A unification of the prevalent views on exploitation, exploration, intensification and diversification

Terms such as exploitation, exploration, intensification and diversification are routinely employed in the metaheuristic literature to explain empirical runtime performance. Six prevalent views on exploitation and exploration are identified in the literature, each expressing a different aspect of these notions. The consistency and meaningfulness of these views are substantiated by their deducibility from the proposed novel definitions of exploitation and exploration, based on the hypothetical construct of a probable fitness landscape. This unifies, and thereby clarifies, the terminology and understanding of metaheuristics.