Introduction to circuit complexity

This book and CD-ROM have been developed in a course taught at Caltech since 1995, and is based on ALife research conducted there. The courses are attended by an interdisciplinary group of students from backgrounds in physics, computer science, and the computational neural sciences.

The intended target audience is advanced undergraduate to beginning graduate students, who have mastered essential concepts of statistical physics, thermodynamics, and basic biology. Also, a familiarity with computer architectures and scientific computing techniques is assumed. The subject matter represents an attempt to bring together the theoretical groundwork and an experimental platform necessary for understanding and testing ideas about the dynamics of systems of self-replicating information, the most basic incarnation of life.

The accompanying CD-ROM contains files and programs which are executable on a variety of platforms. All text (.txt) files are readable across all computer platforms, as are the Java applets and HTML files. Readers can also download additional software pertaining to particular chapters in the book. For example, applications relating to sandpiles and percolation are provided. Most movies included on the CD-ROM are in the MPEG format, although some are also provided in Quicktime, and can be played across all platforms.

The unique ALife software avida, written by Charles Ofria, the California Institute of Technology, is included on the disc, along with an electronic version of the User's manual. Avida implements a system of self-replicating computer programs evolving in -- and adapting to -- a noisy environment, which allows the user to perform dedicated experiments on artificial evolution. Avida is designed to run on Windows95 and Windows NT, as well as UNIX operating systems, but not Macintosh.