This topic follows a similar path as artificial intelligence. Please check the EME 6051 Home Page for information and assigned reading. What follows is excerpts from books and journal articles regarding artificial life, genetic algorithms, and self-organizing systems.
Artificial life is a branch of Artificial intelligence.
Just as medical scientists have managed to tinker with life's mechanisms in vitro, the biologists and computer scientists of a-life hope to create life in silico. While some a-life is in reality more a simulation of processes rather than a living thing created artificially it can be a method of researching and understanding complex systems. Living systems epitomize complexity, so much so that some scientists now see complexity as a defining characteristic of life. This ties in to evolution. GAs use the tools of natural selection and genetics.