A distributed hierarchical evolutionary modeling and visualization of empirical data method and machine readable storage medium for creating an empirical modeling system based upon previously acquired data. The data represents inputs to the systems and corresponding outputs from the system. The method and machine readable storage medium utilize an entropy function based upon information theory and the principles of thermodynamics to accurately predict system outputs from subsequently acquired inputs. The method and machine readable storage medium identify the most information-rich (i.e., optimum) representation of a data set in order to reveal the underlying order, or structure, of what appears to be a disordered system. Evolutionary programming is one method utilized for identifying the optimum representation of data.