The Garden in the Machine - Softcover

Emmeche, Claus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691029032 ISBN 13: 9780691029030

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1996

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Claus Emmeche, a Danish theoretical biologist, is a Research Fellow at the Center of Cognitive Science, University of Roskilde. He is also Guest Scientist and a reader at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and is the author of several books on biology.

Reviews

A serious, sensible introduction to an exciting new field. It is not every day that one can see science fiction clash with natural philosophy in such a civilized fashion.

Can life be synthesized? Emmeche suggests in his fascinating book an approach to this question by means of computer simulation of living processes ... [and] tackles the posed questions with great insight.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691029032
• ISBN 13: 9780691029030
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 214