Understanding evolution as a collective strategy for groping in the dark

Abstract

On the one hand side many people admire the often strikingly efficient results of organic evolution. On the other hand side, however, they presuppose mutation and selection to be a rather prodigal and unefficient trial-and-error strategy. Taking into account the parallel processing of a heterogeneous population and sexual propagation with recombination as well as the endogenous adaptation of strategy characteristics, simulated evolution reveals a couple of interesting, sometimes surprising, properties of nature's learning-by-doing algorithm. ‘Survival of the fittest’, often taken as Darwin's view, turns out to be a bad advice. Individual death, forgetting, and even regression show up to be necessary ingredients of the life game. Whether the process should be named gradualistic or punctualistic, is a matter of the observer's point of view. He even may observe ‘long waves’.