--- layout: default --- Publication details On Self-Reproduction and Evolvability Tim Taylor 1999 Abstract Von Neumann’s architecture for self-reproducing, evolvable machines is described. From this starting point, a number of issues relating to self-reproduction and evolution are discussed. A summary is given of various arguments which have been put forward regarding the superiority of genetic reproduction over self-inspection methods. It is argued that programs in artificial life platforms such as Tierra reproduce genetically rather than by self-inspection (as has previously been claimed). However, the distinction is blurred because significant parts of the reproduction process in Tierran programs are implicitly encoded in the Tierran operating system. The desirable features of a structure suitable for acting as a seed for an open-ended evolutionary process are discussed. It is found that the properties of such a structure are somewhat different to those of programs in Tierra-like platforms. These analyses suggest ways in which the evolvability of individuals in artificial life platforms may be improved, and also point to a number of open questions. Full text Author preprint: pdf On publisher's website: via DOI Reference Taylor, T. (1999). On Self-Reproduction and Evolvability. In D. Floreano, J.-D. Nicoud, & F. Mondada (Eds.), Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 1999 (pp. 94–103). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48304-7_15 BibTeX @inproceedings{taylor1999selfreproduction, title = {On Self-Reproduction and Evolvability}, author = {Taylor, Tim}, year = {1999}, booktitle = {Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 1999}, series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, volume = {1674}, pages = {94-103}, editor = {Floreano, Dario and Nicoud, Jean-Daniel and Mondada, Francesco}, doi = {10.1007/3-540-48304-7_15}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin}, category = {conference}, keywords = {selfrep, cosmos} } Related publications
  1. Taylor, T. (2024). An Afterword to "Rise of the Self-Replicators": Placing John A. Etzler, Frigyes Karinthy, Fred Stahl, and Others in the Early History of Thought About Self-Reproducing Machines. Artificial Life, 30(1), 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_a_00424
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  2. Taylor, T. (2020). What Am I For? Self-Purpose and Self-Reproduction in Rossum’s Universal Robots (Samoúčelnost a samoreprodukce u Rossumových univerzálních robotů). In J. Čejková (Ed.), ROBOT 100: Sto rozumů (pp. 178–180). Prague: Kosmas.
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  3. Taylor, T., & Dorin, A. (2020). Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve. Cham: Springer.
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  4. Taylor, T., & Dorin, A. (2018). Past Visions of Artificial Futures: One Hundred and Fifty Years under the Spectre of Evolving Machines. In T. Ikegami, N. Virgo, O. Witkowski, M. Oka, R. Suzuki, & H. Iizuka (Eds.), ALIFE 2018: Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2018 (pp. 91–98). https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00022
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  5. McMullin, B., Taylor, T., & von Kamp, A. (2001). Who Needs Genomes? Proceedings of the Atlantic Symposium on Computational Biology and Genome Information Systems and Technology, CBGIST 2001, 250–254. Duke University, USA.
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  6. Taylor, T. (2000). Some Representational and Ecological Aspects of Evolvability. In C. L. Nehaniv (Ed.), Proceedings of the Evolvability Workshop at the the Seventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (Artificial Life 7) (pp. 41–44). Retrieved from http://homepages.herts.ac.uk/ comqcln/al7ev/cnts.html
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  7. Taylor, T. (1999). Creativity in Evolution: Individuals, Interactions and Environments. In P. J. Bentley & D. W. Corne (Eds.), Proceedings of the AISB’99 Symposium on Creative Evolutionary Systems (pp. 8–17). The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour.
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  8. Taylor, T. J. (1999). From Artificial Evolution to Artificial Life (PhD thesis). School of Informatics, College of Science and Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
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  9. Taylor, T., & Hallam, J. (1998). Replaying the Tape: An Investigation into the Role of Contingency in Evolution. In C. Adami, R. K. Belew, H. Kitano, & C. E. Taylor (Eds.), Artificial Life VI: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Artificial Life (pp. 256–265). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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  10. Taylor, T., & Hallam, J. (1997). Studying Evolution with Self-Replicating Computer Programs. In P. Husbands & I. Harvey (Eds.), Fourth European Conference on Artificial Life (pp. 550–559). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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  11. Taylor, T. (1997). The COSMOS Artificial Life System (Departmental Working Paper No. 263). Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh.
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  12. Taylor, T. (1996). PhD Proposal: A Study of Evolution in Self-Replicating Parallel Computer Programs (Departmental Discussion Paper No. 169). Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh.
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  13. Taylor, T. (1996). The COSMOS Environment and REPLiCa Programming Language (Departmental Working Paper No. 259). Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh.
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  14. Taylor, T. (1996). On the Incorporation of a Developmental Process in a System of Self-Replicating Programs (Departmental Working Paper No. 258). Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh.
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