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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Subject: Re: ALife Preq
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Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 17:10:11 GMT
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In article <3aegit$k3o@cs.uwp.edu>,
Gabriel Millerd <millerdg@it.uwp.edu> wrote:
>	I am outlining course work for an upper level ALife philosophy course.
>I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for preq. readings and studies. 
>Or perhaps any course work text or handout lists that anyone else has 
>used or heard of. 
>
>	Thanks

Well, the idea of an ALife philosophy course is not thrilling to me,
but here's a reading list.  Most important would be the Artificial Life
books I-IV.  Check out esp. Karl Sims' paper in IV, which to my mind
is the first convincing proof that evolution works.  (Yes, I know
about Tierra, but Sims' work has more in common with biological
evolution.)

PLEASE don't get your students obsessed with defining life.
Better would be to ask what you would do with a definition of life
if you had one:  would it affect ethical judgements in any way?
I think the answer is no.

Phil goetz@cs.buffalo.edu


Light reading:

Steven Levy (1992).  {\it Artificial Life: A report from the frontier
where computers meet biology.}  NY: Random House.  390 p.  A fascinating
nontechnical overview of artificial life, drawn almost entirely from
[Langton 1989] and [Langton et. al. 1992].

Heavier going:

Artificial Life, the journal

Brooks, Rodney A., and Maes, Pattie (1994).  {\it Artificial Life IV}.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Philip Husbands, Jean-Arcady Meyer, and Stewart W. Wilson, eds. (1994).
{\it From Animals to Animats 3: Proceedings of the third
international conference on simulation of adaptive behavior.}
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  Forthcoming in August 1994.

Chris Langton, ed. (1989).  {\it Artificial Life.}  Addison-Wesley, Redwood
City, CA.  655 p.

Chris Langton, ed. (1994).  {\it Artificial Life III.}
Reading, MA:  Addison-Wesley.  599 p.

Chris Langton, Charles Taylor, J. Doyne Farmer, and Steen Rassmussen, eds.
(1992).  {\it Artificial Life II.}  Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, CA.  854 p.

Jean-Arcady Meyer and Stewart W. Wilson, eds. (1991).
{\it From Animals to Animats: Proceedings of the first
international conference on simulation of adaptive behavior.}
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  562 p.

Jean-Arcady Meyer, Herbert L. Roitblat, and Stewart W. Wilson, eds. (1993).
{\it From Animals to Animats 2: Proceedings of the second
international conference on simulation of adaptive behavior.}
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  523 p.

John von Neumann (1966).  {\it Theory of self-reproducing automata.}
Edited and completed by Arthur W. Burks.
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Francisco J. Varela and Paul Bourgine, eds. (1992).  {\it Toward a
Practice of Autonomous Systems: Proceedings of the first European
conference on artificial life.}  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  550~p.

Genetic algorithms:

Belew, R.\ K.; and Booker, L.\ B.\ (eds.) (1991),
{\it Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Genetic
Algorithms}, San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.  

LJ Fogel, AJ Owens, and MJ Walsh (1966).  {\it Artificial Intelligence
Through Simulated  Evolution.}  New York NY: John Wiley and Sons.

 Forrest, Stephanie (1993), {\it Proceedings of the Fifth
International Conference on Genetic Algorithms}, San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.

David Goldberg, Kelsey Milman, and Christina Tidd (1992).
``Genetic algorithms:  A bibliography."  IlliGAL report no. 92008.
Urbana, IL: Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory.
Available via ftp at anonymous:[your email address]@gal4.ge.uiuc.edu
in /pub/papers/IlliGALs/92008part*.ps.Z.

Greffenstette (1985).  {\it Proceedings of the First International Conference
on Genetic Algorithms and their Applications.}  ZZ  Lawrence Erlbaum.

Greffenstette, J.\ J.\ (1987).  {\it Proceedings of the Second International
Conference on Genetic Algorithms and their Applications.}  ZZ  Lawrence Erlbaum.

John Holland (1975).  {\it Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems:
An introductory analysis with applications to biology, control,
and artificial intelligence.}  University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
Reprinted in 1992 by Bradford Books/MIT Press.  228 p.

John Koza (1992).  {\it Genetic Programming: On the programming of computers
by means of natural selection.}  Bradford Books/MIT Press.  840 p.

John Koza (1994).  {\it Genetic Programming II:  Automatic discovery of
reusable subprograms.}  MIT Press.  746 p. 

J. David Schaffer, ed. (1989), {\it Proceedings of
the Third International Conference on Genetic Algorithms}, San Mateo, CA:
Morgan Kaufmann.

Complexity

Light reading:

\hspace{.45in}
Robert Axelrod (1984), {\it The Evolution of Cooperation},
NY NY: Basic Books.  241 p.  An excellent study of the prisoner's dilemma.

Roger Lewin (1992).  {\it Complexity: Life at the edge of chaos.}
NY: Collier/Macmillan.  An excellent nontechnical introduction to
complex systems.  208 p.

M. Mitchell Waldrop (1992).  {\it Complexity:  The emerging science at the edge
of order and chaos.}  New York NY: Simon \& Schuster.  An excellent
nontechnical introduction to the world of the Sante Fe Institute.  380~p.

Heavier going:

Gregory L. Baker and Jerry P. Gollub (1990).  {\it Chaotic Dynamics:
An introduction.}  Cambridge University Press.  A good introductory
textbook to chaos theory.

Stuart A. Kauffman (1993).  {\it The Origins of Order:  Self-organization
and selection in evolution.}  Oxford University Press.  709 p.

Gregoire Nicolis and Ilya Prigogine (1977).  {\it Self-Organization in
Nonequilibrium Systems : From dissipative structures to order through
fluctuations.}  New York: Wiley.

Bruce H. Weber, David J. Depew, and James D. Smith, eds. (1988).
{\it Entropy, Information, and Evolution}.  Cambridge MA: MIT Press.


Miscellaneous light reading:

Kevin Kelly (1994).  {\it Out of Control:  The rise of neo-biological
civilization.}  Reading, MA:  Addison-Wesley.

Hans Moravec (1988).  {\it Mind Children : The future of robot and human
intelligence.} Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
