Complexity_ A Guided Tour - Melanie Mitchell [153]
= log(4)/ log(3) ≈ 1.26.
“the cascade of detail”: Bovill, C., Fractal Geometry in Architecture and Design. Birkhäuser Boston, 1996, p. 4.
“The Architecture of Complexity”: Simon, H. A., The architecture of complexity. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106 (96), 1962, pp. 467–482.
“the complex system being composed of subsystems”: Ibid, p. 468.
“Daniel McShea … has proposed a hierarchy scale”: McShea, D. W., The hierarchical structure of organisms: A scale and documentation of a trend in the maximum. Paleobiology, 27 (2), 2001, pp. 405–423.
Part II
“Nature proceeds little by little”: Quoted in Grene, M. and Depew, D., The Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History. Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 14.
“[W]e all know intuitively what life is”: Lovelock, J. E, The Ages of Gaia. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988, p. 16.
Chapter 8
“Self-Reproducing Computer Programs”: Parts of this chapter were adapted from Mitchell, M., Life and evolution in computers. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 23, 2001, pp. 361–383.
“ … there has been some fascinating research”: See, for example, Luisi, P. L., The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; or Fry, I., The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.
“the field of artificial life”: For more information about the field of artificial life, see, for example, Langton, C. G., Artificial Life: An Overview. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997; or Adami, C., Introduction to Artificial Life. New York: Springer, 1998.
“The complete work was eventually published”: Von Neumann, J., Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata (edited and completed by A. W. Burks). Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966. For descriptions of von Neumann’s self-replicating automaton, see Burks, A. W., Von Neumann’s self-reproducing automata. In A. W. Burks (editor), Essays on Cellular Automata. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970; or Mitchell, M., Computation in cellular automata: A selected review. In T. Gramss et al. (editors), Nonstandard Computation, 1998, pp. 95–140. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH. For an account of self-replication in DNA and how it relates to mathematical logic and self-copying computer programs, see Hofstadter, D. R., Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books, 1979, pp. 495–548.
“reproductive potentialities of the machines of the future’ ”: Quoted in Heims, S. J., John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980, pp. 212–213.
“their respective nonfiction”: Kurzweil, R., The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Viking, 1999; and Moravec, H., Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
“now famous article in Wired”: Joy, B., Why the future doesn’t need us. Wired, April 2000.
“some simple self-reproducing robots”: Zykov, V. Mytilinaios, E., Adams, B., and Lipson, H., Self-reproducing machines. Nature, 435, 2005, pp. 163–164.
“When his mother once stared rather aimlessly”: Macrae, N., John von Neumann. New York: Pantheon, 1992, p. 52.
“the greatest paper on mathematical economics”: Quoted in Macrae, N., John von Neumann. New York: Pantheon, 1992, p. 23.
“the most important document ever written on computing and computers”: Goldstine, H. H., The Computer, from Pascal to von Neumann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, first edition, 1972, p. 191.
“Five of Hungary’s six Nobel Prize winners”: Macrae, N., John von Neumann. New York: Pantheon, 1992, p. 32.
“The [IAS] School of Mathematics”: Quoted in Macrae, N., John von Neumann. New York: Pantheon, 1992, p. 324.
“to have no experimental science”: Quoted in Regis, E., Who Got Einstein’s Office? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1987, p. 114.
“The snobs took revenge”: Regis,