History of Science & Technology Q&A (November 8, 2023)

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 did taxation work before money was invented? - How did trading happen between nations that used different number systems? - Can you discuss the role of ancient civilizations, such as the Greeks, in laying the foundations of modern science and technology? - ​Did Isaac Newton spend a significant amount of time attempting to transmute lead into gold? Did he believe in all of the miracles described in the Old Testament? - What was the greatest technological advancement to come out of the Roman Empire? - ​Given what we know now about symbolic representations and languages, what do you make of the break from computable mathematics in the 1800s/1900s and our current set-theoretic foundations?