Abstract
"Evolvable" robots invented by a team of computer scientists from Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, headlined the popular media last summer. According to the press, these machines were capable of developing, on their own, new and better machines, thus mimicking, in the laboratory , the evolutionary process biologists ascribe to nature. Reporters heralded the work as a key achievement in the area of artificial life, also citing is as powerful supporting evidence for natural-process evolution.