Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information Artificial Life

odel (without referring to it as such), with his famous creation of a selfreproducing, computation-universal entity, using cellular automata (see Glossary). Von Neumann was trying to understand some of the fundamental properties of living systems, such as self-reproduction and the evolution of complex adaptive structures. His approach was to construct simple formal systems that exhibited those properties. This constructive and abstract methodology typifies contemporary artificial life, and cellular automata are still widely used in the field. At about the same time, cybernetics (Wiener 1948) applied two new tools to the study of living systems: information theory and the analysis of selfregulatory processes (homeostasis). One of the characteristics of living systems is their spontaneous self-regulation: their capacity to maintain an internal equilibrium in the face of changes in the external environment. This capacity is still a subject of investigation in artificial life. Informatio