artificial life

Chapter 2: Origins of Artificial Life

2.5 Emergence

Even with Langton's loops it became apparent that life couldn't be defined simply by a laundry list of qualities that an "organism" must exhibit. The a-life pioneers searched for the elusive soul that Aristotle spoke of, could there be any way to emulate one, could a soul be manufactured?

A-life enthusiasts took a closer look at life itself and made another important distinction between living organisms and non-living artifacts. Living creatures were more than just their components. A rock is little more than a conglomeration of different elements and minerals and exhibits no additional behaviors that would cause anyone to think otherwise. Even regular automata are easily understood once their (relatively) simple inner workings are exposed. A clock is little more than metal, wood and paint that moves at a regular interval due to components reacting to simple physical laws.

Animals exhibit behaviors beyond the sum of their individual components. The body organizes itself into a form that can be controlled for movement. The mind directs the body to gather food, to go to sleep, to reproduce.

Something is present in living beings that is not present in their non-living components. Although hard to articulate, this idea of getting "something out of nothing" is called "emergence".

;Emergence is one goal of artificial life research. Another goal is emulation of known behaviors and forms of living creatures. The following chapters investigate other areas of Artificial Life research, along with how they fulfill either, or both of these goals [Levy, 1992].