Towards a Computational Formalization for Foundations of Medicine

A Metamodel for Foundations of Medicine

What would a general theory of medicine look like? Stephen Wolfram proposes one grounded in computation. By evolving simple programs as model organisms, he shows how perturbations can stand in for disease and how counter-perturbations can mimic treatment, with genetic diversity reflected in variant rules. The results mirror core challenges of medical science: the wide range of outcomes, the difficulty of prognosis and the uneven success of treatments. The essay positions medicine alongside physics and evolution as a domain whose essential features can be captured in abstract computational form.

This is not applied biomedicine but a research agenda: an invitation to study medicine's foundations with computation as the guiding principle. It points towards a future in which algorithmic models deepen our intuition for health, disease and healing.

Information and Media Inquiries

October 28, 2025 Publication
Publicity and Interviews: sw-media@wolfram.com
Non-Fiction

Contents

• A Theory of Medicine?
• A Minimal Metamodel
• The Diversity and Classification of Disease
• Diagnosis & Prognosis
• The Problem of Finding Treatments
• The Effect of Genetic Diversity
• Biological Evolution and Our Model Organism
• What It Means and Where to Go from Here
• Thanks & Notes

About the Author

Stephen Wolfram is an award-winning scientist and bestselling author, and the creator of some of the world's most respected software systems—Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Language. For more than 35 years, he has been CEO of the global technology company Wolfram Research, as well as responsible for a series of groundbreaking advances in basic science, including the recent Wolfram Physics Project.

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