John von Neumann and the evolutionary growth of complexity: Looking backwards, looking forwards

In the late 1940’s John von Neumann began to work on what he intended as a comprehensive “theory of [complex] automata”. He started to develop a book length manuscript on the subject in 1952. However, he put this aside in 1953, apparently due to pressure of other work. Due to his tragically early death in 1957, he was never to return to it. The draft manuscript was eventually edited, and combined for publication with some related lecture transcripts, by Burks [2] in 1966. It is clear from the time and effort which von Neu-mann invested in it that he considered this to be a very significant and substantial piece of work. However: subsequent commentators (beginning even with Burks) have found it surprisingly difficult to articulate this substance. Indeed, it has since been suggested that von Neumann’s results in this area are either trivial, or, at the very least, could have been achieved by much simpler means. It is a