Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The research on artificial life can make us understand the emerging
characteristics better. The set of low-grade elements can often bring out
characteristics through our interaction. Each characteristic is not only the overlay
of elements, but also a newly emerging characteristic on the whole. Such a
phenomenon can be seen in all the domains of the nature, but it is most obvious
in life system. The life itself has emerging characteristics indeed. If the whole is
divided into constituent elements, all of the emerging characteristics produced by
interaction will disappear. The research approaches in reduction science can be
regarded as the most serious ones today, the majority of which are analytical
approaches. Reduction science has succeeded in all kinds of fields. But there are
still many characteristics of the natural which are neglected. It is not because
these characteristics are meaningless or unimportant, but on the contrary, there is
a shortage of appropriate tools and effective methods in researching on these
characteristics. The research in artificial life field must be comprehensive, in
which all factors should be considered for life creation.
There are many methods of making new characteristics emerge, although the
evolution of natural selection has increased the complexity, and made it difficult
to get and employ these methods. The common tools and methods in artificial
life research are probably useful for other fields. The fact that a lot of remarkable
physicists study on emerging characteristics has drawn the attention of artificial
life field. For studying the emerging characteristics of the nature, artificial life
has provided a kind of non-traditional approach.
Artificial life will become a very useful tool of researching living beings. To
study the abstract subjects, such as entropy condition, can support the research on
life problems. For a long time, certain achievements have been made in
biological research, ranging from simple organism models to complex
phenomena.
On the one hand, artificial life provides short life cycles for the experiments
(e.g., 20 years for people, 10 days for the fruit bats, and 1 second for Hillis
classification algorithms). On the other hand, artificial life systems give the
chance of non-parallel running to both of control and reproduction. Artificial life
has also provided the chance for people to see the interesting, but unpredictable
emerging characteristics, and return to the past time to study their heredity.
As the basic research tools of the living nature, artificial life is capable of
making organisms and the society simple. It is useful although it is artificial.
For developing new technologies and strengthening our capability of
controlling the natural, artificial life systems have great potential. Take automatic
