Delaney/Helmreich 9312292 The investigator willconduct ethnographic research among a group of scientists who work in the discipline of artificial life, a field dedicated to the computer modeling and simulation of biological systems. The study will investigate the practical ways in which artificial life scientists - a multidisciplinary set of biologist, computer scientists, economists, and physicists - put together their models of living systems. The investigator will be particularly concerned to understand how conceptions of gender, kinship, class, nation, race, economy, history, and cosmology/religion might influence people's computational models of biological phenomena. Research will be undertaken at the Santa Fe Institute for the Sciences of Complexity in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a center for artificial life research. Interviews, participant observation, and archival work will be the primary research methods. The study will build on insights developed in the literature on the ethnography of scientific culture. Taking methodological and theoretical cues from recent breakthroughs in the field, the project will attempt to understand how the content of artificial life work is inflected by the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts within which artificial life scientists work. The dissertation resulting from the research will extend the insights of anthropological studies of science to a discipline concerned with both analytic and synthetic methods. It will also contribute to new work on the ethnography of transnational communities. In addition, it will add a socio-cultural perspective to deba tes about the applications, ethical implications, and future of artificial life. *** Louttit ` ` h h # ( Acting Director, Division of ` ` h h # ( Social, Behavioral, and Economic ` ` h h # ( Research Enclosures Copy to: Peggy Williams ` ` Contract and Grant Associate p p 2 7 h) 0*0*0* E G 2 4 @ B G ! ! ! F G G E Times New Roman Symbol & Arial 1 Pres Elite 5 Courier New " h g delaney abstract abstract"delaney helmreich overman abstract Raymond Hames Raymond Hames
