In this chapter we consider two-dimensional cellular automatons, especially John Conway’s Game of Life (GoL). Like some of the 1-D CAs in the previous chapter, GoL follows simple rules and produces surprisingly complicated behavior. And like Wolfram’s Rule 110, GoL turns out to be universal; that is, it can compute any computable function, at least in theory.
Complex behavior in GoL raises issues in the philosophy of science, particularly related to scientific realism and instrumentalism. I discuss these issues and suggest additional reading.
At the end of the chapter, I demonstrate ways to implement GoL efficiently in Python.