Alife Digest Number 045

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Alife Digest

 · 11 months ago

 
ALIFE LIST: Artificial Life Research List Number 45  Friday, October 26th 1990 
  
             ARTIFICIAL LIFE RESEARCH ELECTRONIC MAILING LIST 
    Maintained by the Indiana University Artificial Life Research Group 

Contents: 
  
                               what is "emergent"? 
                       responding to 'what is "emergent"' 
                                Call for papers 
  
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Date: Tue, 23 Oct 90 19:36:04 EDT 
From: W. Richard Stark <stark@kleene.math.usf.edu> 
Subject:  Call for papers 

=========================================================================== 

                     C A L L - F O R - P A P E R S 

   The Americal Mathematical Society Southeastern Sectional Meeting. 
                          22-23 March 1991,  
              University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida. 

                         AMS SPECIAL SESSION:  
        MATHEMATICAL ISSUES IN BIOLOGICALLY MOTIVATED COMPUTING. 

Presentations in this session will focus on mathematical issues fundamental  
to complex systems of communicating processes: on problems, methods, and  
theory. We see "biologically motivated computing" as being a central case of 
extremely distributed computing. 

Objective: to explore and introduce abstract computational paradigms ranging 
from biological information processing to parallel computing to 
non-classical recursion theory. An ideal format might be to present a simple  
problem in one of these areas, then devote most of the presentation to  
mathematics arising from the problem. We would like to have mathematicians  
leave the special session with an appreciation of the challenges present in 
the subject as well as specific problems that they could attack on the basis 
of the presentation and little more than their particular background. 

Partial list of appropriate systems and topics: natural information-processing 
systems, abstract social systems, abstract tissues/organs, cellular automata,  
biological applications of Petri nets, highly parallel computers  
(e.g., Connection Machine), artificial life, neural networks, Lindenmeyer  
systems, genetic algorithms, graph rewriting systems, parallel complexity, 
and non-classical recursion theory. 

Conclusion: This is an opportunity to communicate problems in an area that 
is extremely deep, but still broadly accessible.  

Organizers: Edwin Clark, Joseph Liang, Gregory McColm, John Pedersen, and  
Richard Stark.  
Mathematics Department, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL  33620.  
Phone: 813-974-2643, FAX: 823-974-2700. 

 

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From: Jonathan Rowe <jro@cs.exeter.ac.uk> 
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 11:29:43 BST 
Subject: what is "emergent"? 

Does anyone have any precise definition of the term "emergent property"? 
Are there any good examples of a system that has both emergent properties 
and non-emergent ones? 

In a recent discussion, two extreme views evolved: one said that all properties 
were emergent, but some more so than others; the other view was that no 
property was emergent, but some were less obviously built-in than others. 

Is it a matter of degree? Or is there a clear distinction to be made? 

Jon Rowe. 

 

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Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 06:34:48 -0500 
From: Marek W. Lugowski <marek@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> 
Subject: responding to 'what is "emergent"' 

I would like to suggest that emergent be taken to mean "not controlled". 
Controlled would mean subject to top-down or interpreter/interpreted 
formalization and emergent would mean not subject to the above but a 
product of natural selection, possibly impossible to write down as a 
closed form formula of a typographical formal system. 

				-- Marek 

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