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Towards a Computational Formalization for Foundations of Medicine
Computational Essay Stephen Wolfram Computational Essay Stephen Wolfram

Towards a Computational Formalization for Foundations of Medicine

Stephen Wolfram

As it’s practiced today, medicine is almost always about particulars: “this has gone wrong; this is how to fix it”. But might it also be possible to talk about medicine in a more general, more abstract way—and perhaps to create a framework in which one can study its essential features without engaging with all of its details?

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Foundations of Biological Evolution: More Results & More Surprises
Computational Essay Stephen Wolfram Computational Essay Stephen Wolfram

Foundations of Biological Evolution: More Results & More Surprises

Stephen Wolfram

A few months ago I introduced an extremely simple “adaptive cellular automaton” model that seems to do remarkably well at capturing the essence of what’s happening in biological evolution. But over the past few months I’ve come to realize that the model is actually even richer and deeper than I’d imagined. And here I’m going to describe some of what I’ve now figured out about the model—and about the often-surprising things it implies for the foundations of biological evolution.

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Why Does Biological Evolution Work? A Minimal Model for Biological Evolution and Other Adaptive Processes
Research Paper Stephen Wolfram Research Paper Stephen Wolfram

Why Does Biological Evolution Work? A Minimal Model for Biological Evolution and Other Adaptive Processes

Stephen Wolfram

Why does biological evolution work? And, for that matter, why does machine learning work? Both are examples of adaptive processes that surprise us with what they manage to achieve. So what’s the essence of what’s going on? I’m going to concentrate here on biological evolution, though much of what I’ll discuss is also relevant to machine learning—but I’ll plan to explore that in more detail elsewhere.

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