[alife] CFP: Life and ALife: Interactions Between Natural and Synthetic Biology

[Titus Brown]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special issue of Theoria et Historia Scientiarum,
Life and ALife: Interactions Between Natural and Synthetic Biology
http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ppcogsci/bhv/Alife

ALife is an interdisciplinary field of research that aims at studying  
life or life-like processes through computational modelling  
techniques and the simulation of real or theoretically possible  
living systems or ecosystems. Neural networks, agents, or communities  
of agents are embedded in simulated environments, or embodied and  
embedded in real environments, where they are left to develop,  
interact, learn, reproduce, adapt and evolve. ALALifeife scientists  
can use such models to test various hypotheses about the nature of  
life or cognition, or about complex process such as adaptation and  
learning. As a concequence, the field stands at the intersection of  
theoretical biology, computational biology and cognitive science. In  
this special edition of Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, "Life and  
ALife: Interactions Between Natural and Synthetic Biology", we  
propose to investigate foundational questions related to the  
interactions between (natural) biology and the synthetic-biological  
approach of ALife. Here is a (non exhaustive) sample of topics that  
can be addressed in this issue:

Epistemology of ALife
	?	Does ALife tell us something about real biological systems 
	or is  it only informative about its own theories?
	?	What is the epistemological status of ALife simulations: are 
	they  scientific theories or models, or simply (fun) formal systems?
	?	Are simulations or artificial agents relevant in the context 
	of  justification or the context of discovery, or both? Are they  
deductive, inductive or abductive engines?

Biology and philosophy of biology
	?	Can ALife help the life sciences address complex issues such 
	as  the nature/existence of the Baldwin effect, the influence of  
development on evolutionary process, or the nature of adaptation? And  
how?
	?	Can ALife help develop naturalistic accounts of cognition? 
	Which  stance (reductionist, emergentist, etc) is advocated by ALife 
research?

Invited Contributors
	?	Pete Mandik,Philosophy Department, William Paterson 
	University
	?	Barbara Webb, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

DEADLINE AND CONTACT

January 28, 2006, is the final deadline for papers to be included in  
the issue on ALife. Please initially send us a brief outline of the  
projected paper. All questions and files (.RTF or .DOC) should be  
addressed to: bhv at sympatico.ca

INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS
all details are avalaible here: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ppcogsci/ 
bhv/Alife/

Edited by:
Ben Hardy
Institut Jean Nicod, Paris (France)
Laboratoire d?Analyse Cognitive de l?Information, Montr?al. CAN.
http://benoithv.free.fr
bhv at sympatico.ca

Pierre Poirier
Philosophy Department
Universit? du Qu?bec at Montreal, CAN
Laboratoire d?Analyse Cognitive de l?Information, Montr?al. CAN.
poirier.pierre at uqam.ca

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Benoit HARDY-VALL?E
bhv at sympatico.ca - http://benoithv.free.fr

?tudiant PhD student :: Institut Jean Nicod [Paris]
LANCI, UQ?M [Montr?al]

COGINFOS: http://coginfos.uqam.ca/