The view from elsewhere: Perspectives on ALife modelling

Many artificial life researchers stress the interdisciplinary character of the field. Against such a backdrop, this paper reviews and discusses artificial life, as it is depicted in, and as it interfaces with, adjacent disciplines (in particular, philosophy, biology, and linguistics), and in the light of a specific historical example of interdisciplinary research (namely cybernetics) with which artificial life shares many features. The paper grew out of a workshop held at the 6 th European Conference on Artificial Life in Prague, and features individual contributions from the workshop’s eight speakers, plus a section designed to reflect the debates that took place during the workshop’s discussion sessions. The major theme that emerged during these sessions was the identity and status of artificial life as a scientific endeavour.