Advances in artificial life

Why is the question of the di? erence between living and non-living matter - tellectually so attractive to the man of the West? Where are our dreams about our own ability to understand this di? erence and to overcome it using the ? rmly established technologies rooted? Where are, for instance, the cultural roots of the enterprises covered nowadays by the discipline of Arti? cial Life? Cont- plating such questions, one of us has recognized [6] the existence of the eternal dream of the man of the West expressed, for example, in the Old Testament as follows: . . . the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis, 2. 7). This is the dream about the workmanlike act of the creation of Adam from clay, about the creation of life from something non-living, and the con? dence in the magic power of technologies. How has this dream developed and been converted into a reality, and how does it determine our present-day activities in science and technology? What is this con? dence rooted in? Then God said: “Let us make man in our image. . . ” (Genesis, 1. 26). Man believes in his own ability to repeat the Creator’s acts, to change ideas into real things, because he believes he is godlike. This con? dence is – using the trendy Dawkins’ term – perhaps the most important cultural meme of the West.