EC Theory — “in Theory”

We present a personal overview of EC theory. In particular, we try to show that recent theoretical developments have pointed the way to a grand unification of different branches of EC, such as Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming, and also different theoretical models, such as the Vose model and Holland’s Schema theorem. We give a broad outline of this unification program showing how the different elements above are related to each other via changes of representation on the space of EC models. Based on our work we pose a series of challenges which if met, we believe, will lead to a much deeper understanding of EC and the various types of evolutionary algorithm.