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important, which allows single RNA molecule to evolve. Another meaningful
development is expanding the polymerase chain reaction of DNA.
15.4 Research Approach of Artificial Life
According to the organization of artificial life, its content can be roughly divided
into two classes:
(1) The internal systems which construct an organism, including brain and
nervous system, endocrine system, immune system, hereditary system,
enzyme system, metabolic system, etc.
(2) The external systems of organisms and their colony, such as environmental
adaptation system, genetic evolution system, etc.
The information received from internal and external systems of the organism
constitutes the research approaches of artificial life, which mainly include two
kinds:
(1) Modeling approaches. According to the life behavior of internal and external
systems, build the information models.
(2) Working principle approaches. The life behavior is self-disciplined,
dispersing and non-linear. Its working principles are chaos and differentiation,
according to which we can research on its mechanism.
For example, it is currently considered that artificial neural network is the
model system of internal systems, and genetic algorithm is the model system of
external systems. Information processing in neural network shows the
characteristics of chaos, but in genetic algorithm it is regarded as parallel
processing which is self-disciplined and dispersing. From such a model system,
we can see all kinds of organism behavior.
The research of artificial life must combine information science and life
science together to form life information science. It can adopt the following
strategies:
(1) Use the hardware, which takes information processing machines such as
computers as the center, to produce the life behavior. Generally, there are two
kinds of approaches: One is adopting the existing information processing
machines and execution devices to implement the systems which have
