Right. It's called artificial life, or a-life.

Artificial life is a new field of scientific inquiry that studies biology by attempting to synthesize such biological phenomena as life, evolution, and ecological dynamics within computers and other "artificial" media. In addition to uncovering new ways to study life as we know it, a-life extends research to the larger domain of life as it could be, whatever it might be made of and wherever it might be found in the universe.This proceedings volume, based on the second artificial life workshop held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1990, reflects the evolution and horizons of this rich field of study, and builds on the proceedings of the seminal first workshop, held at Los Alamos in 1987 (also available from Addison Wesley). This compendium includes more than 30 papers spanning the spectrum of a-life research, from studies of the origin of life to models of complex systems. -- source

Research in this area has been going on for over 20 years.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

I apologise for resurecting this thread, but this paper is a good example of the kind of idea I was trying to float, for anyone who was still wondering what i was going on about! It describes a prebiotic system with natural selection and mutation without replication.

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For me it's enough for the garden to be beautifull; why do so many want to see fairies at the bottom?

"Many of those people are not getting four when adding two and two; many of them aren't even getting five or twenty-two. They're getting potato."
Gillianren

ARGH have to sign in to read it!

'fraid the best i can do is point you towards the new scientist article.

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For me it's enough for the garden to be beautifull; why do so many want to see fairies at the bottom?

"Many of those people are not getting four when adding two and two; many of them aren't even getting five or twenty-two. They're getting potato."
Gillianren

Ahhh thank you... We're friends again now...

Thread necromancy I know, but here's another development on the a-life front.

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For me it's enough for the garden to be beautifull; why do so many want to see fairies at the bottom?

"Many of those people are not getting four when adding two and two; many of them aren't even getting five or twenty-two. They're getting potato."
Gillianren