Dialectical Cellular Automata

Kovas Boguta

Wolfram Research

Abstract

Computational processes provide natural “hooks” for linking up into computational ecologies. Dialectical cellular automata are a minimal model of complex interacting processes, where emergent behavior can be seen both at the scale of the individual process and at the scale of the overall ecology. They are sufficiently simple to be amenable to enumerative methods, allowing for characterizations of the space of all possible relationships. The structure of this space is presented, together with methods of analysis and connections to a range of potential applications.