abstract = "The uninitiated may find it strange that artificial
evolution resides among a class of problem solving
methods belonging to a field called computational
intelligence. Some people still believe that nature's
trial-and-error way to adapt subsystems to their
environment is a prodigal game at dice that has led to
admirable results only due to vast resources of time
and space. A rather simple gedanken experiment,
however, reveals that all 10/sup 80/ most elementary
particles in the universe together with 10/sup 80/
tiniest time steps since the beginning of time cannot
explain the development of even simplest bacterial
genomes by pure random sampling. Organic evolution must
have found a more efficient way to develop clever
individuals and manage complex systems. Since about
forty years now, a couple of scientists have tried to
mimic this process, and they have learned to exploit
some tricks of life for solving an amazing variety of
design and management tasks. The paper tries to give an
overview of some applications as well as a summary of
what we know about the general behaviour of
evolutionary algorithms.",