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Genetic Programming Theory and Practice XIX pp 167–200Cite as

Life as a Cyber-Bio-Physical System

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Part of the book series: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation ((GEVO))

Abstract

The study of living systems—including those existing in nature, life as it could be, and even virtual life—needs consideration of not just traditional biology, but also computation and physics. These three areas need to be brought together to study living systems as cyber-bio-physical systems, as zoetic systems. Here I review some of the current work on assembling these areas, and how this could lead to a new Zoetic Science. I then discuss some of the significant scientific advances still needed to achieve this goal. I suggest how we might kick-start this new discipline of Zoetic Science through a program of Zoetic Engineering: designing and building living artefacts. The goal is for a new science, a new engineering discipline, and new technologies, of zoetic systems: self-producing far-from-equilibrium systems embodied in smart functional metamaterials with non-trivial meta-dynamics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I will not get into definitional questions of what makes systems ‘really’ ‘alive’ [2]. However, consider “living organisms are those material systems that are able to manipulate information so as to produce unexpected solutions that enable them to survive in an unpredictable future”, and “life as a process that enables material systems to manipulate, create, and accumulate information” [3].

  2. 2.

    A distinction is drawn between reproduction (of the physical machinery, the cell) and replication (of the informational content, the DNA) [3]; many abstract models (for example, basic evolutionary algorithms) however do not separate these processes.

  3. 3.

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/zoetic.

  4. 4.

    Not to be confused with the separate, though related, etymology of ‘zoology’ via Latin from the Greek \(\zeta \!\tilde{\omega }o\nu \), zōion, animal.

  5. 5.

    I give a slightly longer quotation here than appears in Ingold [95].

  6. 6.

    Abbott [109] attributes this quotation to Johnson [110]; I am unable to find it in that volume.

  7. 7.

    The distinction between complexity and complication is not a sharp distinction, but may be thought of thus: Complexity is associated with dynamic, bottom-up self-organisation, as in complexity science, while complication is associated with top-down organisational structure, as often in engineering; systems with both features have been dubbed ‘wicked’ systems [126].

  8. 8.

    The minimum viable population of a species has been estimated at around 3500–5000 individuals [128], which should be contrasted with the tens or hundreds making up a typical evolutionary algorithm ‘population’.

  9. 9.

    Bains’ argument is in the context of Origin of Life, but is also relevant to the study of life itself.

  10. 10.

    In a closed system, matter cannot move in or out, but energy can, for example, in a closed system in a constant temperature heat bath. In an isolated system, energy is likewise banned from moving in or out and is hence conserved.

  11. 11.

    One might argue that most engineering projects fail in this regard, due to our inability, or lack of desire, to anticipate and mitigate for all the related unwanted consequences.

  12. 12.

    The prefix ‘meta’ originally meant simply ‘after’, but came to the additional meaning of ‘above’ or ‘transcending’, and now also includes the meaning of ‘change’ or ‘transformation’, and more recently of ‘self-reference’ (as in meta-X is the X of X). The ‘transcending’ meaning comes from a misunderstanding of the derivation of the word ‘metaphysics’: the term as originally coined did not mean ‘transcending physics’, but rather as ‘Aristotle’s book after the one called Physics’.

    ‘Metamaterials’ are changed materials: changed by engineering in this case. ‘Meta-dynamics’ is the self-referential use: the dynamics of dynamics. Given the prevalence of the prefix in the topics of interest here, it would be nice to be able to bundle the concepts into the term ‘metaphysics’, but it has already been taken for that unrelated Aristotelian topic. (To add further confusion to naming, ‘meta-dynamics’ is also the name of a computational simulation technique [170, 171], although the original 2002 paper does not name it thus.)

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Acknowledgements

Some of the ideas and topics presented here grew from a collaboration with Rupert Soar, while co-organising an EPSRC-funded ‘Big Ideas’ workshop in 2019, and from the attendees and presenters at that workshop: Martyn Amos, Rachel Armstrong, Vassilis M. Charitopoulos, René Doursat, Sarah Harris, Tim Ireland, Andrew Jenkins, Veronika Kapsali, Natalio Krasnogor, Ottoline Leyser, Andy Lomas, Tomasz Liskiewicz, Richard James MacCowan, Alison McKay, Robin Ramphal, Robert Richardson, and Tia Shaker.

My further thanks to Rachel Armstrong, Leo Caves, Herbert Jaeger, Rupert Soar, Adam Stanton, Tom McLeish, and three anonymous reviewers, for perceptive and constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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  1. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK

    Susan Stepney

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  1. Susan Stepney
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  1. Engineering Sciences Graduate Program, Tecnológico Nacional de México/Instituto Tecnológico de Tijuana, Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

    Leonardo Trujillo

  2. Heuristic and Evolutionary Algorithms Laboratory, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Wels, Austria

    Stephan M. Winkler

  3. Department of Informatics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Sara Silva

  4. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Wolfgang Banzhaf

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Stepney, S. (2023). Life as a Cyber-Bio-Physical System. In: Trujillo, L., Winkler, S.M., Silva, S., Banzhaf, W. (eds) Genetic Programming Theory and Practice XIX. Genetic and Evolutionary Computation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8460-0_8

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