The Computational Beauty of Nature

2 comments

• so-cal-schemer 14 hours ago

    Gary William Flake · MIT Press, 1998
    The Computational Beauty of Nature
    Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation.
  
  

  In this book, Gary William Flake develops in depth the simple idea that recurrent rules can produce rich and complicated behaviors. Distinguishing “agents” (e.g., molecules, cells, animals, and species) from their interactions (e.g., chemical reactions, immune system responses, sexual reproduction, and evolution), Flake argues that it is the computational properties of interactions that account for much of what we think of as “beautiful” and “interesting.” From this basic thesis, Flake explores what he considers to be today's four most interesting computational topics: fractals, chaos, complex systems, and adaptation.

  Each of the book's parts can be read independently, enabling even the casual reader to understand and work with the basic equations and programs. Yet the parts are bound together by the theme of the computer as a laboratory and a metaphor for understanding the universe. The inspired reader will experiment further with the ideas presented to create fractal landscapes, chaotic systems, artificial life forms, genetic algorithms, and artificial neural networks.

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  • so-cal-schemer 14 hours ago

    I remember code in the physical book being in scheme..

    ..perhaps just this section:

      Computation
      -----------
    
       STUTTER - a simple lisp interpreter that only understands car, cdr,
       cons, if, set, equal, quote, and lambda, but is still Turing-complete.
       Uses stop-and-copy garbage collection and has an adjustable heap size.
       Examples that implement integer and floating-point arithmetic are
       provided.  There is even an example STUTTER function to compute the
       square root of a floating-point argument with nothing but the primitives
       listed above.