Cassandra Yang is a PhD candidate in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. With a background in developmental biology, they examine the heterogeneity of British organicism in the early twentieth century and how ideas about organisms, development, and evolution have interacted. They are particularly interested in organism-centred and processual approaches to biology, explanatory pluralism, and the relationship between developmental and evolutionary processes.

Their doctoral research reconstructs the work of the British biologist C. H. Waddington, a key figure in twentieth-century organicism best known for his theories of epigenetics and genetic assimilation. Drawing on the process philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, they develop a more radical interpretation of Waddington as offering a pluralistic, multi-timescale account of biological organisation. At the KLI, they will explore how this recovered framework can contribute to contemporary debates about the evolutionary significance of development and the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory.