Abstract
Artificial Life is partly aimed at understanding the organisation and complexity of living processes. In this paper the concept of a historical process is discussed with the aim of providing a framework with which to approach diverse phenomena in organismic, ecological, and evolutionary contexts. A historical process is such, not because it is subject to contingencies, nor because it may be explained in historical terms, but because it presents a special relation between its dynamics and changes in its own conditions of realisation. Such processes may lead to durable spontaneous patterns and novelty. It is argued that such patterns can provide powerful explanatory tools and that Artificial Life simulation techniques are well fitted for their exploration.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Boerlijst, M.C., Hogeweg, P.: Spiral wave structure in pre-biotic evolution: Hypercycles stable against parasites. Physica D 48 (1991) 17–28
Hemelrijk, C.K.: An individual-oriented model on the emergence of despotic and egalitarian societies. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 266 (1999) 361–369
Theraulaz, G., Bonabeau, E.: A brief history of stigmergy. Artificial Life 5 (1999) 97–116
Prigogine, I., Stengers, I.: Order out of chaos: Man’s new dialogue with nature. Heinemann, London (1984)
Waddington, C.H.: The evolution of an evolutionist. Edinburgh, UP (1975)
Woodger, J.H.: Biological principles: A critical study. Routledge, London (1929)
Nagel, E.: The structure of science: Problems in the logic of scientific explanations. Routledge, London (1961)
Gould, S.J.: Wonderful life: The Burgess Shale and the nature of history. Hutchinson Radius, London (1989)
Goldstein, H.:Classical Mechanics. 2nd edn. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA (1980)
Gould, S.J.: A developmental constraint in Cerion, with comments on the definition and interpretation of constraint in evolution. Evolution 43(3) (1989) 516–539
Pattee, H.H.: Laws and constraints, symbols and languages. In Waddington, C.H., ed.: Towards a Theoretical Biology 4, Essays. Edinburgh UP (1972) 248–258
Ashby, W.R.: Principles of the self-organizing system. In von Foerster, H., Zopf, G., eds.: Principles of Self-Organization, Pergammon Press, NY (1962) 255–278
Helbing, D., Keltsch, J., Molnár, P.: Modelling the evolution of human trail systems. Nature 388 (1997) 45–50
Pask, G.: Physical analogues to the growth of a concept. In: Mechanisation of thought processes: Proceedings of a symposium held at the National Physical Laboratory on 24–27 November 1958. Vol. II, HM Stationary Office, London (1959)
Blackwell, D., Kendall, D.: The Martin boundary for Polya’s urn scheme and an application to stochastic population growth. J. Appl. Prob. 1 (1964) 284
Arthur, W.B.: Increasing returns and path dependence in the economy. Univ. of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor (1994)
Lewontin, R.: Organism and environment. In Plotkin, H.C., ed.: Learning, development and culture: Essays in evolutionary epistemology. Wiley, Chichester (1982)
Laland, K.N., Odling-Smee, J., Feldman, M.W.: Niche construction, biological evolution and cultural change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (2000) 131–146
Jones, C.G., Lawton, J.H., Schachak, M.: Organisms as ecosystem engineers. Oikos 69 (1994) 373–386
Crutchfield, J.P.: The calculi of emergence: Computation, dynamics and induction. Physica D 75 (1994) 11–54
Fontana, W., Wagner, G., Buss, L.W.: Beyond digital naturalism. Artificial Life 1/2 (1994) 211–227
Di Paolo, E.A., Noble, J., Bullock, S.: Simulation models as opaque thought experiments. In Bedau, M.A., McCaskill, J.S., Packard, N.H., Rasmussen, S., eds.: Artificial Life VII: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Artificial Life, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2000) 497–506
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Di Paolo, E.A. (2001). Artificial Life and Historical Processes. In: Kelemen, J., Sosík, P. (eds) Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2159. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44811-X_75
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44811-X_75
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42567-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44811-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive