Artificial Life

Artificial Life

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Artificial life (commonly called a-life) is the term applied collectively to attempts being made to develop mathematical models and computer simulations of the ways in which living organisms develop, grow, and evolve. Researchers in this burgeoning field hope to gain deeper insights into the nature of organic life as well as into the further possibilities of COMPUTER science and robotics (see ROBOT). A-life techniques are also being used to explore the origins and chemical processes of metabolism. Some investigators have even proposed that some digital "life" in computers might already be considered a real life form.

Background

The term artificial life was coined in the 1980s by Christopher Langdon, a computer scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Santa Fe Institute. Langdon organized the first experimental workshop on the subject at Santa Fe in 1987. Since then other a-life conferences have taken place, drawing increasingly wider attention and a growing number of participants.

Theoretical studies of a-life, however, had been in progress long before the 1980s. Most notably, the Hungarian-born U.S. mathematician John VON NEUMANN, one of the pioneers of computer science, had begun to explore the nature of very basic a-life formats called cellular automata (see AUTOMATA, THEORY OF) in the 1950s. Cellular automata are imaginary mathematical "cells"-analogous to checkerboard squares-that can be made to simulate physical processes by subj...

Artificial Life

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