Throughout the natural world and our human-designed
world, design and evolution seem to go hand-in-hand. Some
of the most astonishing and complex designs known to humankind—the
embryogeny process, the immune system, the brain, the very
structure of DNA—are products of natural evolution,
not human endeavor. In addition, the progress of our own
designs seems evolutionary, as the best concepts from existing
designs are combined with some small variation to produce
the next generation of cars, computers, and indeed, most
types of human design. And now, as the papers in this and
subsequent special issues will show, our computers are
allowing us to harness the power of evolution directly,
to aid the design process.
Overview of a Special Issue on “Geotectonic Evolution of the Japanese Islands under New Paradigms of the Next Generation (Part I-III)”
