Related papers: Self-replication and Computational Universality
A fundamental question is whether Turing machines can model all reasoning processes. We introduce an existence principle stating that the perception of the physical existence of any Turing program can serve as a physical causation for the…
According to the Church-Turing Thesis (CTT), effective formal behaviours can be simulated by Turing machines; this has naturally led to speculation that physical systems can also be simulated computationally. But is this wider claim true,…
Manin, Feynman, and Deutsch have viewed quantum computing as a kind of universal physical simulation procedure. Much of the writing about quantum logic circuits and quantum Turing machines has shown how these machines can simulate an…
What does it mean to claim that a physical or natural system computes? One answer, endorsed here, is that computing is about programming a system to behave in different ways. This paper offers an account of what it means for a physical…
Computing is a high-level process of a physical system. Recent interest in non-standard computing systems, including quantum and biological computers, has brought this physical basis of computing to the forefront. There has been, however,…
Deutsch, Feynman, and Manin viewed quantum computing as a kind of universal physical simulation procedure. Much of the writing about quantum Turing machines has shown how these machines can simulate an arbitrary unitary transformation on a…
Living systems exhibit a range of fundamental characteristics: they are active, self-referential, self-modifying systems. This paper explores how these characteristics create challenges for conventional scientific approaches and why they…
``The purpose of life is to obtain knowledge, use it to live with as much satisfaction as possible, and pass it on with improvements and modifications to the next generation.'' This may sound philosophical, and the interpretation of words…
We explore the possible connections between the dynamic behaviour of a system and Turing universality in terms of the system's ability to (effectively) transmit and manipulate information. Some arguments will be provided using a defined…
This study presents a theoretical model for a self-replicating mechanical system inspired by biological processes within living cells and supported by computer simulations. The model decomposes self-replication into core components, each of…
Expanding upon the widely recognized notion of mathematical universality in Turing machines, a concept of thermodynamic universality in Turing machines is introduced. Under the physical Church-Turing thesis, the existence of a…
The fundamental impasses and ruptures in various domains of the canonical, unitary science, or the 'end of science', become the more and more evident. The natural unity of being is recovered within a universal nonperturbative method leading…
Arbitrary quantum states cannot be copied. In fact, to make a copy we must provide complete information about the system. However, can a quantum system self-replicate? This is not answered by the no-cloning theorem. In the classical…
We study the computational complexity theory of smooth, finite-dimensional dynamical systems. Building off of previous work, we give definitions for what it means for a smooth dynamical system to simulate a Turing machine. We then show that…
We advance a Bayesian concept of 'intrinsic asymptotic universality' taking to its final conclusions previous conceptual and numerical work based upon a concept of a reprogrammability test and an investigation of the complex qualitative…
The abstraction introduced by von Neumann correctly reflected the state of the art 70 years ago. Although it omitted data transmission time between components of the computer, it served as an excellent base for classic computing for…
Causal Graph Dynamics generalize Cellular Automata, extending them to bounded degree, time varying graphs. The dynamics rewrite the graph at each time step with respect to two physics-like symmetries: causality (bounded speed of…
Neuromorphic computing seeks to replicate the remarkable efficiency, flexibility, and adaptability of the human brain in artificial systems. Unlike conventional digital approaches, which suffer from the Von Neumann bottleneck and depend on…
One of the defining features of living systems is their adaptability to changing environmental conditions. This requires organisms to extract temporal and spatial features of their environment, and use that information to compute the…
All physical systems in equilibrium obey the laws of thermodynamics. In other words, whatever the precise nature of the interaction between the atoms and molecules at the microscopic level, at the macroscopic level, physical systems exhibit…