(cybernetics) The ordered set of intermediate states assumed by a dynamical system as a result of time evolution.
Metaphorically, a course of development, such as that of a war or career.
2013-03, w, The Smallest Cell, It is likely that the long evolutionary trajectory of Mycoplasma went from a reductive autotroph to oxidative heterotroph to a cell-wall–defective degenerate parasite. This evolutionary trajectory assumes the simplicity to complexity route of biogenesis, a point of view that is not universally accepted.
