History of Science & Technology Q&A (July 27, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: How was it determined that light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum? - Could you speak about the history of the hard sphere model in statistical mechanics? In many textbooks, it is mentioned rather briefly for something so fundamental. - How did the study of nonlinear dynamics come about? I'd imagine it would be a known thing after Newton's work. - How important are complex numbers in the history of science and tech? Would the current state be possible without them? - Solving equations of that form led negative and complex numbers to be taken more seriously, but people did not see the utility of these types of numbers. A lot of facts that are true about real numbers are also true about complex numbers. They're not necessary to solve many problems, but they're convenient for packaging. - Have you ever seen CA-like objects produced by a Jacquard loom? - Just curious on your thoughts on technological singularity.