The Garden in the Machine - the Emerging Science of Artificial Life

Claus Emmeche

ISBN 10: 0691029032 / ISBN 13: 9780691029030

Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1996

About this Item

In the Princeton Science Library, translated from Danish by Steven Sampson. Card covers, 199pp inc index, plus 3pp list of series, b/w illustrations. Apart from several production creases in front cover laminate, the book looks unread.

Seller Inventory # 002433

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Garden in the Machine - the Emerging Science of Artificial Life
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691029032
• ISBN 13: 9780691029030
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: Third Printing
• Condition: VG++
• Dust Jacket Condition: N/a

About this title

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 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.