The metaphors of complexity: the language and cognitive resources of artificial life

Abstract

The use of computers has opened access to complex phenomena for the comprehension of which no operational narrative traditions are available. Notions of “life”, “cognition” and “intelligence” constitute metaphors and procedures for description and understanding that make it possible to discuss these phenomena, however. They represent cognitive resources for scientists. Why do computer scientists “play” at being biologists, and why do they view it as essential to naturalize their artifacts? When this question is taken as the starting point, it becomes possible to outline what an anthropological study of relations to complexity might look like. For “artificial life”, the outcome is a faustian attitude, implying the creation not of life, pure and simple, but of all possible forms of life. Most importantly, this “Godly discourse” goes along with the development of a truly astonishing object — self-modifiable, adaptable and evolutionary mimetic programs. There is no place for these surprising artifacts in the narrative traditions by means of which scholars may describe and account for them. To examine the all-pervasive but constantly denied language-related dimension of experimentation in artificial life, in an attempt to reach a more intimate understanding of how a purely playful technical project may be transformed into a grandiose metaphysical program, points to two major characteristics of such discourse, which have attracted little attention so far: its insistence on staging parallel, manipulatable and acceleratable temporal sequences for the phenomena observed, as well as an obdurate, painstaking will to exclude everything human from these worlds, which must be perfectly and even hermetically sealed off, this being perceived as a precondition for real life. One direct consequence of these radical positions is that they cut off artificial life from its richest heritage, and in particular from its forefathers in the world of art. One major consequence of this research on artificial life is the reformulation of where we cross boundaries in our culture, and rethinking the status of human beings.

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