Yaeger, Larry. “Computational genetics, physiology, metabolism, neural systems, learning, vision, and behavior or Poly World: Life in a new context.” In SANTA FE INSTITUTE STUDIES IN THE SCIENCES OF COMPLEXITY-PROCEEDINGS VOLUME- , vol. 17, pp. 263-263. ADDISON-WESLEY PUBLISHING CO, 1994.
URL1 URL2
The study of living systems has taken many forms, from research into fundamental physical processes to ethological studies of animal behavior on a global scale. Traditionally these investigations have focused exclusively on “real” biological systems existing in our world’s ecological system. Only recently have investigations of living systems begun to occur in “artificial” systems in computers and robotic hardware. The potential benefits of an enhanced understanding of living systems are tremendous. Some are of a grand scale and are intuitively obvious, such as improvements in our ability to manage our own real ecosystems, the development of true machine intelligence, and the possibility of understanding our own mental and physiological processes. Some are of a more prosaic scale, but more accessible thereby, and perhaps of more immediate utility, such as simple learning systems, robust pattern classifiers, general purpose optimization schemes, robotic controllers, and evolvable software algorithms. The technological issues of the study of Artificial Life (ALife) are well laid out by Langton [27] in the proceedings of the first ALife workshop; the societal and hilosophical implications of ALife are well presented by Farmer and Belin [16] in the proceedings of the second ALife workshop