History of Science & Technology Q&A (November 8, 2023)
Episode description
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa
Questions include: How did taxation work before money was invented? - How did trading happen between nations that used different number systems? - Can you discuss the role of ancient civilizations, such as the Greeks, in laying the foundations of modern science and technology? - Did Isaac Newton spend a significant amount of time attempting to transmute lead into gold? Did he believe in all of the miracles described in the Old Testament? - What was the greatest technological advancement to come out of the Roman Empire? - Given what we know now about symbolic representations and languages, what do you make of the break from computable mathematics in the 1800s/1900s and our current set-theoretic foundations?