What is life? Is it just the biologically familiar--birds,
trees, snails, people--or is it an infinitely complex set of
patterns that a computer could simulate? What role does
intelligence play in separating the organic from the inorganic, the
living from the inert? Does life evolve along a predestined path,
or does it suddenly emerge from what appeared lifeless and
programmatic?
In this easily accessible and wide-ranging survey, Claus Emmeche
outlines many of the challenges and controversies involved in the
dynamic and curious science of artificial life. Emmeche describes
the work being done by an international network of biologists,
computer scientists, and physicists who are using computers to
study life as it could be, or as it might evolve under conditions
different from those on earth.
Many artificial-life researchers believe that they can create
new life in the computer by simulating the processes observed in
traditional, biological life-forms. The flight of a flock of birds,
for example, can be reproduced faithfully and in all its complexity
by a relatively simple computer program that is designed to
generate electronic "boids." Are these "boids" then alive? The
central problem, Emmeche notes, lies in defining the salient
differences between biological life and computer simulations of its
processes. And yet, if we can breathe life into a computer, what
might this mean for our other assumptions about what it means to be
alive?
"The Garden in the Machine" touches on every aspect of this
complex and rapidly developing discipline, including its
connections to artificial intelligence, chaos theory, computational
theory, and studies of emergence. Drawing on the most current work
in the field, this book is a major overview of artificial life.
Professionals and nonscientists alike will find it an invaluable
guide to concepts and technologies that may forever change our
definition of life.
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