Artificial Life
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Artificial Life
This enthralling book alerts us to nothing less than the existence of new varieties of life. Some of these species can move and eat, see, reproduce, and die. Some behave like birds or ants. One such life form may turn out to be our best weapon in the war against AIDS. What these species have in common is that they exist inside computers, their DNA is digital, and they have come into being not through God's agency but through the efforts of a generation of scientists who seek to create life in silico. But even as it introduces us to these brilliant heretics and unravels the intricacies of their work. Artificial Life examines its subject's dizzying philosophical implications: Is a self-replicating computer program any less alive than a flu virus? Are carbon-and-water-based entities merely part of the continuum of living things? And is it possible that one day "a-life" will look back at human beings and dismiss us as an evolutionary way station -- or, worse still, a dead end?
The Philosophy of Artificial Life
The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available to the university student or the general reader. The editor of each volume contributes an introductory essay on the items chosen and on the questions with which they deal. A selective bibliography is appended as a guide to further reading. This volume offers a selection of the most important philosophical work in the new and fast-growing interdisciplinary area of artifical life; it will set the agenda for future study and research. Artifical life (A-Life) research aims to synthesize the characteristics of life by artifical means, particularly employing computer technology. The essays chosen explore such fascinating themes as the nature of life, the relation between life and mind, and the limits of technology. The first two papers, one of which is the classic A-Life manifesto by Christopher Langton, provide a general overview of the subject and compare it with artificial intelligence (AI); in Part II, the contributors describe examples of A-Life research. Part III discusses various explanatory strategies in A-Life, and relates them to approaches in AI and cognitive science, while Part IV focuses on the concept of life in general. Finally, Part V explores A-Life's relation to functionalism and the feasibility of `strong' A-Life.
Artificial Life
This book brings together a series of overview articles that appeared in the first three issues of the groundbreaking journal Artificial Life.
