Isn't, under this mode of thought, the GA system /itself/ imbued with
spirit at the time of creation by the programmer and, as such, in the
grander sense, this a case of a creation imbued with spirit creating
things imbued with (perhaps lesser) spiritas? (Maybe "spirit" is the
wrong word here; I'm tempted to dip into my classical roots and
suggest "aura" or "numinus" or "spiratus.")
GA's don't really "hunt" for an efficent algorithm, after all; they
breed for one, which is an entirely different process, really. "Hunt"
implies a search through a pre-existing pile of entities; unless you
take the state-space of all possible algorithms as the "pre-existing"
bit, then all its really doing is putting a few together and seeing if
they `feel right' and if so, making more that `feel like' them and
refining it. Much like someone writing music is `feeling' through the
state-space of all possible notes with all possible lengths.