Topic description / abstract:

The concept of evolvability has sparked considerable debate since it first emerged in evolutionary biology. Initial discussions centered on the intriguing question of the evolution of evolvability itself, which has often been framed as paradoxical. For many, the idea of the "evolution of evolvability" suggests the notion of "selection for evolvability," which raises theoretical challenges. Over time, however, the literature on the evolution of evolvability has grown significantly, and a range of hypotheses have been proposed to address this issue, enriching our understanding of how evolvability might be integrated into evolutionary processes. This talk presents the conceptual landscape of these different hypotheses, examining the philosophical implications of naturalizing the evolution of evolvability. In particular, it explores how the notion of evolvability arose as an epistemic need in evolutionary biology and how research on its evolution is increasingly turning the notion into a conceptual bridge between the ideas of contingency and necessity.

Biographical note:

Cristina Villegas is group leader on “Philosophy of the Life Sciences” at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI). She is a philosopher of biology specialized in causal explanations, probabilities and chance in evolutionary biology, with a special focus on evo-devo and evolvability research. She studied Philosophy at the University of Seville and obtained MAs in Education (UGR) and in Logic and Philosophy of Science (USC), before completing her PhD in the Philosophy of Biology at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in 2020. Before joining the KLI team in May 2025, she worked as a research assistant at UCM and as a postdoctoral fellow, first at KLI (2021-2022) and later at the University of Lisbon (2022-2025). She is particularly interested in the intersection between evolutionary developmental biology and evolutionary quantitative genetics, and her work revolves around the epistemological, ontological, and historical aspects of this intersection.

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