Five Years of A New Kind of Science May 14, 2007 — Stephen
Wolfram New technology is often what has driven the creation of
new science. And so it has been with Mathematica. One of the
main reasons I originally started building Mathematica was that
I wanted to use it myself. And having Mathematica was a bit like
having one of the first telescopes: I could point it somewhere,
and immediately see all sorts of new things that had never been
seen before. Much has been discovered with Mathematica in almost
every area of science. But my particular interest has been to
create a new kind of science that is uniquely made possible by
Mathematica: a science based on exploring the computational
universe. We are used to creating computer programs for
particular purposes. But as a matter of basic science we can ask
about the universe of all possible programs. And with
Mathematica it becomes easy to explore this. A quarter of a
century ago I had begun my exploration of the computational
universe—and had glimpsed some remarka