A cellular automaton is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessellation structures, and iterative arrays. Cellular automata have found application in various areas, including physics, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling.
Langton's ant is a two-dimensional universal Turing machine with a very simple set of rules but complex emergent behavior. It was invented by Chris Langton in 1986 and runs on a square lattice of black and white cells. The universality of Langton's ant was proven in 2000. The idea has been generalized in several different ways, such as turmites which add more colors and more states.
The edge of chaos is a transition space between order and disorder that is hypothesized to exist within a wide variety of systems. This transition zone is a region of bounded instability that engenders a constant dynamic interplay between order and disorder.
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems. The institute is ranked 24th among the world's "Top Science and Technology Think Tanks" and 24th among the world's "Best Transdisciplinary Research Think Tanks" according to the 2020 edition of the Global Go To Think Tank Index Reports, published annually by the University of Pennsylvania.
In sociology, social complexity is a conceptual framework used in the analysis of society. In the sciences, contemporary definitions of complexity are found in systems theory, wherein the phenomenon being studied has many parts and many possible arrangements of the parts; simultaneously, what is complex and what is simple are relative and change in time.
Computational sociology is a branch of sociology that uses computationally intensive methods to analyze and model social phenomena. Using computer simulations, artificial intelligence, complex statistical methods, and analytic approaches like social network analysis, computational sociology develops and tests theories of complex social processes through bottom-up modeling of social interactions.
An artificial society is an agent-based computational model for computer simulation in social analysis. It is mostly connected to the themes of complex systems, emergence, the Monte Carlo method, computational sociology, multi-agent systems, and evolutionary programming. While the concept was simple, actually realizing this conceptual point took a while. Complex mathematical models have been, and are, common; deceivingly simple models only have their roots in the late forties, and took the advent of the microcomputer to really get up to speed.
In biology and other experimental sciences, an in silico experiment is one performed on a computer or via computer simulation software. The phrase is pseudo-Latin for 'in silicon', referring to silicon in computer chips. It was coined in 1987 as an allusion to the Latin phrases in vivo, in vitro, and in situ, which are commonly used in biology. The latter phrases refer, respectively, to experiments done in living organisms, outside living organisms, and where they are found in nature.
John Henry Holland was an American scientist and professor of psychology and electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was a pioneer in what became known as genetic algorithms.
Codd's cellular automaton is a cellular automaton (CA) devised by the British computer scientist Edgar F. Codd in 1968. It was designed to recreate the computation- and construction-universality of von Neumann's CA but with fewer states: 8 instead of 29. Codd showed that it was possible to make a self-reproducing machine in his CA, in a similar way to von Neumann's universal constructor, but never gave a complete implementation.
J. Doyne Farmer is an American complex systems scientist and entrepreneur with interests in chaos theory, complexity and econophysics. He is Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University, where he is also director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. Additionally he is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is on complexity economics, focusing on systemic risk in financial markets and technological progress. During his career he has made important contributions to complex systems, chaos, artificial life, theoretical biology, time series forecasting and econophysics. He co-founded Prediction Company, one of the first companies to do fully automated quantitative trading. While a graduate student he led a group that called itself Eudaemonic Enterprises and built the first wearable digital computer, which was used to beat the game of roulette.
Norman Harry Packard is a chaos theory physicist and one of the founders of the Prediction Company and ProtoLife. He is an alumnus of Reed College and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Packard is known for his contributions to chaos theory, complex systems, and artificial life. He coined the phrase "the edge of chaos".
Melanie Mitchell is an American scientist. She is the Davis Professor of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute. Her major work has been in the areas of analogical reasoning, complex systems, genetic algorithms and cellular automata, and her publications in those fields are frequently cited.
Computer simulation is a prominent method in organizational studies and strategic management. While there are many uses for computer simulation, most academics in the fields of strategic management and organizational studies have used computer simulation to understand how organizations or firms operate. More recently, however, researchers have also started to apply computer simulation to understand organizational behaviour at a more micro-level, focusing on individual and interpersonal cognition and behavior such as team working.
Langton's loops are a particular "species" of artificial life in a cellular automaton created in 1984 by Christopher Langton. They consist of a loop of cells containing genetic information, which flows continuously around the loop and out along an "arm", which will become the daughter loop. The "genes" instruct it to make three left turns, completing the loop, which then disconnects from its parent.
Humans have considered and tried to create non-biological life for at least 3000 years. As seen in tales ranging from Pygmalion to Frankenstein, humanity has long been intrigued by the concept of artificial life.
James P. Crutchfield is an American mathematician and physicist. He received his B.A. summa cum laude in physics and mathematics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1979 and his Ph.D. in physics there in 1983. He is currently a professor of physics at the University of California, Davis, where he is director of the Complexity Sciences Center—a new research and graduate program in complex systems. Prior to this, he was research professor at the Santa Fe Institute for many years, where he ran the Dynamics of Learning Group and SFI's Network Dynamics Program. From 1985 to 1997, he was a research physicist in the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been a visiting research professor at the Sloan Center for Theoretical Neurobiology, University of California, San Francisco; a postdoctoral fellow of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at UCB; a UCB physics department IBM postdoctoral fellow in condensed matter physics; a distinguished visiting research professor of the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and a Bernard Osher Fellow at the San Francisco Exploratorium.
Artificial life is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American theoretical biologist, in 1986. In 1987, Langton organized the first conference on the field, in Los Alamos, New Mexico. There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life researchers study traditional biology by trying to recreate aspects of biological phenomena.
Luis M. Rocha is the George J. Klir Professor of Systems Science at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, Binghamton University. He has been director of the NSF-NRT Complex Networks and Systems graduate Program in Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. He is also director of the Center for Social and Biomedical Complexity, between Binghamton University and Indiana University, Bloomington, a Fulbright Scholar, and Principal Investigator at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia, Portugal. His research is on complex systems and networks, computational and systems biology, biomedical complexity and digital health, and computational intelligence.
Erica Jen was an American applied mathematician. She was a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a faculty member at the University of Southern California, and a scientific director and faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute.
