Chapter category: Nanomedicine

CHAPTER 2 Classical Theory of Machine Replication

This chapter appears in the following book:

Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines

Edited by: Robert A. Freitas, Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle
ISBN: 1-57059-690-5
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Chapter authors:
Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle

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The early history of machine replication theory is largely the record of von Neumann’s thinking on the matter during the 1940s and 1950s, particularly his kinematic and cellular models, described below. Von Neumann did not finish or publish most of his work on this subject prior to his untimely death in 1957, but Arthur Burks, a colleague of von Neumann, extensively edited and completed many of von Neumann’s manuscripts on the subject. Automata theory has advanced and been refined in the decades since, with many alternative models of machine replication having been proposed and discussed as will be described later. By 1980, a detailed technical study co-edited by Freitas2 concluded that “there appear to be no fundamental inconsistencies or insoluble paradoxes associated with the concept of self-replicating machines.” Physics professor Jeremy Bernstein concurred:1040 “I believe, on the basis of the history of technology, that human nature is such that whatever can be constructed, in theory, will, eventually, be constructed. Since self-replicating automata are possible in principle, they will, I think, eventually be built. When, by whom, and what for, I do not have the foggiest idea.”

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Additional chapters from this book:

APPENDIX B Design Notes on Some Aspects of the Merkle Freitas Molecular Assembler