Bumble Bee Tuna

Anybody know of any computer programs or web applets or any such thing that is a good demonstration of order from a simple process? I know I saw a program where you could set a simple rule, make some squares in a grid red, some squares blue, and then the program would run and the grid would turn into ordered shapes. Something like this would be useful in arguing with someone who is claiming "how could something complex come out of a random process" or one of those simple arguments.

Anyone know where I could go to get something like this?

-B

Bumble Bee Tuna

er...immediately after posting I found John Conway's Game of Life at <a href="http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/" target="_blank">http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/</a>
so I guess I found what I was looking for.
Sorry.

-B

Principia

You might also try the few that are <a href="http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Software/software.htm" target="_blank">here</a>, from Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker.

Principia

<a href="http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/" target="_blank">Here</a> is a more technical program by Tom Schneider at the NIH's Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology (LECB).

Principia

For a more mathematical treatment of cellular automata (the technical name for the 'Game of Life' originally introduced by <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=120773 05&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">von Neumann</a>), here is Stephen Wolfram's collection of <a href="http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/books/ca-reprint/" target="_blank">papers</a>.

And if you have Mathematica, here is the <a href="http://library.wolfram.com/demos/v4/CellularAutomata.nb" target="_blank">notebook file for a CA</a>.

EDIT: history mistake

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Principia ]</p>

Principia

And if you're interested in further readings on the topic, here is one of the technical journals on artificial life, <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=4&tid=41" target="_blank">Artificial Life</a> and one of many web resources on <a href="http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~csgs/resources/gaal.html" target="_blank">the topic</a>.

liquid

Haven't posted for a loonnnnnng time!

I'm currently reading Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", so if you have any questions on that, I might be able to answer them.

Take a look at "A new kind.... explorer" on his website, a tool that is about to come out to replicate all his computer experiments. In the meantime, there are CA programs around, but the one you need to run is 110 (under the wolfram classification system). Get a program and I can give you the rules.

scigirl

Welcome back! Where have you been??

Sounds interesting - keep us posted.

Do you have a link handy?

scigirl

Principia

Here is an example of CA <a href="http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/CA1DRule110" target="_blank">Rule 110</a>.

And here is Wolfram's <a href="http://www.wolframscience.com/nksx/index.html" target="_blank">A New Kind of Science Explorer</a>.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Principia ]</p>

Shadowy Man

Back in college I wrote a program that performed "Langton's Ant", which I had read about in Scientific American. It's about as simple as it gets.

Langton's ant starts on a grid of white squares. Takes one step forward. If it steps on a white square it paints it black and turns left; if it steps on a black sqaure it paints it white and turns right. Then takes another step. The resulting pattern is fascinating.

This simple program greatly helped aid me in my disbelief in the need for an intelligent god to explain the complexity in the universe.

Unfortunately, I wrote it in IDL, which most people here probably don't have. If anyone does have it, ask me for the code, I'll gladly deliver it up.

Or, I could just show the IDL code and a clever person should be able to translate it into C without too much difficulty.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Shadowy Man ]</p>