Artificial Life

Christopher G. Langton

Artificial life, a field that seeks to increase the role of synthesis in the study of biological phenomena, has great potential, both for unlocking the secrets of life and for raising a host of disturbing issues -- scientific and technical as well as philosophical and ethical. This book brings together a series of overview articles that appeared in the first three issues of the groundbreaking journal Artificial Life, along with a new introduction by Christopher Langton, Editor-in-Chief of Artificial Life, founder of the discipline, and Director of the Artificial Life Program at the Santa Fe Institute.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Editor's Introduction
1
Artificial Life as a Tool for Biological Inquiry by Charles Taylor and David Jefferson

Cooperation and Community Structure in Artificial Ecosystems by Kristian Lindgren and Mats G. Nordahl

Extended Molecular Evolutionary Biology: Artificial Life Bridging the Gap Between Chemistry and Biology by P. Schuster

Visual Models of Morphogenesis by Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz

The Artificial Life Roots of Artificial Intelligence by Luc Steels

Toward Synthesizing Artificial Neural Networks that Exhibit Cooperative Intelligent Behavior: Some Open Issues in Artificial Life by Michael G. Dyer

Modeling Adaptive Autonomous Agents by Pattie Maes

Chaos as a Source of Complexity and Diversity in Evolution by Kunihiko Kaneko

An Evolutionary Approach to Synthetic Biology: Zen and the Art of Creating Life by Thomas S. Ray

Beyond Digital Naturalism by Walter Fontana, Günter Wagner and Leo W. Buss

Learning About Life by Mitchel Resnick

Book Reviews: Books on Artificial Life and Related Topics by David G. Stork

Computer Viruses as Artificial Life by Eugene H. Spafford

Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Life by Melanie Mitchell and Stephanie Forrest

Artificial Life as Philosophy by Daniel Dennett

Levels of Functional Equivalence in Reverse Bioengineering by Stevan Hamad

Why Do We Need Artificial Life? by Eric W. Bonabeau and Guy Theraulaz

Index