Fatima Moukaideche

Bio [2005]
Fatima Moukaideche was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan on October 29, 1983. She graduated from high school in Rouen, where she concentrated in economics and social sciences. She then went to study in Paris at the University Paris-IV Sorbonne, where she studied the history of philosophy, general philosophy, logic, and epistemology. She is especially interested by the intuition and the new methodology of research suggested by NKS, and cellular automata (AC in French) in particular.

Project Title
Epistemology and Cellular Automata

Project

In patterns exhibited by CAs, some evolutions could be considered complex, and others could be considered as not complex. The question being: why is that? Is it a question of perception? Or is it another thing? Moukaideche attempted to give an answer to that question citing an American philosopher and logician: Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000). In his opinion, it is necessary to have both "experiments" (equivalent to observational data) along with the perception of these experiments (equivalent to observational statement) to have real understanding. So, what we will discuss is how to make statements about the pattern of CAs and what language should be used.

Favorite Four-Color, Nearest-Neighbor, Totalistic Rule

Rule chosen: 994590

I chose the rule 994590 because it exhibits rich and interesting structures. Indeed, on the two borders of the pattern, we can see some nested structures, very complicated. These structures are nested triangles one within another. They remind us of the rough structures of the fractals of Benoît Mandelbrot. Therefore we can observe areas without cells. They can be identified with internal structures. The white color in the center of the picture shows that they are dying. They die out gently and finish with a sort of "auto-destruction."