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Mark A. Bedau

Mark A. Bedau is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College, Adjunct Professor of Systems Science at Portland State University, and Editor-in-Chief of the MIT Press journal Artificial Life.

Titles by This Editor

Artificial Life XI

Edited by Seth Bullock, Jason Noble, Richard A. Watson and Mark A. Bedau

Artificial Life is an interdisciplinary effort to investigate the fundamental properties of living systems through the simulation and synthesis of life-like processes in artificial media. The field brings a powerful set of tools to the study of how high-level behavior can arise in systems governed by simple rules of interaction.

The Ethics of Protocells

Moral and Social Implications of Creating Life in the Laboratory
Edited by Mark A. Bedau and Emily C. Parke

Teams of scientists around the world are racing to create protocells—microscopic, self-organizing entities that spontaneously assemble from simple organic and inorganic materials. The creation of fully autonomous protocells—a technology that can, for all intents and purposes, be considered literally alive—is only a matter of time. This book examines the pressing social and ethical issues raised by the creation of life in the laboratory.

Protocells

Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter
Edited by Steen Rasmussen, Mark A. Bedau, Liaohai Chen, David Deamer, David C. Krakauer, Norman H. Packard and Peter F. Stadler

Protocells offers a comprehensive resource on current attempts to create simple forms of life from scratch in the laboratory. These minimal versions of cells, known as protocells, are entities with lifelike properties created from nonliving materials, and the book provides in-depth investigations of processes at the interface between nonliving and living matter. Chapters by experts in the field put this state-of-the-art research in the context of theory, laboratory work, and computer simulations on the components and properties of protocells.

Emergence

Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science
Edited by Mark A. Bedau and Paul Humphreys

Emergence, largely ignored just thirty years ago, has become one of the liveliest areas of research in both philosophy and science. Fueled by advances in complexity theory, artificial life, physics, psychology, sociology, and biology and by the parallel development of new conceptual tools in philosophy, the idea of emergence offers a way to understand a wide variety of complex phenomena in ways that are intriguingly different from more traditional approaches.

Artificial Life IX

Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems
Edited by Jordan Pollack, Mark A. Bedau, Phil Husbands, Richard A. Watson and Takashi Ikegami

Artificial Life is an interdisciplinary effort to investigate the fundamental properties of living systems through the simulation and synthesis of life-like processes. The young field brings a powerful set of tools to the study of how high-level behavior can arise in systems governed by simple rules of interaction.

Artificial Life VIII

Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Artificial Life
Edited by Russell Standish, Mark A. Bedau and Hussein A. Abbass

The term "artificial life" describes research into synthetic systems that possess some of the essential properties of life. This interdisciplinary field includes biologists, computer scientists, physicists, chemists, geneticists, and others. Artificial life may be viewed as an attempt to understand high-level behavior from low-level rules—for example, how the simple interactions between ants and their environment lead to complex trail-following behavior.

Artificial Life VII

Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Artificial Life
Edited by Mark A. Bedau, John S. McCaskill, Norman H. Packard and Steen Rasmussen

The term "artificial life" describes research into synthetic systems that possess some of the essential properties of life. This truly interdisciplinary field includes biologists, computer scientists, physicists, chemists, geneticists, and others. Artificial life may be viewed as an attempt to understand high-level behavior from low-level rules—for example, how the simple interactions between ants and their environment lead to complex trail-following behavior.