--- layout: default --- Publication details Evolution in virtual worlds Tim Taylor 2014 Abstract This chapter discusses the possibility of instilling a virtual world with mechanisms for evolution and natural selection in order to generate rich ecosystems of complex organisms in a process akin to biological evolution. Some previous work in the area is described, and successes and failures are discussed. The components of a more comprehensive framework for designing such worlds are mapped out, including the design of the individual organisms, the properties and dynamics of the environmental medium in which they are evolving, and the representational relationship between organism and environment. Some of the key issues discussed include how to allow organisms to evolve new structures and functions with few restrictions, and how to create an interconnectedness between organisms in order to generate drives for continuing evolutionary activity. Full text Author preprint: pdf On publisher's website: via DOI Reference Taylor, T. (2014). Evolution in virtual worlds. In M. Grimshaw (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality (pp. 526–548). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199826162.013.044 BibTeX @inbook{taylor2014evolution, title = {Evolution in virtual worlds}, author = {Taylor, Tim}, year = {2014}, doi = {10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199826162.013.044}, language = {English}, isbn = {9780199826162}, pages = {526--548}, editor = {Grimshaw, Mark}, booktitle = {The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, address = {United Kingdom}, category = {chapter}, keywords = {oee} } Related publications
  1. Channon, A., Bedau, M., Packard, N., & Taylor, T. (2024). Editorial Introduction to the 2024 Special Issue on Open-Ended Evolution. Artificial Life, 30(3), 300–301. https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_e_00445
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  2. Taylor, T. (2021). Evolutionary Innovation Viewed as Novel Physical Phenomena and Hierarchical Systems Building. Presented at the Fourth Workshop on Open-Ended Evolution (OEE4) at the 2021 Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE 2021). Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.09669
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  3. Taylor, T. (2020). The Importance of Open-Endedness (For the Sake of Open-Endedness). In J. Bongard, J. Lovato, L. Hebert-Dufrésne, R. Dasari, & L. Soros (Eds.), ALIFE 2020: Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2020 (pp. 578–580). https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00257
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  4. Taylor, T. (2019). Evolutionary Innovations and Where to Find Them: Routes to Open-Ended Evolution in Natural and Artificial Systems. Artificial Life, 25(2), 207–224. https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_a_00290
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  5. Packard, N., Bedau, M., Channon, A., Ikegami, T., Rasmussen, S., Stanley, K., & Taylor, T. (2019). An Overview of Open-Ended Evolution: Editorial Introduction to the Open-Ended Evolution II Special Issue. Artificial Life, 25(2), 93–103. https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_a_00291
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  6. Packard, N., Bedau, M., Channon, A., Ikegami, T., Rasmussen, S., Stanley, K., & Taylor, T. (2019). Open-Ended Evolution and Open-Endedness: Editorial Introduction to the Open-Ended Evolution I Special Issue. Artificial Life, 25(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_e_00282
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  7. Taylor, T. (2018). Routes to Open-Endedness in Evolutionary Systems. Presented at the Third Workshop on Open-Ended Evolution (OEE3) at the 2018 Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE 2018). Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01883v3
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  8. Taylor, T., Bedau, M., Channon, A., Ackley, D., Banzhaf, W., Beslon, G., … Wiser, M. (2016). Open-Ended Evolution: Perspectives from the OEE Workshop in York. Artificial Life, 22(3), 408–423. https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_a_00210
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  9. Taylor, T. (2015). Requirements for Open-Ended Evolution in Natural and Artificial Systems. Presented at the EvoEvo Workshop at the European Conference on Artificial Life 2015 (ECAL 2015). Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.07403
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  10. Taylor, T. (2012). Exploring the Concept of Open-Ended Evolution. In C. Adami, D. M. Bryson, C. Ofria, & R. T. Pennock (Eds.), Artificial Life 13: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (pp. 540–541). MIT Press.
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  11. Taylor, T. (2004). Redrawing the Boundary between Organism and Environment. In J. Pollack, M. A. Bedau, P. Husbands, R. A. Watson, & T. Ikegami (Eds.), Artificial Life IX: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (pp. 268–273). https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/1429.003.0045
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  12. Taylor, T. (2003). Evolving Interaction in Artificial Systems: An historical overview and future directions. In P. McOwan, K. Dautenhahn, & C. L. Nehaniv (Eds.), Abstracts from the Evolvability and Interaction Symposium, held at Queen Mary, University of London, UK, in October 2003. University of Hertfordshire Computer Science Technical Report No. 393.
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  13. Taylor, T. (2001). Creativity in Evolution: Individuals, Interactions and Environments. In P. J. Bentley & D. W. Corne (Eds.), Creative Evolutionary Systems (pp. 79–108). https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-155860673-9/50037-9
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  14. 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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  15. 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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  16. Taylor, T. (1998). Nidus Design Document (Departmental Working Paper No. 269). Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh.
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