"Artificial Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Bruce Sterling

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From THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, Dec 1992.

F&SF, Box 56 Cornwall CT 06753 $26/yr; outside US $31/yr

F&SF Science column #4



ARTIFICIAL LIFE



The new scientific field of study called "Artificial Life" can be
defined as "the attempt to abstract the logical form of life from its
material manifestation."

So far, so good. But what is life?

The basic thesis of "Artificial Life" is that "life" is best
understood as a complex systematic process. "Life" consists of
relationships and rules and interactions. "Life" as a property is
potentially separate from actual living creatures.

Living creatures (as we know them today, that is) are basically
made of wet organic substances: blood and bone, sap and cellulose,
chitin and ichor. A living creature -- a kitten, for instance -- is a
physical object that is made of molecules and occupies space and has
mass.

A kitten is indisputably "alive" -- but not because it has the
"breath of life" or the "vital impulse" somehow lodged inside its body.
We may think and talk and act as if the kitten "lives" because it has a
mysterious "cat spirit" animating its physical cat flesh. If we were
superstitious, we might even imagine that a healthy young cat had
*nine* lives. People have talked and acted just this way for millennia.

But from the point-of-view of Artificial Life studies, this is a
very halting and primitive way of conceptualizing what's actually
going on with a living cat. A kitten's "life" is a *process, * with
properties like reproduction, genetic variation, heredity, behavior,