More information on the 17c/45 Caterpillar is available here and here. Just as spectacular as the concept of a Turing Machine being built in the Game of Life is the " 17c/45Ĭaterpillar spaceship"-a gigantic pattern involving over 10 million cells that travels across the universe. The details of this construction are available at Paul Rendell's site here. It is possible to build a pattern that acts like a finite state machine connected to two counters."Īlthough it may seem a bit convoluted, this idea became the basis for the construction of a Turing Machine within the Game of Life. It is possible to construct logic gates such as AND, OR and NOT using gliders. This "sliding block memory" can be used to simulate a counter. If three gliders are shot in just the right way, the block will move farther away. For example, if two gliders are shot at a block in just the right way, the block will move closer to the source of the gliders. "It is possible for gliders to interact with other objects in interesting ways. He spent hours in the common rooms of the University of Cambridge, UK, and Princeton. The Wikipedia article on the Game of Life notes: Conway, who died at the age of 82 from complications related to COVID-19, was a lover of games of all kinds. Wikipedia article on Conway's Game of Life Dennett has used the analog of Conway's Life "universe" extensively to illustrate the possible evolution of complex philosophical constructs, such as consciousness and free will, from the relatively simple set of deterministic physical laws governing our own universe." For example, philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel C. The game can also serve as a didactic analogy, used to convey the somewhat counterintuitive notion that "design" and "organization" can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer. It is interesting for physicists, biologists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers, generative scientists and others to observe the way that complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of very simple rules. Life is an example of emergence and self-organization. To celebrate his memory, here is a small. "Ever since its publication, Conway's Game of Life has attracted much interest because of the surprising ways in which the patterns can evolve. The Sciences For Math Fans: Some Puzzles from Game of Life Creator John Conway The great British mathematician passed away from COVID-19 last year. The emergence of complex behavior-sometimes chaotic and other times seemingly orderly-from the simple rules set out by the Game of Life has notable implications in many fields:
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