Sub-Symbolic Artificial Chemistries

Abstract

We wish to use Artificial Chemistries to build and investigate open-ended systems. As such, we wish to minimise the number of explicit rules and properties needed. We describe here the concept of sub-symbolic Artificial Chemistries (ssAChems), where reaction properties are emergent properties of the internal structure and dynamics of the component particles. We define the components of a ssAChem, and illustrate it with two examples: RBN-world, where the particles are Random Boolean Networks, the emergent properties come from the dynamics on an attractor cycle, and composition is through rewiring the components to form a larger RBN; and SMAC, where the particles are Hermitian matrices, the emergent properties are eigenvalues and eigenvectors, and composition is through the non-associative Jordan product. We conclude with some ssAChem design guidelines.