Artificial life

“ We can evoke electricity at will from many different sources, but we can evoke life only from other life; the biogenetic law is inviolable.
IV
It takes some of the cold iron out of the mechanistic theory of life if we divest it of all our associations with the machine-mad and machine-ridden world in which we live and out of which our material civilization came. The mechanical, the automatic, is the antithesis of the spontaneous and the poetic, and it repels us on that account. We are so made [Pg 224] that the artificial systems please us far less than the natural systems. ”

“ Nature (the art whereby God has made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as does a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer? ”

“ But the living organism differs from artificial machines in that, of itself and by itself, it is [Pg 9] continuously drawing into itself non-living matter, converting it into an integral part of the organism, and so endowing it with the qualities of life. And from this non-living matter it derives fresh energy for the carrying on of the life of the organism.
The engine and the butterfly gas flame do not give us, any more than the river, a complete picture of the living organism. ”

“ Both natural and artificial selection are quite simple natural, mechanical relations of life, which depend upon the interaction of two physiological functions, namely, on Adaptation and Inheritance, functions which, as such, must again be traced to physical and chemical properties of organic matter. ”

“ For the human species to-day, the significance of natural selection is historical merely; the future belongs to artificial selection. The device for humanity must be, “Not Natural Selection, but Artificial Selection—Eugenics!” ”

“ But it is because the lines of natural affinity are, as it were, so interwoven throughout the organic world, and because there is, in consequence, so much difficulty in following them, that artificial systems have to be made in the first instance as feelers towards eventual discovery of the natural system. ”

“ The problem of which I speak is that of organic mechanism and its relation to that of organic adaptation. How in general are the phenomena of life related to those of the non-living world? How far can we profitably employ the hypothesis that the living body is essentially an automaton or machine, a configuration of material particles, which, like an engine or a piece of clockwork, owes its mode of operation to its physical and chemical construction? It is not open to doubt that the living body is a machine. ”

“ And if natural selection, with artificial to help it, will produce better animals and better men than the present, and fit them better to the conditions of existence, why, let it work, say we, to the top of its bent There is still room enough for improvement. ”

“ This important difference between artificial and natural selection deserves especial consideration. For we learn by it to understand how arrangements serving a purpose can be produced by mechanical causes acting without an object, as well as by causes acting for an object. ”

“ From this point of view there is a very profound analogy between artificial and natural selection. Upon the theory of natural selection organisms are lifeless constructs which are mechanically perfected by external agency, just as machines are improved by a process of conscious selection of the most successful among a number of competing models. ”

“ A fundamental difference between artificial machines and living organisms is that the former are worn out by use, while the latter not only repair the loss caused by use, but are also stimulated to further increase. ”

“ Thus, research in self-growing and self-replicating machine systems can be viewed as a contribution to, even as F a central part of, a true theoretical biology which takes as its subject matter not merely the evolved, naturally occur ring living organisms of Earth, but lifelike mechanisms, natural or artificial, having existed or possible, wherever in L the universe they might arise. ”

“ The machine of the last evolution is far ahead, far from us still. It is the machine that is not of iron and beryllium and crystal, but of pure, living force.
"Life, chemical life, could be self-maintaining. It is a complete unit in itself and could commence of itself. ”

“ They are the only instances in nature of a structure built with its parts harmoniously adjusted to each other to the performance of certain ends. All other machines with which we are acquainted were made by man, and in making them intelligence came in to adapt the parts to each other. But in the living organism is a similarly adapted machine made by natural means rather than artificial. ”

“ By its aid we may hereafter succeed not only in looking far forward into the future history of the human race, but in determining what artificial means may be used, and to what extent, to accelerate the natural progress in so far as it is beneficial; to compensate for whatever may be its inherent inconveniences or disadvantages; and to guard against the dangers or accidents to which our species is exposed from the necessary incidents of its progression. ”

“ Human Artificials 3. Human Artificials. We have now to consider a class of entities which, though it contains but few individuals, has acquired from its intimate connection with one of the great movements of modern times an importance entirely out of proportion to its numbers. It seems doubtful whether it should appear under the first or third of our main divisions; but, though certainly human, it is so far removed from the course of ordinary evolution, so entirely the product of a will outside of its own, that it perhaps falls most naturally into place among the artificial beings. ”

“ Artificial selection, such as this, is after all only imitation of that natural selection which has derived the horse from a progenitor little larger than a fox, in response, age after age, to changing food, climate, enemies, and the needs of his human master. ”

“ I. The reproduction or generation of living organized bodies, is the great criterion or characteristic which distinguishes animation from mechanism. Fluids may circulate in hydraulic machines, or simply move in them, as mercury in the barometer or thermometer, but the power of producing an embryon which shall gradually acquire similitude to its parent, distinguishes artificial from natural organization.
The reproduction of plants and animals appears to be of two kinds, solitary and sexual; the former occurs in the formation of the buds of trees, and the bulbs of tulips ”

“ You see, then, that the struggle for existence is an absolute necessity; and out of this all-essential strife springs what has been well called Natural Selection. What is meant by this will more easily be understood by looking first at Artificial Selection, which has been practised by man, sometimes consciously, and oftener unconsciously, in the process of domesticating a great number of plants and animals. ”

“ It is true that some biologists have urged certain technical objections to the employment of domesticated animals and their history as analogies to the processes and results in wild nature. To my mind, however, artificial selection is truly a part of the whole process of natural selection. Man is but one element of the environment of tame forms, and his fancy or need is therefore one of the varied series of external criteria that must be met if survival is to be the result; failing this, elimination follows as surely as under the conditions of an area uninhabited or uninfluenced by mankind. ”

“ The insects of the garden, supposing them to be invested with reasoning power, and aware how artificial are their own works, might of course very reasonably conclude that, being in its totality an artificial object, the garden was the work of some maker or artificer. And so also must we conclude, when we attain a knowledge of the artificiality which is at the basis of nature, that nature is wholly the production of a Being resembling, but infinitely greater than ourselves.
Organic beings are, then, bound together in development, and in a system of both affinities and analogies. ”

“ It was the spectacle of human contrivance that suggested to Darwin his conception of natural selection. It was in studying the methods of pigeon breeders that he divined the processes by which nature, in the absence of design, obtains analogous results in the differentiation of types. As soon as the importance of artificial selection in the transformation of species of animals was understood, reflection naturally turned to the human species, and the question arose, How far do men observe, in connection with themselves, those laws of which they make practical application in the case of animals? ”

“ It requires as much power to call into existence a living molecule as to produce a living being. Both are accomplished upon the same principle, and that principle is not an incessant intervention of a supernatural kind, but the operation of unvarying law. Physical agents, working through physical laws, remove in organisms such molecules as have accomplished their work and create new ones, and physical agents, working through physical laws, control the extinctions and creations of forms in the universe of life. ”

“ Indeed, a high authority says: “Though, since the human race began, all sorts of artificial agencies have been employed, and though there has been the closest scrutiny, yet not a distinctively new type of plant or animal, on what is called broad lines, has come into existence.” ”

“ The early patents are the creatures in possession, and to develop a new type without infringing on their pastures, and risking their claws, a machine is driven into ever-odder contrivances, like creatures that can only exist in an over-crowded milieu by wriggling into some curious shape and filling some forgotten niche. The lust of life that runs through Nature transforms the very dust to a creeping palpitation, fills every leaf and drop of water with pullulating populations. ’Tis an eternal exuberance, a riotous extravagance, an ecstasy of creation. ”

“ He says a machine does work, but it does not create and repair itself like living organisms. He would therefore modify the prevailing definition of organic life, and make it not only a machine, but more than a machine, and emphasize the fact that life is as much an interaction between various parts of the organism as between the organism and the world of exterior matter. He says one organ of the body may lose in bulk, in order that others may increase. ”

“ Adjusting over time to the novel experience of space, they conceived new ways or adapted their ancient qualities and prospered in wholly enclosed artificial worlds. Organ modifications, genetic engineering and cloning gave impetus to human transformation. ”

“ The first has been designated as the natural, and the other the artificial system; and, without entering into a critical disquisition on these definitions, it will be sufficient to observe, that by the Artificial System we bend nature to conform to certain arbitrary principles, which we lay down and to which we insist all her productions known and unknown will conform; while in the Natural method, we endeavour by tracing her modifications, to adapt our system to that which appears to regulate her operations. ”

“ Now, it is surely unquestionable that in these typical proofs of the efficacy of artificial selection in the modification of specific types, we have the strongest conceivable testimony to the power of natural selection in the same direction. ”

“ A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the 18th century are the work of a single individual, Hitherto there is no such book. Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature’s Technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention? ”

“ Furthermore, it would give us creatures without special adaptation of any kind to the peculiar circumstances of their own environment. To account for adaptation, for the almost perfect fitness of every plant and every animal to its position in life, for the existence (in other words) of definitely correlated parts and organs, we must call in the aid of survival of the fittest. Without that potent selective agent, our conception of the becoming of life is a mere chaos; order and organisation are utterly inexplicable save by the brilliant illuminating ray of the Darwinian principle. ”

“ Or perhaps such an event has even greater import, since "machine life" is of a totally different material substance than either animal or plant life, and because "machine life" very possibly is a form which cannot evolve by direct natural routes but instead requires a naturally evolved biological creator. ”

“ But artificial structures imply artificers. And if the structures are so designed as to meet the needs of a living organism, it implies that the living organism that designed them must have a reasonable mind lodged in a natural body. ”