Date: Tue, 31 May 1994 13:58:00 PDT Reply-To: "Gessler, Nicholas (G) ANTHRO" <gessler(a)ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU> Sender: General Anthropology Bulletin Board <ANTHRO-L(a)UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU> From: "Gessler, Nicholas (G) ANTHRO" <gessler(a)ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU> Subject: references to COMPUTATIONAL EMERGENCE X-To: DARWIN-L(a)ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, ANTHRO-L(a)UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu To: Multiple recipients of list ANTHRO-L <ANTHRO-L(a)UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU> Sarich was interested in references on the concept of emergence under whatever name. It would certainly be nice to see an historical trajectory of the referents to the term and its auxilliary concepts, and its relation to discussions of teleology, reductionism, vitalism, etc. I can offer the following recent sources, but all refer to deterministic computational emergence, a referent which cannot be more than a few decades old. It would be enlightening to know in what ways computational emergence is congruent with pre-computational definitions of the term. An answer to that question would likely have to wait for the results of computational approaches to pre-computationally formulated problems in t he biological and social evolutionary sciences. Nevertheless, it does seem that we now have a computational method for dealing with some problems which were intractable when Kroeber was formulating his arguments on the "superorganic" in 1917. ========== CELLULAR AUTOMATA: Gutowitz, Howard, editor 1991. CELLULAR AUTOMATA - THEORY AND EXPERIMENT. Special Issues of Phyusica D. Cambridge: MIT Press, A Bradford Book (Elsevier Science). Forrest, Stephanie, editor 1991. EMERGENT COMPUTATION - SELF-ORGANIZING, COLLECTIVE, AND COOPERATIVE PHENOMENA IN NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL COMPUTING NETWORKS. Special Issues of Physica D. Cambridge: MIT Press, A Bradford Book, (Elsevier Science). AMERICAN ARTIFICIAL LIFE: Langton, Christopher G., editor 1989. ARTIFICIAL LIFE (I) - PROCEEDINGS OF AN INTERDISCIPLINARY WORKSHOP ON THE SYNTHESIS AND SIMULATION OF LIVING SYSTEMS, HELD SEPTEMBER 1987 IN LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO. Santa Fe Institute, Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Volume VI. Redwood City: Addison-Wesley. Langton, Christopher G., Charles Taylor, J. Doyne Farmer, and Steen Rasmussen, editors 1991. ARTIFICIAL LIFE II - PROCEEDINGS OF THE WORKSHOP ON ARTIFICIAL LIFE HELD FEBRUARY 1990 IN SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO. Santa Fe Institute, Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Proceedings Volume X. Redwood City: Addison-Wesley. Langton, Christopher, G., editor 1994. ARTIFICIAL LIFE III - PROCEEDINGS OF THE WORKSHOP ON ARTIFICIAL LIFE HELD JUNE, 1992 IN SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO. Santa Fe Institute, Stucies in the Sciences of Complexity, Proceedings Volume XVII. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Brooks, Rodney and Pattie Maes, editors 1994. ARTIFICIAL LIFE IV - PROCEEDINGS OF THE WORKSHOP ON ARTIFICIAL LIFE HELD JULY, 1994 IN CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS. Cambridge: MIT Press, A Bradford Book. (In Press.) EUROPEAN ARTIFICIAL LIFE: Varela, Francisco J. and Paul Bourgine, editors 1992. TOWARD A PRACTICE OF AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS - PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL LIFE. Cambridge: MIT Press, A Bradford Book. Meyer, Jean-Arcady and Stewart W. Wilson, editors 1991. FROM ANIMALS TO ANIMATS - PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SIMULATION OF ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR. Cambridge: MIT Press, A Bradford Book. Meyer, Jean-Arcady Meyer, Herbert L. Roitblat, and Stewart W. Wilson, editors 1993. FROM ANIMALS TO ANIMATS 2 - PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SIMULATION OF ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR. Cambridge: MIT Press, A Bradford Book. JOURNALS: ARTIFICIAL LIFE, edited by Christopher G. Langton. Cambridge: MIT Press Journals. ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR, edited by Jean-Arcady Meyer. Cambridge: MIT Press Journals. EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTING, edited by Kenneth De Jong. Cambridge: MIT Press Journals. ========== NOTE: Rodney Brooks has written a series of entertaining articles on the ramifications of the concept entitled "Elephants Don't Play Chess," "Intelligence Without Reason," and "Intelligence Without Representation." Luc Steels has defined several ranked levels of emergence, from "self-organization" to "emergent functionality" which should appear in press soon. Both gentlement work in robotics and are trying, among other things, to design robots which will work together cooperatively. This is a sort of robot "culture." ========== Nick Gessler gessler(a)anthro.sscnet.ucla.edu gessler(a)alife.santafe.edu "Artificial Life is 'rich.'" Ernst Mayr, Stephen Gould, Anatol Rapoport. (Ostentatious appeal to authority.) ===== end =====