Formalizing Emergence: the Natural After-Life of Artificial Life

摘要

Originally, the field of Artificial Life was born out of the frustration and isolation felt by some "hackers" keen on cellular automata, game of life, genetic algorithms, L-systems and other computer recreations. Fascinated by this surprising cohabitation of programming simple algorithms and the complex working of these same algorithms (this new perception of complex phenomena as emerging from simple algorithms but iterated, distributed and recursive), convinced of the interest of their works for theoreticians of biology but aware of the lack of dialogue with them, they organized a series of workshops whose desired originality was multidisciplinarity and the coming together of researchers sharing the same will to understand the mechanisms and functions characterizing living organisms. These researchers in computer science, mathematics, physics, biology, robotics, philosophy, now meet every year, alternatively in Europe and the USA. What is discussed as inherent to all living organisms, and therefore which represents the bulk of the material dealt with during these workshops, are the mechanisms of self-organization or of the "emerging functionalities" opposing a centralized vision of biology, the need to better balance the coupling of the studied objects with their environment opposing a solipsistic methodology still representative of a certain artificial intelligence, the compulsory passage via the mechanisms of learning and adaptation as the most simple and autonomous way to face the complexity typical of the architecture and dynamics of these systems and, finally, the study of this complexity per se. A same motto brings together all these researchers: "some form of complexity can be faced and domesticated very simply by relying on the computer brute force". The mascots that are most representative of artificial life are: robotic insectoids, the game of life and other cellular automata, genetic algorithms, L-systems and simulations of ecosystems. These first workshops, due to the originality of the process, created a considerable stir. They undoubtedly seemed to reach their primary target, that is to allow better communication between researchers. Today, however, a certain breathlessness is noticeable which goes not without reminding the same dying down that characterized the cybernetic and systemic trends (Alife fathers) of the forties and fifties. The multidisciplinarity although essential to the inspiration does not survive, in principle, the specialization which arises naturally as a consequence of several years of study dedicated to a same subject and which drive researchers to privilege interlocutors sharing their same narrow and deep interest. Gradually new scientific communities appear with a more focused object of study and which, either free themselves of the mother field (like genetic algorithms or cellular automata) or become connected with existing communities (like robotics, study of ecosystems, study of the origin of life, study of insects societies). As we can notice during these workshops, "life" resists whatever unique and narrow definition. This diversity is the de-stabilizing factor which could cause the burst of artificial life. Besides, the risk is important of a forthcoming divorce, which has already taken place in artificial intelligence, between a so called "strong" science which could fuse with an existing scientific tradition (cognitive science for AI and theoretical biology for artificial life) and its so called "weak" counterpart with a more engineering like aftertaste and leading to technological innovations (expert systems, fuzzy logic and knowledge engineering in AI, neural networks, genetic algorithms and autonomous robotics in artificial life). If the artificial life star turns into a supernovae to finally explode and leaves behind, as relics of its glorious past, one and only one scientific pulsar, more focused, firmly grounded, and, above all, perpetrating as well as possible the original e