Q3: Who is concerned with EAs?

     EVOLUTIONARY  COMPUTATION  attracts  researchers  and people of quite
     dissimilar disciplines, i.e.   EC  is  a  interdisciplinary  research
     field:

 Computer scientists
     Want  to  find  out  about the properties of sub-symbolic information
     processing with EAs and about learning,  i.e.   adaptive  systems  in
     general.

     They   also  build  the  hardware  necessary  to  enable  future  EAs
     (precursors are already beginning  to  emerge)  to  huge  real  world
     problems,  i.e. the term "massively parallel computation" [HILLIS92],
     springs to mind.

 Engineers
     Of many kinds want to exploit the capabilities of EAs on  many  areas
     to solve their application, esp.  OPTIMIZATION problems.

 Roboticists
     Want  to  build  MOBOTs (MOBile ROBOTs, i.e. R2D2's and #5's cousins)
     that navigate through uncertain ENVIRONMENTs, without using  built-in
     "maps".   The  MOBOTS  thus  have to adapt to their surroundings, and
     learn what they can do "move-through-door" and what they can't "move-
     through-wall" on their own by "trial-and-error".

 Cognitive scientists
     Might view CFS as a possible apparatus to describe models of thinking
     and cognitive systems.
 Physicists
     Use EC hardware, e.g. Hillis' (Thinking Machine  Corp.'s)  Connection
     Machine  to  model  real  world  problems  which include thousands of
     variables, that run "naturally" in parallel, and thus can be modelled
     more  easily  and  esp.   "faster"  on  a parallel machine, than on a
     serial "PC" one.

 Biologists
     In fact many working biologists  are  hostile  to  modeling,  but  an
     entire   community   of   Population   Biologists   arose   with  the
     'evolutionary synthesis' of the 1930's created by the polymaths  R.A.
     Fisher,  J.B.S.  Haldane, and S. Wright.  Wright's SELECTION in small
     POPULATIONs, thereby avoiding local optima) is of current interest to
     both biologists and ECers -- populations are naturally parallel.

     A  good  exposition  of  current  POPULATION  Biology  modeling is J.
     Maynard Smith's text Evolutionary Genetics.  Richard Dawkin's Selfish
     Gene and Extended Phenotype are unparalleled (sic!) prose expositions
     of  evolutionary  processes.   Rob  Collins'  papers  are   excellent
     parallel  GA  models of evolutionary processes (available in [ICGA91]
     and by FTP from ftp.cognet.ucla.edu:/pub/alife/papers/ ).

     As fundamental motivation, consider Fisher's comment:  "No  practical
     biologist  interested  in  (e.g.) sexual REPRODUCTION would be led to
     work out the detailed consequences experienced  by  organisms  having
     three  or more sexes; yet what else should [s/]he do if [s/]he wishes
     to understand why the sexes are, in fact, always two?"  (Three  sexes
     would make for even weirder grammar, [s/]he said...)

 Philosophers
     and some other really curious people may also be interested in EC for
     various reasons.