Hypergraph Rewriting

Max Piskunov

SetReplace is an open‑source Wolfram Language package that executes set‑substitution systems. It evolves user‑defined rules from an initial state and returns structured objects that expose events, causal dependencies, and branching dynamics for analysis and visualization.

James K. Wiles

A concise survey of how recent computational models, such as the ruliad and observer theory, are transforming metaphysical questions into formal, testable frameworks.

Utkarsh Bajaj

Hypergraph rewriting is studied through categorical frameworks to establish foundational concepts of events and causality in graph rewriting systems. Novel concepts are introduced within double-pushout rewriting in adhesive categories. An algorithm is constructed to determine causal relations between events during λ-calculus evaluation, with extensions developed for arbitrary λ-expressions.

Carlos Zapata-Carratalá, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla

Exploration of a wide range of higher-order phenomena across multiple disciplines and the preliminary application of hypergraph and hypermatrix methods.

Jonathan Gorard

This paper introduces the Gravitas computational general relativity framework's numerical subsystem, emphasizing its ability to perform 3 + 1 spacetime decompositions via the ADM formalism, handle complex simulations of gravitational phenomena like binary black hole mergers, and leverage adaptive refinement algorithms based on hypergraph rewriting within the Wolfram Language.

Dean Rickles, Hatem Elshatlawy, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla

Physical laws arise from the sampling of the Ruliad by observers (including us). This naturally leads to several conceptual issues, such as what kind of object is the Ruliad? What is the nature of the observers carrying out the sampling, and how do they relate to the Ruliad itself? What is the precise nature of the sampling? This paper provides a philosophical examination of these questions, and other related foundational issues, including the identification of a limitation that must face any attempt to describe or model reality in such a way that the modeller-observers are included.

Carlos Zapata-Carratalá, Maximilian Schich, Taliesin Beynon, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla

Hypergraph and hypermatrix methods are applied to detect irreducible interactions in higher-order systems.

Jonathan Gorard

This study extends the Raychaudhuri equation to discrete spacetimes, exploring conditions under which they might exhibit geodesic incompleteness, and applies numerical simulations to predict black hole formations.

Carlos Zapata-Carratalá, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Taliesin Beynon

Stephen Wolfram

One of the many surprising (and to me, unexpected) implications of our Physics Project is its suggestion of a very deep correspondence between the foundations of physics and mathematics. We might have imagined that physics would have certain laws, and mathematics would have certain theories, and that while they might be historically related, there wouldn’t be any fundamental formal correspondence between them. 

But what our Physics Project suggests is that underneath everything we physically experience there is a single very general abstract structure—that we call the ruliad—and that our physical laws arise in an inexorable way from the particular samples we take of this structure.

Stephen Wolfram

I call it the ruliad. Think of it as the entangled limit of everything that is computationally possible: the result of following all possible computational rules in all possible ways. It’s yet another surprising construct that’s arisen from our Physics Project. And it’s one that I think has extremely deep implications—both in science and beyond.

Jonathan Gorard

The article shows that causal invariance in the Wolfram Model leads to discrete general and Lorentz covariance, introducing curvature concepts for hypergraphs related to the Ricci tensor and Einstein field equations

Jonathan Gorard
This study links causal set theory and the Wolfram model, showing hypergraph rewriting facilitates causal set evolution, infers conformal invariance, and derives the Benincasa-Dowker action from discrete Einstein-Hilbert action.

Jonathan Gorard
This article introduces a numerical general relativity code using the Z4 formulation with hypergraph-based Cauchy data and adaptive mesh refinement, validating results against standard spacetimes and comparing with Wolfram model evolution.

Stephen Wolfram

In any decentralized system with computers, people, databases, measuring devices or anything else one can end up with different values or results at different “nodes”. But for all sorts of reasons one often wants to agree on a single “consensus” value, that one can for example use to “make a decision and go on to the next step”.

Jonathan Gorard, Manojna Namuduri, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla

Stephen Wolfram

When we launched the Wolfram Physics Project a year ago today, I was fairly certain that—to my great surprise—we’d finally found a path to a truly fundamental theory of physics, and it was beautiful. A year later it’s looking even better. We’ve been steadily understanding more and more about the structure and implications of our models—and they continue to fit beautifully with what we already know about physics, particularly connecting with some of the most elegant existing approaches, strengthening and extending them, and involving the communities that have developed them.

Jonathan Gorard, Manojna Namuduri, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla

Stephen Wolfram

Let’s say we find a rule that reproduces physics. A big question would then be: “Why this rule, and not another?” I think there’s a very elegant potential answer to this question, that uses what we’re calling rule space relativity—and that essentially says that there isn’t just one rule: actually all possible rules are being used, but we’re basically picking a reference frame that makes us attribute what we see to some particular rule. In other words, our description of the universe is a sense of our making, and there can be many other—potentially utterly incoherent—descriptions, etc.

Stephen Wolfram

In our models, space emerges as the large-scale limit of our spatial hypergraph, while spacetime effectively emerges as the large-scale limit of the causal graph that represents causal relationships between updating events in the spatial hypergraph. An important result is that (subject to various assumptions) there is a continuum limit in which the emergent spacetime follows Einstein’s equations from general relativity.

Jonathan Gorard

By exploring hypergraph rules that deliberately break causal invariance, we show that the Wolfram Model’s multiway evolution functions like a quantum superposition whose geometry converges to projective Hilbert space. By proving that observers can “collapse” these histories via Knuth–Bendix completion—and deriving multiway analogues of Einstein’s equations, the path integral and the Schrödinger equation—we unify discrete spacetime, quantum mechanics and relativity within one framework.

Stephen Wolfram

I’ve been saying it for decades: “Someday I’m going to mount a serious effort to find the fundamental theory of physics.” Well, I’m thrilled that today “someday” has come, and we’re launching the Wolfram Physics Project. And getting ready to launch this project over the past few months might be the single most intellectually exciting time I’ve ever had. So many things I’d wondered about for so long getting solved. So many exciting moments of “Surely it can’t be that simple?” And the dawning realization, “Oh my gosh, it’s actually going to work!” 

Stephen Wolfram

It’s unexpected, surprising—and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.