Artificial life : the proceedings of an Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems, held September, 1987, in Los Alamos, New Mexico

Description

This book is an outcome of workshop on Artificial Life held at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1987. It focuses on the general theme of Artificial Life, its history, techniques, and various associated methodological issues. It describes simulation systems for studying various aspects of life. "In September 1987, the first workshop on Artificial Life was held at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jointly sponsored by the Center for Nonlinear Studies, the Santa Fe Institute, and Apple Computer Inc, the workshop brought together 160 computer scientists, biologists, physicists, anthropologists, and other assorted ""-ists,"" all of whom shared a common interest in the simulation and synthesis of living systems. During five intense days, we saw a wide variety of models of living systems, including mathematical models for the origin of life, self-reproducing automata, computer programs using the mechanisms of Darwinian evolution to produce co-adapted ecosystems, simulations of flocking birds and schooling fish, the growth and development of artificial plants, and much, much more The workshop itself grew out of my frustration with the fragmented nature of the literature on biological modeling and simulation. For years I had prowled around libraries, shifted through computer-search results, and haunted bookstores, trying to get an overview of a field which I sensed existed but which did not seem to have any coherence or unity. Instead, I literally kept stumbling over interesting work almost by accident, often published in obscure journals if published at all." Artificial life / Christopher G. Langton -- Artificial organisms: History, problems, and directions / Richard Laing -- Simulations, realizations, and theories of life / H.H. Pattee -- Towards a quantitative theory of the origin of life / Steen Rasmussen -- Cellular automata, reaction-diffusion systems, and the origin of life / Pablo Tamayo and Hyman Hartman -- Precipitation membranes, osmotic growths, and synthetic biology / Milan Zeleny, George J. Klir and Kevin D. Hufford -- Evolving bugs in a simulated ecosystem / Norman Packard -- The genetic algorithm and simulated evolution / Stewart W. Wilson -- Human culture: A genetic takeover underway / Hans Moravec -- The evolution of evolvability / Richard Dawkins -- Developmental models of multicellular organisms: A computer graphics perspective / Aristid Lindenmayer and Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz -- The artificial menagerie / Peter Oppenheimer -- RAM: Artificial life for the exploration of complex biological systems / Charles E. Taylor, David R. Jefferson, Scott R. Turner and Seth R. Goldman -- Mirror beyond mirror: Puddles of life / P. Hogeweg -- Movable finite automata (MFA): A new tool for computer modeling of living systems / Narendra S. Goel and Richard L. Thompson -- Computational metabolism: Towards biological geometries for computing / Marek W. Lugowski -- Typogenetics: A logic for artificial life / Harold C. Morris -- Lego, logo, and life / Mitchel Resnick -- Modeling behavior in Petworld / Bill Coderre -- Animal construction kits / Michael Travers -- Nanotechnology with Feynman machines: Scanning tunneling engineering and artificial life / Conrad Schneiker -- Biological and nanomechanical systems: Contrasts in evolutionary capacity / K. Eric Drexler -- Molecular automata in microtubules: Basic computational logic of the living state? / Stuart Hameroff, Steen Rasmussen and Bengt Mȧnsson -- Some types of movements / Valentino Braitenberg.