Artificial Life II

If you are intrested in how biological systems can be simulated via computer or in what contect computer programs or computer simulations can be called alive -- this is the book to read. Eventhou the articials in this book are technical reports from a scientific conference most provide easy reading for the layperson. Artificial Life is a fassinating scientific endevor that seeks to do for biology what Artificial Instelligence did for psychology -- model biological processes, instead of mental processes on the computer and look to biology as a model for computation -- using techniques such as Genetic Algorithms, Cellular Automata and Neural Networks. I find that all the books I've read that were published by the Santa Fe Institute to be intresting -- how ever the Artifical Life series is the easiest for an armchair scientist to grasp.