Workshop on the History & Philosophy of Artificial Life

Histories of computing and artificial life and intelligence traditionally began in the mid-twentieth century. In the last few years this has been changing, as historians shift their attention to earlier attempts at simulating life and earlier assessments of the relations between human and machine intelligence. The resulting work has begun to restore to the modern fields of artificial life and artificial intelligence a history stretching back several centuries. This history reveals the complexity and contingency of the process by which philosophers and engineers have used simulations of living and cognitive behaviors to distinguish, along continually shifting axes, between organic and mechanical, animate and inert, intelligent and rote. The workshop is a response to this current flowering of interest in the long and intricate history of artificial life.