From Peter Reynolds
Rodney Brooks suggests that mathematics needs some “new stuff” to breathe life into robots (1 June, p 46). Just suppose for a minute that the fundamental phenomenon underlying life itself is emergence. That is to say that “life” itself is a continual dynamic process of emergence. Such a quality could never be predicted or programmed.
That isn’t to say that robots could not discover it for themselves by accident. But the real question is: how would they recognise such emergence when they saw it? And how or why would they harness it?
Ilford, Essex
