They modelled them using two-dimensional grids, updated in discrete steps following precise and deterministic rules. Some thirty years prior to Conway’s Game of Life, in fact, Stanisław Ulam and John von Neumann explored the theory behind self-replicating machines. The idea was to find a simple set of rules which allowed the merger of two seemingly disconnected fields: Engineering and Biology. The mind behind this bizarre game was John Horton Conway, a brilliant British Mathematician fascinated by the exploration of Mathematics in its purest form: the recreational one.Ĭonway had carefully designed the rules behind this “game of life” with the intent of making its evolution unpredictable. Each square adjacent to exactly three pieces gives birth to a new piece. Likewise, every piece next to one or no pieces at all dies from isolation.
Each piece surrounded by four or more pieces dies from overpopulation. Every piece surrounded by two or three other pieces survives for the next turn. A “zero-player game” with no winners or losers, which result is fully determined by the initial configuration of the pieces on the board.Ī player is only needed to advance the state of the game to the next turn-a “generation”-following three simple rules. But unlike Chess and Go, it requires no players. Like Chess and Go, Life is played with pieces on a board. That was going to become one of his most successful columns. In the October 1970 issue of Scientific American (below), Gardner talked about the “fantastic combinations” of this new solitaire game called “life”. “Life” gained popularity after appearing in a column written by Martin Gardner called “Mathematical Games”. I’m Alan Zucconi, and in this short documentary we will get lost in the endless complexity of a game so apparently simple that its creator called it “Life”.
Like Chess and Go, sometimes complexity can hide in the most …unexpected places. Emergent behaviours often-well, emerge-from simple, discrete rules that have seemingly nothing to do with them. In reality, the more rules a system has, the more “constrained” it is. One of the most common misconceptions is that complex phenomena arise from complex rules.
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