Editing Darwin machine

A '''Darwin machine''' (a 1987 coinage by [[William H. Calvin]], by [[analogy]] to a [[Turing machine]]) is a machine that, like a Turing machine, involves an [[iteration]] process that yields a high-quality result, but, whereas a Turing machine uses [[logic]], the Darwin machine uses rounds of variation, [[Selection (biology)|selection]], and [[inheritance]].
 
In its original connotation, a Darwin machine is any process that [[Bootstrapping|bootstrap]]s quality by using all of the six essential features of a Darwinian process:  A ''pattern'' is ''copied'' with ''variations'', where populations of one variant pattern ''compete'' with another population, their relative success biased by a ''multifaceted environment'' ([[natural selection]]) so that winners predominate in producing the further variants of the next generation (Darwin's ''inheritance principle'').

More loosely, a Darwin machine is a process that uses some subset of the Darwinian essentials, typically [[natural selection]] to create a non-reproducing pattern, as in [[neural Darwinism]]. Many aspects of [[neural development]] use overgrowth followed by pruning to a pattern, but the resulting pattern does not itself create further copies.

''Darwin machine'' has been used multiple times to name computer programs after [[Charles Darwin]].

==See also==
* [[Artificial life]]
* [[Artificial intelligence]]
*"[[Darwin among the Machines]]"
* [[Evolutionary computation]]
* [[Evolutionary algorithm]]
* [[Genetic algorithm]]
* [[Universal Darwinism]]

==References and external links==

* [[William H. Calvin]] (1987), [http://www.williamcalvin.com/1980s/1987Nature.htm "The brain as a Darwin Machine"], ''Nature'' 330:33-34.
* [[William H. Calvin]] (1997) [http://www.williamcalvin.com/1990s/1997JMemetics.htm "The Six Essentials?] Minimal Requirements for the Darwinian Bootstrapping of Quality,"  ''Journal of Memetics'' 1:1.
* [[George Dyson (science historian)|George B. Dyson]] (1998), ''Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence'' (Perseus 1997)(1998) {{ISBN|0-7382-0030-1}}.
* J. M. Manier (1996), ''Reason and Instinct (Robert Wright's The Moral Animal and Henry Plotkin's Darwin, Machines and the Nature of Knowledge)''. THEORY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 6 (2): 347–348. ISSN 0959-3543
* Henry Plotkin (1994), ''Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge'' (Harvard University Press. {{ISBN|0-674-19280-X}} 
* Henry Plotkin & Nicholas S. Thompson (1995), ''Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge''. ''Contemporary Psychology''. 40 (12), 1179.
* E. A. Smith (1995), ''Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge (Henry C. Plotkin)''. ''Politics and the Life Sciences : the Journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences''. 14 (2), 296. ISSN 0730-9384

[[Category:History of artificial intelligence]]
[[Category:Cybernetics]]
[[Category:Emergence]]
[[Category:Evolution]]


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