Evolutionary computation

Article By:

Fogel, David B Natural Selection, Inc., La Jolla, California.

Last reviewed:March 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.757683

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• Evolutionary computation, published June 2020:Download PDF Get Adobe Acrobat Reader

An interdisciplinary science area that is concerned with modeling aspects of natural evolution in order to solve real-world problems of optimization. Living organisms, as well as those that are long extinct, demonstrate optimized complex behavior at all levels: cells, organs, individuals, and populations. The English naturalist Charles Darwin wrote of “organs of extreme perfection” when describing the ability of evolution to craft ingenious solutions to complex problems such as vision. Evolution is the great unifying principle of biology, but it extends beyond biology and can be used as an engineering principle where individuals in a population of candidate solutions to some particular problem undergo random variation (mutation and recombination) and face competition and selection based on their appropriateness for the task at hand. See also: Biology; Evolution; Mutation; Recombination (genetics)

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