A PROFILE OF THE SCIENTIST WE MENTIONED EARLIER :

The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything ... : ... But first it cracked him. The inside story of how Stephen Wolfram went from boy genius to recluse to science renegade. (Steven Levy, June 2002, Wired)

As dessert is served, I bring up the secret-of-the-universe question. Wolfram's theory that there is a single rule at the heart of everything--a single simple algorithm that, in effect, generates all the rules of physics and everything else--is bound to be one of his most controversial claims, a theory that even some of his close friends in physics aren't buying. Furthermore, Wolfram rubs our faces in the dreary implications of his contention. Not only does a single measly rule account for everything, but if one day we actually see the rule, he predicts, we'll probably find it unimpressive. "One might expect," he writes, "that in the end there would be nothing special about the rule for our universe--just as there has turned out to be nothing special about our position in the solar system or the galaxy."

I have some trouble with this.

"I've got to ask you," I say. "How long do you envision this rule of the universe to be?"

"I'm guessing it's really very short."

"Like how long?"

"I don't know. In Mathematica, for example, perhaps three, four lines of code."

"Four lines of code?"

"That's what I'm guessing. I mean, I don't really know, but I think there's no obvious evidence that it's any longer than that. Now, in a sense, it will be short if Mathematica was a well-designed language. It will be longer if it doesn't happen to be as well-designed, in the sense that that doesn't happen to be the way the universe works. But we're not looking at 25,000 lines of code or something. We're looking at a handful of lines of code."

"So it's not like Windows?"

"No." Wolfram laughs. "It's not like Windows. It's going to be something small, I think. I've certainly wondered. You ask about the theological questions and things. I think there will be a time when one will sort of hold those lines of code in one's hand, and that is the universe. And what does this mean? You know, how do we then feel about things, if this whole thing is just five lines of code or something? And in a sense, that is a very unsatisfying conclusion, that sort of everything that's going on, everything out there, is all just this five lines of code we're running."

There is a moment of silence between us. In the background are the clatter of dishes and silverware, noises that come from a restaurant in Urbana, Illinois, preparing for closing time. The mundane but complex stuff of equivalent computational processes.

"Well," I say finally, "I guess we'd feel really bad if it wasn't well-written."

Wolfram grins. "Yes, right."

Another pause. "So do you believe we'll find this code in your lifetime?"

"I hope so. Yeah."

"Do you want to find it?"

"Sure. That'd be nice."

"Is that your next thing to do?"

The self-styled Newton of our times smiles, as if to himself. "I'd like to think about that. Yeah."

Maybe I'm just dense, but I don't see why it's believers who should be threatened by the idea that a sentient being created the universe via a few simple equations. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 17, 2002 12:47 PM