Hey I like it. I remember something similar by Kevin Kelly, one of the founding editors of Wired Magazine, a few years back. It's a whole new picture, isn't it? I think this idea of kind of a creative tension between order and chaos is somehow very fertile...

---------- Post added 09-07-2009 at 02:54 PM ----------

This is one of the articles I was thinking of: God Is The Machine

This is one of the articles I was thinking of: God Is The Machine

let alone the possibility of a creative fusion between analog and digital computation .

This is one of the articles I was thinking of: God Is The Machine

Self organization in all its beauty ! The 'gliders' and the waves... it really took my breath !
I mean, ok, it looks like the very first computer games, so it doesn't really offer anything for spoilt nintendo users who need good graphics to get a thrill.
However you must not look from the graphical angle, but if you see it from the logical perspective - When you look at the start situation you think: What can really happen, a few pixles will move in a circle, nothing exciting. The rules of these automata are so little and basic that nobody would expect these systems to just develop a BEHAVIOUR.
But then they behave.
I have never really seen self organization so in action.
Wow. I do really understand how somebody can imagine the whole universe being based on such simple functions.
If someone is interested, i downloaded the applet from Mirek's Cellebration Download Area

It would seem that intelligence has an inherent desire to order given how strongly ordering tendencies manifest themselves...

Maybe you could say that this is because life is mind, through and through. Mind is not 'something that thinks' but this kind of latent intelligence which is embedded in everything. This is completely different to the traditional image of the 'great architect and the grand design'. Instead you have embedded the principle in every single thing so it can more or less create itself....kind of like DNA. And in fact it must have been like this for DNA to have occurred, mustn't it?

... way cool, isn't it!? ... about a year and a half ago I downloaded the software and played with it a little ... the CA grid wasn't big enough for my taste, so I modified the source code to allow me to make some bigger CA grids ... one of the CA rule sets that was pretty boring at the smaller grid size all of a sudden took on a life of its own ... Is There Life on the Sun? ... (scroll down to December 12th, 2007) ...

Jesus Paulhanke, that simulation you made really blows my mind!
How long did you run the simulation to get this result?
Have you tried to continue?

... it blows my mind, too ... it doesn't take long before the growing cell-like structures first appear - maybe 5 minutes at most ... unfortunately, there is no feedback to control the growth - eventually, all of the cell-like structures merge into a single cell that encompasses the whole grid ... I think this would be akin to one of the multitude of false-starts I feel certain there were in the history of life on earth ...

Yes, i understand.
Do you see a chance for me of running this modified software on my computer? I'm really excited about it.

(Oh, by the way... i was surprised to see some kind of terminology used by R. Sheldrake.
You can imagine that i am more than curious about that...)

His idea of 'morphic resonance' is that nature has habits; crystals could form in millions of potential ways, but once having formed once in a certain way, they tend to do so again. They do this through morphogenetic fields.

I think this is straying from this particular thread somewhat. I have posted a response to that observation (which is really pretty important) back at your blog.

I have thought throughout this dialog that the tendency of living or even proto-living systems to spontaneously form and develop must be due to an underlying form. I found the following passage describing Plotinus' interpretation of the nature of the Forms and how they engender living forms, which seems peculiarly appropriate:

"The world of Forms is animated by a single Life: a constant movement which engenders the different forms. It is like a single organism, which finds its raison d'etre within itself, and differentiates itself into living parts. The Forms become complex and subdivide from the original Plant to the different kinds of plants, and from the original Animal to various kinds of animals. Each Form develops that which it implies: the form "human" requires reason, but also feet and fingers.... Each form, that is to say, wills itself to be complete and perfect in its own way, according to its own theme. The World of Forms does not carry a program or plan above and beyond itself. It is...'a melody that sings itself'. It is an immediate wisdom, "which is not acquired by calculations, since it has always been present as a whole; because it lacks nothing, it does not need to be sought after. (comment: this implies the 'plenitude' of The One.) This wisdom does not need to be constructed out of theorems; it is complete, and it is a unity,....it does not derive from anything else, nor is it in anything else....

"Life is, for [Plotinus], is a formative, simple and immediate activity, irreducible to all our analyses. It is a totality present all at once, within itself; a Form which forms itself'. (my emphasis and comment).

Not bad, for first century AD, eh?

From Plotinus: or The Simplicity of Vision; by Pierre Hadot; University of Chicago Press, Pp 40-41.

It is...'a melody that sings itself'.