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IMHO, I'd date the concept of artificial life further back than Christopher Langton. I'd start with Von Neumann's Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata. Though

IMHO, I'd date the concept of artificial life further back than Christopher Langton. I'd start with Von Neumann's Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata. Though the book was published in 1966, Von Neumann was working on the concept as early as the 1940s. In his work, "He asked what is the threshold of complexity that must be crossed for machines to be able to evolve. His answer was to specify an abstract machine which, when run, would replicate itself. In his design, the self-replicating machine consists of three parts: a "description" of ('blueprint' or program for) itself, a universal constructor mechanism that can read any description and construct the machine (sans description) encoded in that description, and a universal copy machine that can make copies of any description." From wikipedia [1] [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construc...

kragen 3y ago
quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine#Histo... > The general concept of artificial machines capable of producing copies of themselves dates back at least several hundred years. An early reference is an anecdote regarding the philosopher René Descartes, who suggested to Queen Christina of Sweden that the human body could be regarded as a machine; she responded by pointing to a clock and ordering "see to it that it reproduces offspring."[9] Several other variations on this anecdotal response also exist. Samuel Butler proposed in his 1872 novel Erewhon that machines were already capable of reproducing themselves but it was man who made them do so,[10] and added that "machines which reproduce machinery do not reproduce machines after their own kind".[11] In George Eliot's 1879 book Impressions of Theophrastus Such, a series of essays that she wrote in the character of a fictional scholar named Theophrastus, the essay "Shadows of the Coming Race" speculated about self-replicating machines, with Theophrastus asking "how do I know that they may not be ultimately made to carry, or may not in themselves evolve, conditions of self-supply, self-repair, and reproduction".[12] iirc in erehwon the narrator visits a land populated entirely by self-replicating machines

kragen 3y ago

quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine#Histo... > The general concept of artificial machines capable of producing copies of themselves dates back at least several hundred years. An early reference is an anecdote regarding the philosopher René Descartes, who suggested to Queen Christina of Sweden that the human body could be regarded as a machine; she responded by pointing to a clock and ordering "see to it that it reproduces offspring."[9] Several other variations on this anecdotal response also exist. Samuel Butler proposed in his 1872 novel Erewhon that machines were already capable of reproducing themselves but it was man who made them do so,[10] and added that "machines which reproduce machinery do not reproduce machines after their own kind".[11] In George Eliot's 1879 book Impressions of Theophrastus Such, a series of essays that she wrote in the character of a fictional scholar named Theophrastus, the essay "Shadows of the Coming Race" speculated about self-replicating machines, with Theophrastus asking "how do I know that they may not be ultimately made to carry, or may not in themselves evolve, conditions of self-supply, self-repair, and reproduction".[12] iirc in erehwon the narrator visits a land populated entirely by self-replicating machines