Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
or fire expansion. To limit the phenomena of multiplying without necessity, new
cells will form other functional entities (i.e. a cell on a higher level of the hierar-
chy) and so the process unfolds until a certain number of levels of hierarchies is
reached (also obeying Ockham's principle) like in the case of a mature living being.
1.1.3 Natural Computing Systems are Dissipative Systems
According to Prigogine [4] a natural system is a dissipative system, which has
achieved its functionality as a “far from equilibrium” state, i.e. a state of apparent
order and stability but which is in fact a complicated dynamic process. Therefore
such a system requires a source of energy and since it is a dynamic process rather
than a static one, it should evolve.
1.1.4 Transient Nature of the Behavioral Complexity of Natural
Systems
A natural computing system is not likely to have an “eternal life”. Instead it
evolves through maturity to aging until it eventually “dies”, i.e. enters another
(stable) dynamical regime. In a recent paper [5] it was suggested that complex and
far from equilibrium dynamics (i.e. functional life) has to be always associated
with a long transient process. The longer the transient, the more complex is the
systems functionality. This principle inspired the introduction of the transient
length measure of emergence in Chap. 4.
1.1.5 Natural Systems and Recurrence
A system is recurrent if there is at least one closed loop (i.e. feedback loop) in the
cell interconnection graph, i.e. a cell has always a feedback about its “actions” via
its neighboring cells.
1.1.6 Emergence, Complexity, and Local Activity of Cells
Quite recently, in addition to the principle of nonlinearity [4] regarded by Prigogine
as a precondition for a far-from-equilibrium dynamics, the principle of local activ-
ity was introduced by Chua [7,8] to narrow the search for an ideal structure of a
cell. Previously it was assumed that emergence and complexity are solely the
effects of cell's nonlinearity. Chua's local activity theory demonstrates that in
addition a cell must be locally active , i.e. capable to amplify small fluctuations
received from its neighbors. In a series of papers [9-11] we demonstrated how this
principle may be applied to various models of natural computation to identify
proper cells (i.e. cells for which emergence is likely to occur) without being necessary
to simulate the cellular system but only performing an analytical investigation of
Search WWH ::




Custom Search