The NATO workshop on Disordered Systems and Biological Organization was attended, in march 1985, by 65 scientists representing a large variety of fields: Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics and Biology. It was the purpose of this interdisciplinary workshop to shed light on the conceptual connections existing between fields of research apparently as different as: automata theory, combinatorial optimization, spin glasses and modeling of biological systems, all of them concerned with the global organization of complex systems, locally interconnected. Common to many contributions to this volume is the underlying analogy between biological systems and spin glasses: they share the same properties of stability and diversity. This is the case for instance of primary sequences of biopo Iymers I ike proteins and nucleic acids considered as the result of mutation-selection processes [P. W. Anderson, 1983] or of evolving biological species [G. Weisbuch, 1984]. Some of the most striking aspects of our cognitive apparatus, involved In learning and recognttlon [J. Hopfield, 19821, can also be described in terms of stability and diversity in a suitable configuration space. These interpretations and preoccupations merge with those of theoretical biologists like S. Kauffman [1969] (genetic networks) and of mathematicians of automata theory: the dynamics of networks of automata can be interpreted in terms of organization of a system in multiple possible attractors. The present introduction outlInes the relationships between the contributions presented at the workshop and brIefly discusses each paper in its particular scientific context.

This workshop brought together several distinguished researchers who represented different lines of research. The following were discussed: A general mathematical theory of the complexity of neural network models (seen as a particular case of automata networks), the relevance of automata networks to theoretical biology, the statistical mechanical approach to neural networks, multilayer and back-propagation models in artificial intelligence, the complexity of real neural networks, the relevance of ultrametricity (a concept arisen in spin glass theory), statistical mechanical models of the origin of life and a dynamical model exhibiting a new route to chaos.

The idea of evolving machines, whose origins can be traced to the cybernetics movementofthe1940sand1950s,hasrecentlyresurgedintheformofthenascent ?eld of bio-inspired systems and evolvable hardware. The inaugural workshop, Towards Evolvable Hardware, took place in Lausanne in October 1995, followed by the First International Conference on Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware (ICES), held in Tsukuba, Japan in October 1996. The second ICES conference was held in Lausanne in September 1998, with the third and fourth being held in Edinburgh, April 2000 and Tokyo, October 2001 respectively. This has become the leading conference in the ?eld of evolvable systems and the 2003 conference promised to be at least as good as, if not better than, the four that preceeded it. The ?fth international conference was built on the success of its predec- sors, aiming at presenting the latest developments in the ?eld. In addition, it brought together researchers who use biologically inspired concepts to imp- ment real systems in arti?cial intelligence, arti?cial life, robotics, VLSI design and related domains. We would say that this ?fth conference followed on from the previous four in that it consisted of a number of high-quality interesting thought-provoking papers.

This book discusses the emergence of life, the development of the individual, and the study of the interaction between individuals and species. It gives the student of theoretical biology some idea of the flavor of current research in the field.

les Houches This Winter School on "The Physics and Fabrication of Microstructures" originated with a European industrial decision to investigate in some detail the potential of custom-designed microstructures for new devices. Beginning in 1985, GEC and THOMSON started a collaboration on these subjects, supported by an ESPRIT grant from the Commission of the European Com munity. To the outside observer of the whole field, it appears clear that the world effort is very largely based in the United States and Japan. It also appears that cooperation and dissemination of results are very well organised outside Europe and act as a major influence on the development of new concepts and devices. In Japan, a main research programme of the Research and Development for Basic Technology for Future Industries is focused on "Future Electron Devices". In Japan and in the United States, many workshops are organised annually in order to bring together the major specialists in industry and academia, allowing fast dissemination of advances and contacts for setting up cooperative efforts.

This book contains a detailed and self-contained presentation of the replica theory of infinite range spin glasses. The authors also explain recent theoretical developments, paying particular attention to new applications in the study of optimization theory and neural networks. About two-thirds of the book are a collection of the most interesting and pedagogical articles on the subject.

This book has emerged from a meeting held during the week of May 29 to June 2, 1989, at St. John’s College in Santa Fe under the auspices of the Santa Fe Institute. The (approximately 40) official participants as well as equally numerous “groupies” were enticed to Santa Fe by the above “manifesto.” The book—like the “Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information” meeting explores not only the connections between quantum and classical physics, information and its transfer, computation, and their significance for the formulation of physical theories, but it also considers the origins and evolution of the information-processing entities, their complexity, and the manner in which they analyze their perceptions to form models of the Universe. As a result, the contributions can be divided into distinct sections only with some difficulty. Indeed, I regard this degree of overlapping as a measure of the success of the meeting. It signifies consensus about the important questions and on the anticipated answers: they presumably lie somewhere in the “border territory,” where information, physics, complexity, quantum, and computation all meet.