MAKING WAVES: THE PARADIGMS OF DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY AND THEIR IMPACT ON ARTIFICIAL LIFE AND EMBRYONICS

Abstract

Abstract Artificial life ("Alife") is purported to subsume real life, but in practice life-as-it-could-be is not based on life-as-we-know-it, but rather on life-as-we-don't-know-it. In terms of developmental biology, this means that we have yet to decide which of numerous paradigms for the embryogenesis of organisms is correct, if any. Two paradigms are compared and contrasted: positionalinformation and differentiation waves.These provide very different models for the nascent field of embryonics, the construction of computers and robots based on ideas from embryology. The behavioral component of Alife is usually thought about in terms of neural networks. Yet bacteria, single-cell ciliates such as Paramecium, and multicellular organisms, such as the ciliated placazoan Trichoplax adhaerens, have reasonably rich behavioral repertoires without nervous systems at all. It is therefore suggested that if Alife is to imitate and go beyond real life, then simulations of these organisms may be the place to begin.