rtificial life (commonly called a-life) is the term applied collectively to attempts being made to develop mathematical models and computer simulations of the ways in which living organisms develop, grow, Researchers in this burgeoning field hope to gain deeperinsights into the nature of organic life as well as into the furtherpossibilities of COMPUTER science and robotics (see ROBOT). A-lifetechniques are also being used to explore the origins and chemicalprocesses of metabolism. Some investigators have even proposed that somedigital "life" in computers might already be considered a real life form.BackgroundThe term artificial life was coined in the 1980s by Christopher Langdon,a computer scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Santa FeInstitute. Langdon organized the first experimental workshop on the subjectat Santa Fe in 1987. Since then other a-life conferences have taken place,drawing increasingly wider attention and a growing number of participants.Theoretical studies of a-life, however, had been in progress long beforethe 1980s. Most notably, the Hungarian-born U.S. mathematician John VONNEUMANN, one of the pioneers of computer science, had begun to explore thenature of very basic a-life formats called cellular automata (see AUTOMATA,THEORY OF) in the 1950s. Cellular automata are imaginary mathematical"cells" --analogous to checkerboard squares--that can be made to simulatephysical processes by subjecting them to certain simple rules calledalgorithms (see ALGORITHM). Before his death, von Neumann had developed aset of algorithms by which a cellular automaton--a box shape with a verylong tail--could "reproduce" itself.Another important predecessor of a-life research was Dutch biologistAristid Lindenmeyer. Interested in the mathematics of plant growth,Lindenmeyer found in the 1960s that through the use of a few basicalgorithms--now called Lindenmeyer systems, or L-systems--he could modelbiochemical processes as well ...
