::" We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers ... At this point the reader will expect to find a careful and precise definition of consciousness.

Stanisław Lem has also studied the same idea in his novel The Invincible ( 1964 ), in which the crew of a spacecraft landing on a distant planet finds non-biological life-form, which is the product of long, possibly of millions of years of mechanical evolution.

Stanisław Lem has also studied the same idea in his novel The Invincible ( 1964 ), in which the crew of a spacecraft landing on a distant planet finds a non-biological life-form, which is the product of long, possibly of millions of years of, mechanical evolution.

This forms an analogy to the idea of a gene as a single unit of self-replicating information found on the self-replicating chromosome.

The idea of self-replicating spacecraft has been applied — in theory — to several distinct " tasks ".

In his short story, " Lungfish " ( see Examples in fiction below ), David Brin touches on this idea, pointing out that self-replicating machines launched by different species might actually compete with one another ( in a Darwinistic fashion ) for raw material, or even have conflicting missions.

Before the idea of heralds, Galactus created a self-replicating program that sought out planets for him.

The idea of an automated spacecraft capable of constructing copies of itself was first proposed in scientific literature in 1974 by Michael A. Arbib, but the concept had appeared earlier in science fiction such as the 1967 novel Berserker by Fred Saberhagen or the 1950 novellette trilogy The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. van Vogt ( see self-replicating machines in fiction, below ).

Van Vogt was always interested in the idea of all-encompassing systems of knowledge ( akin to modern meta-systems ) -- the characters in his very first story used a system called ' Nexialism ' to analyze the alien's behaviour, and he became interested in the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski.

The idea that alternative mathematical systems might exist was very troubling to mathematicians of the 19th century and the developers of systems such as Boolean algebra made elaborate efforts to derive them from traditional arithmetic.

Leopold believed that harm was frequently done to natural systems out of a sense of ownership and this idea eclipsed community.

Russian physicist Lev Landau used the idea for the Fermi liquid theory wherein low energy properties of interacting fermion systems were given in terms of what are now known as Landau-quasiparticles.

High-end systems introduced the idea of channel controllers, which were essentially small computers dedicated to handing the input and output of a given bus.

The modern idea of citizenship still respects the idea of political participation, but it is usually done through " elaborate systems of political representation at a distance " such as representative democracy.

This idea has been generalized by Sinai, Bowen, and Ruelle ( SRB ) to a larger class of dynamical systems that includes dissipative systems.

Although several versions of many-worlds have been proposed since Hugh Everett's original work, they all contain one key idea: the equations of physics that model the time evolution of systems without embedded observers are sufficient for modelling systems which do contain observers ; in particular there is no observation-triggered wave function collapse which the Copenhagen interpretation proposes.

It also has a hacker ethic, based on the idea that writing software and sharing the result on a voluntary basis is a good idea, and that information should be free, but that it's not up to the hacker to make it free by breaking into private computer systems.

The writer David Hatcher Childress authored Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth ( 1998 ) in which he reprinted the stories of Palmer and defended the hollow earth idea based on alleged tunnel systems beneath South America and central Asia.

With the advent of the PC, the idea was to invoke central systems only when absolutely unavoidable, and to do all application processing with local software on the personal computer.

The idea of magic in Mage is broadly inclusive of diverse ideas about mystical practices as well as other belief systems, such as science and religion, so that most mages do not resemble typical fantasy wizards.

Herschel conceived the idea that stars were initially scattered across space, but later became clustered together as star systems because of gravitational attraction.

Nevertheless, these belief systems may retain an idea of God's decision eternally determining the present or future, in the sense of God's decision being logically prior, or " transcendentally necessary " to all existence.

Ignorant of the idea that console systems ' primary strength is in standardization, Sega had created three different platforms ( the Sega Mega Drive, and the Mega-CD / Sega CD and the 32X add-ons ) all under the same banner, stealing valuable shelf space from itself and confusing both vendors and consumers in the process.

While many of the root meanings for the idea of a " general systems theory " might have been lost in the translation and many were led to believe that the systems theorists had articulated nothing but a pseudoscience, systems theory became a nomenclature that early investigators used to describe the interdependence of relationships in organization by defining a new way of thinking about science and scientific paradigms.

`` It was Brenner's idea '', Jess mumbled, dabbing at his nose.

He had no idea which was up and which was down.

Beyond the two basic tasks mentioned above, no attention was paid by statesman or scholar to an idea of state responsibility, either internally or externally.

Despite the clarity of his presentation, his idea was not of Einsteinian calibre.

To get an idea of the embarrassment and chagrin that was heaped upon Wright and Olgivanna, we should bear in mind that the raids were sometimes led by Miriam in person.

Apparently still sensitive about the idea with which General Gates had approached him at Saratoga, namely, that George Washington be replaced, Morgan was vehement in his support of the commander-in-chief during the campaign around Philadelphia.

Their policy ran counter to the traditional idea that a good fighter was usually a libertine, and that in sex affairs `` God-given passion '' was a proof of manliness.

Yet, the idea imbedded in each was identical: to surround the unknown with mystery and to isolate that class which had been given special dominion over the secrets of God.

The idea was not even suggested because political expediency prevailed over wisdom.

He had no idea where he was.

He realized that he had no idea where the telephone was.

Although Mr. Brown was not himself its inventor ( it was a French idea ), it is typical that his intuition first conceived the importance of mass producing this basic tool for general use.

While Mr. Blatz was putting up the pegboards and starting the workbench, Mr. Crombie told him of this idea about paneling the whole end of the cellar.

Instructions to relax, i.e., to be `` spontaneous '', and react immediately to whatever impulse they might have, was not sufficiently reassuring until some idea of the possibilities of normal reactions had been given.

By this time Churchill was not so cordial toward moving Poland westward as he had been at Teheran, where he and Eden had both heartily approved the idea.

The dated poems also give us an idea of the degree to which Hardy drew upon past productions for his various volumes, and therefore probably are an indication of the amount of poetry he was writing at the time.

For weeks he had been saying that Hudson's idea of sailing through to Java was absurd.

And it was Lucy Upton who first started the idea of a regular course in Music at Spelman College.

That, incidentally, might give you some idea of what Felix was like.

Well, it hadn't been what it seemed, he'd had no idea the girl was in there.

This was senseless -- he had no idea what to look for.

`` I'll get my references in order '', Needham said, and though he spoke with a smile, Casey somehow got the idea that he was not particularly amused.