The emergence of hierarchcal organisation in artificial life systems - Theoretical and meta-theoretical problems

The main aspiration of the field of Artificial Life is to implement life-like entities in agent-based computer models (ABM). Although relatively successfull in the past, the available models today still do not reflect the rich hierarchical organisation of real organisms (molecules, cell, organs...). It has been proven to be difficult to make ABMs which support the spontaneous emergence of more than one level. It is a challenge for the field of Artificial Life to learn how to do this. One part of the proje ct is therefore to examine how ABMs have to be made in order to support hierarchical organisation. The second part of the project will examine the way Artificial Life produces knowledge. ABM are a reductionistic way of doing research on life and there a re strong (if abstract) arguments against their adequacy or for the proper understanding of organisms(especially advocated by Robert Rosen). It is however unclear what the relevance of these arguments for the practical work in Artificial Life is and what possible alternatives to a reductionist Artificiai Life are.