This volume discusses the foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? and How does nature compute?

Nature has long provided the inspiration for a variety of scientific discoveries in engineering, biomedicine, and computing, though only recently have these elements of nature been used directly in computational systems. Natural Computing for Simulation and Knowledge Discovery investigates the latest developments in nature-influenced technologies. Within its pages, readers will find an in-depth analysis of such advances as cryptographic solutions based on cell division, the creation and manipulation of biological computers, and particle swarm optimization techniques. Scientists, practitioners, and students in fields such as computing, mathematics, and molecular science will make use of this essential reference to explore current trends in natural computation and advance nature-inspired technologies to the next generation.

Bringing together an exciting group of knowledge workers, scholars and activists from across fields, this book revisits a foundational question of the Enlightenment: what is “the last or furthest end of knowledge”? It is a book about why we do what we do, and how we might know when we are done. In the reorganization of knowledge that characterized the Enlightenment, disciplines were conceived as having particular “ends,” both in terms of purposes and end-points. As we experience an ongoing shift to the knowledge economy of the Information Age, this collection asks whether we still conceptualize knowledge in this way. Does an individual discipline have both an inherent purpose and a natural endpoint? What do an experiment on a fruit fly, a reading of a poem, and the writing of a line of code have in common? Focusing on areas as diverse as AI; biology; Black studies; literary studies; physics; political activism; and the concept of disciplinarity itself, contributors uncover a life after disciplinarity for subjects that face immediate threats to the structure if not the substance of their contributions. These essays – whether reflective, historical, eulogistic, or polemical – chart a vital and necessary course towards the reorganization of knowledge production as a whole.

This work presents a series of dramatic discoveries never before made public. Starting from a collection of simple computer experiments---illustrated in the book by striking computer graphics---Wolfram shows how their unexpected results force a whole new way of looking at the operation of our universe. Wolfram uses his approach to tackle a remarkable array of fundamental problems in science: from the origin of the Second Law of thermodynamics, to the development of complexity in biology, the computational limitations of mathematics, the possibility of a truly fundamental theory of physics, and the interplay between free will and determinism.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science held in Pec pod Sněžkou, Czech Republic, during January 24-29, 2015. The book features 8 invited talks and 42 regular papers which were carefully reviewed and selected from 101 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named: foundations of computer science; software and Web engineering; data, information, and knowledge engineering; and cryptography, security, and verification.

This book questions the relevance of computation to the physical universe. Our theories deliver computational descriptions, but the gaps and discontinuities in our grasp suggest a need for continued discourse between researchers from different disciplines, and this book is unique in its focus on the mathematical theory of incomputability and its relevance for the real world. The core of the book consists of thirteen chapters in five parts on extended models of computation; the search for natural examples of incomputable objects; mind, matter, and computation; the nature of information, complexity, and randomness; and the mathematics of emergence and morphogenesis. This book will be of interest to researchers in the areas of theoretical computer science, mathematical logic, and philosophy.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th Conference on Computability in Europe, CiE 2017, held in Turku, Finland, in June 2017. The 24 revised full papers and 12 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The conference CiE 2016 has six special sessions, namly: algorithmics for biology; combinatorics and algorithmics on words; computability in analysis, algebra, and geometry; cryptography and information theory; formal languages and automata theory; and history and philosophy of computing.