Re: [-empyre-] emergence, embodiment, biology

[Mitchell Whitelaw <mitchell.whitelaw@canberra.edu.au>]

On 10/11/2004, at 8:21 AM, Paul Brown wrote:

> Adrian's original experimental rig only worked in one specific location
> if he moved it a few centimetres along the bench it stopped.  He
> discovered that there was a power cable embedded in the wall at the
> original location and that the evolved circuit was "stealing" the mains
> impedance frequency as an input.  This example convinced me of the
> importance of embodiment in AI and alife.

And I think this insight also relates to some of what Aliette has 
posted re. alternatives to Darwinian evolutionary biology. For the 
record I'm as suspicious of Dawkins-style genocentrism as anyone, and I 
find approaches such as Margulis' symbiogenesis far more appealing. 
It's also clear from my resesarch that in a-life in general, and most 
a-life art, the question of embryogenesis and genetic expression - the 
"wet" end of genetics - is put in the "too hard" basket.

Thompson's experiments and other embodied approaches (even in 
software!) are powerful counter-examples. The richness of their 
approach is actually aesthetically as well as formally evident... I'm 
thinking here of the work of Annunziato (http://www.plancton.com/) and 
Driessens and Verstappen (http://www.xs4all.nl/~notnot); works using 
cellular automata (like Paul's) also offer an alternative to the 
"organism = gene = code" fallacy.

Mitchell