Creation:
Life and How to Make It
By Steve Grand
2000, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard university
Press
Paper 218 pp. Illus b/w
ISBN 0-674-00654-2
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
pepperell@ntlworld.com
Steve Grand is a popular science writer
in the best tradition of the genre. He is
motivated by the need to explain, to popularize,
an intellectual vision in which he passionately
believes, a vision driven by his sustained
investigation into some deeply perplexing
scientific questions: What is life? Can
living processes be replicated? What is
consciousness and can it too be replicated?
Anyone who has seen or heard him speak will
know this passion is fuelled by his conviction
that some of the greatest enigmas in human
thought (the nature of life and consciousness)
are not only explicable but susceptible
to synthetic regeneration, given the appropriate
tools and methods. Hence the claim made
in the books subtitle would be, for
Grand, a reasonable summary of his project
rather than, as it would be for others,
a ridiculously bombastic declaration.
Grands approach is essentially synthetic
rather than analytic. He takes contemporary
ideas in physics, mathematics, biology,
computer science and neurology and synthesizes
a coherent, transdisciplinary model that
has the benefit of being more that purely
theoretical. His previous experience as
the inventor of the artificial life computer
game Creatures, and his more recent
work constructing artificial beings,
give him a practical insight into the problems
of generating complex behaviour with computer
code.
To summarise his position, he advocates
a theory of emergence, which is to say the
properties of natural phenomena such as
intelligence and life emerge from the interaction
of a multitude of variables without being
reducible to any one of them. Nor can any
one variable be said to be the first or
final cause of any particular event. Even
the notion of control we associate with,
for example, human agency is seen as the
effect of some prior cause or causes rather
than as a determining influence itself.
Higher order phenomena such as consciousness
are less the attributes of a particular
substance than consequences of the behaviour
of a certain pattern or arrangement: "Consciousness
cannot therefore be a property of matter,
only a property of certain configurations
of matter." (p. 38). It is these principles
that Grand seeks to implement through computer
simulations, thereby creating virtual laboratories
for exploring the creation of life, intelligence
and consciousness.
The nub of Grands formula for the
creation of life is to combine a number
of mechanical building blocks such as modulators,
transducers, differentiators and integrators
(what he calls "Gods LEGO set"),
each relatively simple but capable of producing
complex behaviour when acting in concert.
Crucial to the whole enterprise is the provision
of some basic impulses and drives, like
the need to eat, communicate, learn and
mate, without which, he argues, a living
thing would lack purpose. All these behaviours
can be simulated in a virtual world-space
wherein the life, or computer code behaving
as life, is born: "Our task is not
to program in intelligent behaviour, but
to enable such behaviour to emerge from
simulated objects that embody the cybernetic
properties from which life emerged in the
natural world." (p. 147).
Grand has an engaging style, his arguments
are almost always persuasive, and his examples
and analogies genuinely illuminating. Given
the complexity of the subject matter, the
text moves at a lively pace yet without
compromising the seriousness of his thesis.
I have to admit that in my case he was preaching
to the converted, but I hope this book will
have a wider impact, in particular on those
in the AI and A-Life communities, and indeed
in the scientific community in general,
who seek to reductively analyse complex
phenomena. Although the book might be criticised
for sometimes conflating life, intelligence
and consciousness, Creation stands
as a model of clear, independent thought,
impassioned reason and well-founded speculation.