Self-replicating automata

J. vonNeumann, in Theory of Self-Replicating Automata, A. Burks, ed. University of Illinois... 

What matters is that the genotype - the biological software - is a deposit of instructions and therefore is potentially capable of carrying the project of embryonic development. This was the long-awaited answer to vitalism, and the computer became therefore the new model of mechanism. In reality, the new model of a living machine is not the computer that we encounter in our daily life, but an ideal machine known as von Neumann s self-replicating automaton. 

Cellular automata are abstract discrete dynamical systems introduced by Von Neumann in an attempt to model self-replication in biological systems [11]. A cellular automaton consists of a set of nodes, usually arranged on a regular lattice, each of which supports state variables that take on a finite number of possible values. The state variables are synchronously updated at discrete... 

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