Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
References
All Topics
Mathematics
Computational Mathematics

Facing N-P problems via artificial life: A philosophical appraisal

Profile image of Nelson Alfonso Gómez-CruzNelson Alfonso Gómez-Cruz

2011

Abstract

Life as an N-P problem is a philosophical, scientific and engineering concern. N-P problems can be understood and worked out via artificial life. However, these problems demand a new understanding of engineering, since engineering is basically a way of acting upon the world. Such a new engineering is known as non-conventional engineering or also as complex systems engineering. Bio-inspired systems are more flexible and allow a higher number of degrees of freedom. As a consequence, AL enlarges our understanding of living systems in general and can be taken as a step forwards in grasping the complexity of life.

Related papers

Open Problems In Artificial Life
Takashi Ikegami

Artificial life, 2000

View PDFchevron_right
Using the Logic of the Life to Reduce the Complexity of Life
Bernard Scott
View PDFchevron_right
Why complex systems engineering needs biological development
Wolfgang Banzhaf

Complexity, 2007

Here we shall discuss the need of Complex Systems Engineering to adopt principles from natural development of complex biological organisms-besides principles of natural evolution-to acomplish the type of performance that biology achieves regularly. We shall situate Complex Systems Engineering and discuss an example of how it could be employed.

View PDFchevron_right
Artificial Life - The Coming Evolution
Massimo Bonline

Within fifty to a hundred years a new class of organisms is likely to emerge. These organisms will be artificial in the sense that they will originally be designed by humans. However, they will reproduce, and will evolve into something other than their initial form; they will be "alive" under any reasonable definition of the word. These organisms will evolve in a fundamentally different manner than contemporary biological organisms, since their reproduction will be under at least partial conscious control, giving it a Lamarckian component. The pace of evolutionary change consequently will be extremely rapid. The advent of artificial life will be the most significant historical event since the emergence of human beings. The impact on humanity and the biosphere could be enormous, larger than the industrial revolution, nuclear weapons, or environmental poilution. We must take steps now to shape the emergence of artificial organisms; they have potential to be either the ugliest terrestrial disaster, or the most beautiful creation of humanity.

View PDFchevron_right
Biologically-inspired computing, Lecture Notes
Luis Rocha

"Seeking a connecting link, they had condescended to the preposterous assumption of structureless living matter, unorganized organisms, which darted together of themselves in the albumen solution, like crystals in their mother-liquor; yet organic differentiation still remained at once condition and expression of all life. One could point to no form of life that did not owe its existence to procreation by parents". Thomas Mann [1924].

View PDFchevron_right
The Past, Present, and Future of Artificial Life
Wendy Aguilar

Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2014

For millennia people have wondered what makes the living different from the non-living. 3 Beginning in the mid-1980s, artificial life has studied living systems using a synthetic approach: 4 build life in order to understand it better, be it by means of software, hardware, or wetware. 5 This review provides a summary of the advances that led to the development of artificial life, its 6 current research topics, and open problems and opportunities. We classify artificial life research 7 into fourteen themes: origins of life, autonomy, self-organization, adaptation (including evolution, 8 development, and learning), ecology, artificial societies, behavior, computational biology, 9 artificial chemistries, information, living technology, art, and philosophy. Being interdisciplinary, 10 artificial life seems to be losing its boundaries and merging with other fields. 11 12 13

View PDFchevron_right
Artificial Life
Wolfgang Banzhaf

Handbook of Natural Computing, 2012

Artificial life has now become a mature inter-discipline. In this contribution, its roots are traced, its key questions are raised, its main methodological tools are discussed, and finally its applications are reviewed. As part of the growing body of knowledge at the intersection between the life sciences and computing, artificial life will continue to thrive and benefit from further scientific and technical progress on both sides, the biological and the computational. It is expected to take center stage in natural computing. " Artificial life is the study of artificial systems that exhibit behavior characteristic of natural living systems. This includes computer simulations, biological and chemical experiments, and purely theoretical endeavors. Processes occurring on molecular, cellular, neural, social, and evolutionary scales are subject to investigation. The ultimate goal is to extract the logical form of living systems. (Langton 1987

View PDFchevron_right
Can Complex Systems Be Engineered? Lessons from Life
Anthony Dekker

2007

Abstract. Recently there has been considerable debate as to whether Complex Systems can be engineered. Can engineering techniques be applied to Complex Systems, or are there fundamental attributes of Complex Systems that would prevent this? A first glance at the Complex Systems literature suggests a negative answer, but this is partly due to the fact that complex systems theorists often look for unstable, chaotic, and “interesting” behaviour modes, while engineers look for stable, regular, and predictable modes.

View PDFchevron_right

References (19)

  1. Heudin, J.: Artificial Life and the Sciences of Complexity: History and Future. In: Feltz, B., Crommelinck, M. and Goujon, P. (eds.): Self-Organization and Emergence in Life Sciences, pp. 227--247. Springer Verlag, Holanda (2006)
  2. Copeland, J., Proudfoot, D.: Un Alan Turing Desconocido. Investigación y Ciencia 273, 14--19 (1999)
  3. Sipper, M.: The Emergence of Cellular Computing. IEEE Computer 32(7), 18--26 (1999)
  4. Nunes de Castro, L.: Fundamentals of Natural Computing: An Overview. Physics of Life 4, 1--36 (2007)
  5. Bedau, M.: Artificial Life: Organization, Adaptation and Complexity from the Bottom-Up. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(11), 505--512 (2003)
  6. Bedau, M. et al.: Open Problems in Artificial Life. Artificial Life 6(4), 363--376 (2000)
  7. Braha, D., Minai, A., Bar-Yam, Y. (eds.): Complex Engineered Systems: Science Meets Technology. Springer Complexity, Cambridge (2006)
  8. Maldonado, C. E.: Ciencias de la complejidad: Ciencias de los Cambios Súbitos. In: Odeón. Observatorio De Economía y Operaciones Numéricas, pp. 85--125. Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá (2005)
  9. Maldonado, C. E.: La heurística de la vida artificial. Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia II (4 and 5), 35--43 (2001)
  10. Lane, N.: Power, Sex, Suicide. Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2005)
  11. Lloyd, S.: Programming the Universe. Alfred A. Knopf, New York (2006)
  12. Kauffman, S.: Reinventing the sacred: A new view of science, reason, and religion. Basic Books, New York (2008)
  13. Langton, Ch.: Studying Artificial Life with Cellular Automata. Physica 22D, 120--149 (1986)
  14. Langton, Ch.: Artificial Life. In: Boden, M. (ed.): The Philosophy of Artificial Life. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1996)
  15. Waldrop, M.: Complexity. The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. Touchstone, New York (1993)
  16. Ray, Th.: An approach to the synthesis of life. In: Langton, C., Taylor, C., Farmer, D., Rasmussen, S. (eds.): Artificial Life II, Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, vol. XI, pp. 371--408. Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, CA (1991)
  17. Ray, Th.: Jugué a ser Dios y Creé la Vida en mi Computadora. In: Gutiérrez, C. (ed): Epistemología e Informática, pp. 257--267. UNED, Costa Rica (1994)
  18. Gardner, M.: Mathematical Games: The fantastic combinations of John Conway's new solitaire game "life". Scientific American 223, 120--123 (1970)
  19. Chaitin, G.: Metamaths. The Quest for Omega. Atlantic Books, London (2006)

Related papers

Artificial Life: Discipline or Method? Report on a Debate Held at ECAL '99
Jason Noble

Artificial Life, 2000

How can artificial life (AL) advance scientific understanding? Is AL best seen as a new discipline, or as a collection of novel computational methods that can be applied to old problems? And given that the products of AL research range from abstract existence proofs to working robots to detailed simulation models, are there standards of quality or usefulness that can be applied across the whole field? On September 16th, 1999 in Lausanne, Switzerland, a debate on these questions was held as part of the Fifth European Conference on Artificial Life. As the organizers, we wanted to foster a constructive discussion regarding the scientific status, and future, of AL. We were well aware that some of these issues had been raised before (e.g., Miller [2]) but we felt that earlier treatments had perhaps not reached a wide enough audience. The format for the debate consisted of contributions from invited panelists followed by an open discussion. The panelists were Chris Langton, Mark Bedau, Simon Kirby, and Inman Harvey-Hiroaki Kitano was scheduled to participate but regrettably could not attend the conference.

View PDFchevron_right
Artificial life: The quest for a new creation
Steven Levy

The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 1993

Meat evolution is designing its way out of existence. The billion-year process that shaped us out is going to shape, on a vastly faster timescale , the silicon life forms a few computational biologi in the near future. Some people think tinkering with the pace of evolution might not be a bad idea. Who are we to ques evolution works? Isn't human-engineered a-life a legitimate evolutionary mechanism? Once there were there are people; tomorrow, it will be the semimetallic descendants of today's a-life experiments. O deliberatey designed information creatures are something we have

View PDFchevron_right
The scientific and philosophical scope of artificial life
Mark Bedau

Leonardo, 2002

The new interdisciplinary science of artificial life has had a connection with the arts from its inception. This paper provides an overview of artificial life, reviews its key scientific challenges, and discusses its philosophical implications. It ends with a few words about the implications of artificial life for the arts.

View PDFchevron_right
Artificial life: Discipline or method
Ezequiel Di Paolo

How can arti cial life (AL) advance scienti c understanding? Is AL best seen as a new discipline, or as a collection of novel computational methods that can be applied to old problems? And given that the products of AL research range from abstract existence proofs to working robots to detailed simulation models, are there standards of quality or usefulness that can be applied across the whole eld? On September 16th, 1999 in Lausanne, Switzerland, a debate on these questions was held as part of the Fifth European Conference on Arti cial Life. As the organizers, we wanted to foster a constructive discussion regarding the scienti c status, and future, of AL. We were well aware that some of these issues had been raised before (e.g., Miller [2]) but we felt that earlier treatments had perhaps not reached a wide enough audience. The format for the debate consisted of contributions from invited panelists followed by an open discussion. The panelists were Chris Langton, Mark Bedau, Simon Kirby, and Inman Harvey-Hiroaki Kitano was scheduled to participate but regrettably could not attend the conference.

View PDFchevron_right
Extending Life Concepts to Complex Systems
Jean Le Fur

Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, 2013

There is still no consensus definition of complex systems. This article explores, as a heuristic approach, the possibility of using notions associated with life as transversal concepts for defining complex systems. This approach is developed within a general classification of systems, with complex systems considered as a general 'living things' category and living organisms as a specialised class within this category. Concepts associated with life are first explored in the context of complex systems: birth, death and lifetime, adaptation, ontogeny and growth, reproduction. Thereafter, a refutation approach is used to test the proposed classification against a set of diverse systems, including a reference case, edge cases and immaterial complex systems. The summary of this analysis is then used to generate a definition of complex systems, based on the proposal, and within the background of cybernetics, complex adaptive systems and biology. Using notions such as 'birth' or 'lifespan' as transversal concepts may be of heuristic value for the generic characterization of complex systems, opening up new lines of research for improving their definition.

View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • Engineering
  • Computer Science
  • Philosophy
  • Complexity Theory
  • Artificial Life
  • Non conventional computing
  • Philosophical aspects
    • 580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved