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A modeling formalism is proposed for the description and study of living and life-like systems. It provides an abstract conceptual model framework for real life and evolution of biological organisms. It is proposed, that this model…
Life occurs in concentrated `Ringer Solutions' derived from seawater that Lesser Blum studied for most of his life. As we worked together, Lesser and I realized that the questions asked of those solutions were quite different in biology…
It is often stated that there are no laws in biology, where everything is contingent and could have been otherwise, being solely the result of historical accidents. Furthermore, the customary introduction of fundamental biological entities…
A major challenge of interdisciplinary description of complex system behaviour is whether real systems of higher complexity levels can be understood with at least the same degree of objective, "scientific" rigour and universality as…
Even when concepts similar to emergence have been used since antiquity, we lack an agreed definition. However, emergence has been identified as one of the main features of complex systems. Most would agree on the statement ``life is…
This short text summarizes the work in biology proposed in our book, Perspectives on Organisms, where we analyse the unity proper to organisms by looking at it from different viewpoints. We discuss the theoretical roles of biological time,…
One of the longest standing open problems in science is how life arises from non-living matter. If it is possible to measure this transition in the lab, then it might be possible to understand the physical mechanisms by which the emergence…
How do complex adaptive systems, such as life, emerge from simple constituent parts? In the 1990s Walter Fontana and Leo Buss proposed a novel modeling approach to this question, based on a formal model of computation known as $\lambda$…
With the completion of human genome mapping, the focus of scientists seeking to explain the biological complexity of living systems is shifting from analyzing the individual components (such as a particular gene or biochemical reaction) to…
Why life is complex and --most importantly-- what is the origin of the over abundance of complexity in nature? This is a fundamental scientific question which, paraphrasing the late Per Bak, "is screaming to be answered but seldom is even…
Theoretical physics is the search for simple and universal mathematical descriptions of the natural world. In contrast, much of modern biology is an exploration of the complexity and diversity of life. For many, this contrast is prima facie…
The origin of life is shrouded in mystery, with few surviving clues, obscured by evolutionary competition. Previous reviews have touched on the complementary approaches of top-down and bottom-up synthetic biology to augment our…
There has been on-going philosophical debate on whether artificial life models, also known as digital organisms, are truly alive. The main difficulty appears to be finding an encompassing and definite definition of life. By examining…
A key challenge in modern computing is to develop systems that address complex, dynamic problems in a scalable and efficient way, because the increasing complexity of software makes designing and maintaining efficient and flexible systems…
The origins of life stands among the great open scientific questions of our time. While a number of proposals exist for possible starting points in the pathway from non-living to living matter, these have so far not achieved states of…
A vast array of transformative technologies developed over the past decade has enabled measurement and perturbation at ever increasing scale, yet our understanding of many systems remains limited by experimental capacity. Overcoming this…
It is a fascinating subject to explore how well we can understand the processes of life on the basis of fundamental laws of physics. It is emphasised that viewing biological processes as manipulation of information extracts their essential…
At present, there is a great deal of confusion regarding complexity and its measures (reviews on complexity measures are found in, e.g. Lloyd, 2001 and Shalizi, 2006 and more references therein). Moreover, there is also confusion regarding…
Self-replication is central to all life, and yet how it dynamically emerges in physical, non-equilibrium systems remains poorly understood. Von Neumann's pioneering work in the 1940s and subsequent developments suggest a natural hypothesis:…
While evolution has inspired algorithmic methods of heuristic optimisation, little has been done in the way of using concepts of computation to advance our understanding of salient aspects of biological phenomena. We argue that under…