Concept
Artificial life
Overview
Artificial Life, also referred to as ALife, is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986. In 1987, Langton organized the first conference on the field, in Los Alamos, New Mexico. There are three main kinds of artificial life, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life researchers study traditional biology by trying to replicate aspects of biological phenomena.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
They are minute bodies, most of which are made individually visible only by the microscope. All of them are extremely simple in structure; and some of them, as the _Rhizopods_, almost structureless. Multiplying, as they ordinarily do, by the spontaneous division of their bodies, they produce halves, which may either become quite separate and move away in different directions, or may continue attached. By the…
Herbert Spencer, Illustrations of Universal Progress
States what Artificial life is.
Instances could be given of the same variety being produced under conditions of life as different as can well be conceived; and, on the other hand, of different varieties being produced from the same species under the same conditions. Such facts show how indirectly the conditions of life must act.
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection
Close in meaning to Artificial life; the term itself is not named.
She was, no doubt, handsome in her youth, and in her early years probably trifled away her time in rendering many a poor youth the sport of her caprice: in her riper years she has submitted to the yoke of a veteran officer, who, in return for her person and her small independence, has spent with her what we may designate her age of brass. He is dead; and she is now a widow, and deserted. She spends her iron age…
Theodor Fontane, German Fiction
Opens on Artificial life; names Artificial life.
Philosophers who discussed Artificial life
Related ideas
- Artificial intelligence
- Philosophy of biology
- Life
- Axiomatic system
- Abiogenesis
- Mario Bunge
- Ontology
- The New York Times
- Information processing (psychology)
- Computer scientist
- Emergence
- Computational theory of mind
- Nature (journal)
- Methodology
- System
- Biology
- Ethics
- First principle
- Ecosystem
- Biomimetics