Life and Brain in the Universe of Cellular Automata

Abstract

Historically, in science and philosophy people believed in a sharp difference between “dead” and “living” matter. Aristotle interpreted life as the power of self-organization (entelechy) driving the growth of plants and animals to their final form. A living system is able to reproduce itself and to move by itself, while a dead system can only be copied and moved from outside. Life was explained by teleology, i.e., by non-causal (“vital”) forces aiming at some goals in nature. In the eighteenth century Kant showed that self-organization of living organisms cannot be explained by a mechanical system of Newtonian physics. In a famous quotation he said that the Newton for explaining a blade of grass was still lacking. Nowadays, children put the same question: How is it possible that complex organisms such as plants, animals, and even humans emerge from the interactions of simple elements such as atoms, molecules, or cells? The concept of cellular automata was the first mathematical model to prove that self-reproduction and self-organization of complex patterns from simple rules are universal features of dynamical systems. Therefore, the belief in some preprogrammed intelligent design is unnecessary.