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Artificial life
Artificial life (A-Life) uses informational
concepts and computer modeling to study life in
general, and terrestrial life in particular. It
aims to explain particular vital phenomena,ranging
from the origin of biochemical metabolisms to
the coevolution of behavioral strategies, and
also the abstract properties of life as such (“life
as it could be”).It is thus a form of mathematical
biology—albeit of a highly interdisciplinary
type. Besides their presence in biology, especially
ETHOLOGY and evolutionary theory,
A-Life’s research topics are studied
also (for instance) in artificial intelligence,
computational psychology, mathematics, physics,
biochemistry, immunology, economics, philosophy,
and anthropology.A-Life was named by Christopher
Langton in 1986(Langton 1986 and 1989). Langton’s
term suggests (deliberately) that the aim of A-Life
is to build new living things. However, not all
A-Life scientists share this goal. Even fewer
believe this could be done without providing some
physical body and metabolism. Accordingly, some
A-Life workers favor less philosophically provocative
terms, such as “adaptive systems”
or “animats” (real or simulated robots
based on animals) (Meyer and Wilson 1991).
The theoretical focus of A-Life is the
central feature of living things: self-organization.
This involves the spontaneous EMERGENCE, and maintenance,
of order out of an origin that is ordered to a
lesser degree. (The lower level may,though need
not, include random “noise.”) Self-organization
is not mere superficial change, but fundamental
structural development. This development is spontaneous,
or autonomous.That is, it results from the intrinsic
character of the system (often in interaction
with the environment), rather than being imposed
on it by some external force or designer.
-raj kumar
Beer, R. D. (1990). Intelligence as Adaptive
Behavior: An Experiment
in Computational Neuroethology. New York:
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