One of Robert Rosen's main contributions to the scientific community is summarized in his book Life itself. There Rosen presents a theoretical framework to define living systems; given this definition, he goes on to show that living systems are not realizable in computational universes. Despite being well known and often cited, Rosen's central proof has so far not been evaluated by the scientif...

This paper aims to discuss engineering aspects for an agent-based ambient assisted living system for the home environment using argumentation for decision making. The special requirements of our system are to provide a platform with cost-effective specialized assisted living services for the elderly people having cognitive problems, which will significantly improve the quality of their home lif...

The target of this paper is to draw a comparison between information in living systems and information in inorganic contexts. The two representative contexts we will refer to are those of an organism and of solid state physics. We have published extensively elsewhere on the properties of a model hierarchy (e.g. Cottam et al, 2003; and most recently Cottam et al, 2016; Cottam et al, 2017), and t...

The evolution of coordination is an important consideration in living systems. Throughout the natural world examples of coordination can be found. These include fish schooling, birds flocking and animals hunting in packs. This paper examines the issue of coordination and how groups can coordinate their actions in a competitive setting. A number of existing game theoretic representations of coor...

The world ocean with a coastline of 312,000 km (193,000 miles) and a volume of 137 × 10 km, is the largest ecosystem on earth, and has been used for a variety of purposes by man for millennia. Because of its large volume and vast area, influence of the world ocean on world climate is profound. Microorganisms occur nearly everywhere in nature and occupy an important place in human view of life. ...

This paper is part of an on-going research which attempts to reveal whether an analogy between ecology and architecture can benefit architectural design and if so, then in what ways. The analogy is done through an interpretation of three ecological principles which define the organization of living systems and then attempts to reveal how these three ecological principles may be implemented in a...

Although these chemicals have fairly consistent behavior when investigated alone, they can produce a variety of effects when used in living systems and when used in conjunction with, or following the administration of, other chemicals. The following article describes how difficult it can be to assign one type of response to a particular chemical! At the end of this long paper and the equally lo...

Behavioral dynamics of living species is characterized by additonal nonNewtonian properties which are not included in the laws of Newtonian or statistical mechanics. These properties follow from a priviledged ability of living systems to process information, namely, to generate a force in response to an external cue. In this paper “free-will-based” forces will be incorporated into the neurodyna...

Webb distinguishes two endeavors she calls animal modeling and animat modeling and advocates for the former. I share her preference and point to additional virtues of modeling actual biological mechanisms (animal modeling). As Webb argues, animat modeling should be regarded as modeling of specific, but madeup, biological mechanisms. I contend that modeling made-up mechanisms in situations in wh...

The fundamental feature that characterizes living systems is autonomy, and any account of their organization as systems that can exist as individual unities must show what autonomy is as a phenomenon proper to them, and how it arises in their operation as such unities. Accordingly the following is proposed. (1) That autonomy in living systems is a feature of self-production (autopoiesis), and t...