Introduction to Artificial Life [With Cross-Platform]

By Christoph Adami

Book Overview

Life is so diverse and complex that is seems impossible to extract the general principles governing each individual living system. Fortunately, however, the unrelenting growth of the power of modern computers has opened up entirely unexpected avenues of opportunity for us in exploring the construction of artificial living systems. This has created the possibility to design and conduct dedicated experiments with these systems, and has generated interest in the idea of formulating a set of "general principles of the living state" which are quite independent of a particular implementation. Such a "theory of living systems" might equally well-predict the outcome of experiments performed on the protean living system which gave rise to life on earth, e.g., and RNA world, and those worlds in which information is coded in binary strings compiled to programs that have the ability to self-replicate: thus and instance of "Artificial Life." This book and CD-ROM have been developed in a lab-oriented course taught at Cal Tech in 1995 and 1996, and simultaneously augmented by Artificial Life research conducted there. The courses have been attended by an interdisciplinary group of students from backgrounds in physics, computer science, and the computational neural sciences. Pre- requisite understanding of statistical physics and thermodynamics, basic biology, as well as familiarity with computer architectures and scientific computing techniques are assumed. This project is an attempt to bring together the necessary theoretical groundwork for understanding the dynamics of systems of self-replicating information, as well as the result from initial experiments carried out with artificial living systems based on this paradigm.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0387946462
• ISBN13: 9780387946467
• Release Date: December 1997
• Publisher: Springer
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.2" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Adami's Book Is Extraordinarily Important

"ADAMI'S BOOK IS EXTRAORDINARILY IMPORTANT. It represents a true landmark in the new field of Artificial Life, and will find a wide readership, ranging from university students to professional researchers." - Prof. Dr. Heinz G. Schuster, University of Kiel, Germany Author of Deterministic Chaos: An Introduction [from the back cover]

At times cryptic, but nevertheless marvellous

This is the ONLY book I have seen which brings together all the many and various strands which are essential to the exciting new subjects arising currently around the question: What is Life? It is a stunning tour de force of the basic knowledge you need to possess to work in the areas of A-life or biological complexity.I should warn: it's not a book I could read through in an afternoon, by any means. At times the descriptions are a little cryptic, so that I had to work at understanding what was being said. But the effort I had to put in was always rewarded with greater understanding. Thank you, Chris Adami.

Hard Science

Adami demonstrates how to use the tools of artificial life to conduct pure scientific research. A very clear and readable textbook on the subject, Adami makes me want to go back to graduate school. Here is a chance to take an introductory course in an exciting field of research that is truely table-top science. I loved the book and I didn't even use the CD and software that came with it.

An excellent textbook for this rapidly changing field.

Adami's book is the first comprehensive review of issues pertinent to the field of artificial life. The book is a textbook based on his lectures at CalTech. Some of the topics are a bit brief (Turing machines are summarized in four pages) but that is to be expected for a book whose goal is to integrate concepts from the fields of biology, chemistry, statistics, computer science, information science, etc. I found the book fascinating and Chris includes a CD-rom and several chapters on the Avida simulation developed at CalTech. There are numerous references and problems at the end of each chapter.