The Garden in the Machine (Princeton Science Library) - Hardcover

Emmeche, Claus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691033307 ISBN 13: 9780691033303

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1994

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

Are computer viruses living things? The answer depends on how you define life. Like biological viruses, the electronic varieties have metabolisms, reproduce, adapt to their environments, and even evolve. Through computer modeling of biological phenomena, life, as some theorists define it, already exists in virtual space. Programs have been written that reproduce both the order and the spontaneity of nature, such as that observed in a flock of birds in flight. Thus, artificial life forces scientists and philosophers to reconsider just what, if anything, is so special about biological life. Danish theorist Emmeche gives a far-ranging view of artificial life and related currents of thought, such as chaos theory and the study of emergence. He writes in a querying mode, not promoting any point of view but simply trying to ask the right questions. This is heady stuff that, far from being arcane, involves real issues about how human beings think about themselves. For large public and academic libraries.
Gregg Sapp, Montana State Univ. Libs., Bozeman
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691033307
• ISBN 13: 9780691033303
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216