Further reading

Major inspirations were Daniel Dennett’s “Elbow Room”. Douglas Hofstader’s “Godel Escher Bach”, and James Gleik’s “Chaos”.

For more on the philosophy of mind, start with Gilbert Ryle’s (1949) “The Concept of Mind”. Roy Porter’s “Flesh in the Age of Reason” is a great historical account of how modern ideas about the mind developed.

Unlike me, Kevin Mitchell thinks physical determinacy undermines free will, but here he argues why mental content - beliefs, thoughts, etc - has a causal role even in a physical system (i.e. our brains): Does Neuroscience Leave Room for Free Will?

For more on cellular automata and Rule 30 see:

• Explorable on cellular automata from @spaciecat
• Devin Acker’s Simple 1D Wolfram cellular automaton using HTML5/JS
• Stephen Wolfram’s blog about the design of Cambridge Train Station
• Lucas Oman’s cellular automata demo
• Fabienne “fbz” Serrière makes computational knitwear

Also recommended

• Greene & Cohen (2004). For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything.

Victorian Science

• Stanley, Matthew. “The Pointsman: Maxwell’s Demon, Victorian Free Will, and the Boundaries of Science.” Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no. 3 (2008): 467-91.
• Reed, J. R. (1989). Victorian will.
• Ifill, H. (2018). Creating character: Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction. Oxford University Press.

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