Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!nott!cunews!freenet.carleton.ca!FreeNet.Carleton.CA!aq859
From: aq859@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (J. C. Murray)
Subject: Re: alife, factfree?
Message-ID: <D8xHDq.xo@freenet.carleton.ca>
Sender: aq859@freenet.carleton.ca (J. C. Murray)
Organization: The National Capital FreeNet, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 12:29:50 GMT
Lines: 26


Hello,

The claim that "alife is a factfree science" is misleading.

The goal of alife is to create, not to establish facts.

As such, alife should be measured by its creations.

In the 1993 paper "Mobile Software Agents for Distributed
Control in a Telecommunications Network" (BT Labs Journal),
Appleby and Steward use (software) ants to solve problems
in distributed control.  The only "fact" is that ants are
able to work together to solve problems (e.g. retrieving food).
The contribution of alife is the solution architecture
(how to model ants in software), not the "facts".

Object-Oriented Analysis and Design is also a "factfree"
science.  I can name a few thousand others but I must move
on to alt.i.need.another.coffee.

I think that anyone who has used alife to solve a problem
(such as distributed control) will appreciate its value.

Regards,
J.C. (I have returned) Murray
