Title: A very good book
Review: Emmeche's slim book is a great intro for those interested in this new & theoretical science. It is well-written, with a constant eye towards the philosophical side of the emerging discipline of "artificial life". Crucial to this discipline is the idea that "form"--a self-organized pattern in space--takes precedence over the material substrate of which it is made. As Emmeche emphasizes throughout his narrative, computer scientists have gained better results at modeling artificial life with the "bottom-up" approach (in contrast to "top-down" attempts to legislate global behavior of these systems). This is a good book for those who might want to study the amazing work of Chris Langton and Stuart Kaufmann. Those chapters in particular are excellent.
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