On 28 Jun 2002 at 10:22, David McFadzean wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Collins" <me@thisisnurgle.org.uk>
> Sent: Friday, June 28, 2002 9:55 AM
>
>
> > Something worth noting:
> >
> > Wolfram was not the first person to put foward the idea of using Cellular
> > Automata in a way to simulate the universe. That award goes to John Conway
> > (the guy who created The Game of Life).
>
> If you want to give credit where it is due, give it to Edward Fredkin. He
> was the first to suggest that CA such as Conway's Life could be used as a
> foundation for physics. (Which is why I posted the link to
> http://digitalphysics.org/ )
>
Let's nor forget John Von Neumann, who wrote THE THEORY OF
SELF-REPRODUCING AUTOMATA, and with Oskar Morganstern, THE
THEORY OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR. Much of the
subsequent work inm Alife was simply applications of his theoretical
foundations.
Also, Thomas Ray (the programmer of TIERRA) must be given his due
props. It was TIERRA that convinced the seminal evolutionary theorist
John Maynard Smith to declare that artificial evolution in computers was
possible.
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