Fuzziness in evolutionary biology

The core of soft computing consists of fuzzy sets and systems (FSS) computing with words (CW) and the computational theory of perceptions (CTP). In the introduction of this paper we give a brief presentation of that subject. The second section of the paper focuses on a general view on fuzziness in evolutionary biology. The view on evolutionary biology is a meta-scientific reflection: The theory of FSS complemented by CW and CTP builds a stack of methodologies to help bridge the gap between systems and phenomena in the real world and scientific theories. Lotfi A. Zadeh established the theory of FSS to bridging this gap in the 1960s when he compared living systems that are very complex and man-made systems e.g. in electrical engineering. We use Zadeh's stack of soft computing methodologies in this tradition to reflect the field of evolutionary biology in the view of the evolutionary biologist, historian and philosopher of biology Ernst Mayr who emphasized that most theories in biology are based not on laws but on concepts.