Jonathan Gorard admits that it was a risk, for his academic career, to work on the Wolfram Physics project.

In this third excerpt from my recent conversation with Jonathan, I asked him how he thought about that risk and why he decided to take it.

He told me that the opportunity to work with Stephen Wolfram on this new model is a bit like being given an opportunity to work with von Neumann and Ulam on cellular automata, or with Turing, Church and Gödel on computational models, back in the early twentieth century.

So I asked Jonathan whether he thought, as I do, that the reframing physics in terms of computation feels like we’re in a scientific revolution, as important as the reframing of physics in terms of mathematics several hundred years ago.

“It’s a strong statement,” he replied, “but I don’t think it’ll end up being too inaccurate.”

For me, the opportunity to talk to Jonathan about Wolfram Physics feels a bit like being given an opportunity to interview Dirac, Heisenberg, Pauli or Schrödinger back in the early days of quantum mechanics.

These are exciting times.

Mark

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of Open Web Mind