Marvin was used to having theories about thinking that could be figured out just by thinking—a bit like the ancient philosophers had done. But Marvin was interested in everything, including physics. He wasn’t an expert on the formalism of physics, though he did make contributions to physics topics (notably patenting a confocal microscope). And through his long-time friend Ed Fredkin, he had already been introduced to cellular automata in the early 1960s.
