On November 14th, 2025 1pm. Centro Carlos Santamaria, Room TBA. The talk will be hybrid, to participate remotely contact: alberto.monterde@ehu.eus

Abstract

This presentation examines whether the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) – the theoretical proposal aiming to integrate diverse areas of biology within an evolutionary perspective – should be regarded as an extension of the Evolutionary Synthesis (ES) or as a fundamentally distinct theory. To address this question, we employ Imre Lakatos’ methodology of scientific research programmes and reconstruct both ES and EES in Lakatosian terms.

Our analysis focuses on identifying and comparing the ‘hard cores’ –  i.e. the core theoretical commitments  – of the two programmes in order to determine whether EES can be understood as part of the same programme as ES or as a divergent one. We argue that EES cannot be adequately described as a simple extension of ES. Rather, it constitutes a distinct research programme, structured around its own hard core and heuristic principles.

A further question concerns the relation between these two programmes and Darwin’s original theory. We suggest that there was no fully developed Darwinian research programme preceding the ES, although the ES formed around Darwin’s central contributions: the explanation of evolution by natural selection and the principle of descent with modification. However, the ES also abandoned several of Darwin’s proposals concerning heredity. By contrast, EES reopens some of these questions in light of advances in epigenetics, developmental biology, and ecology. In this sense, EES may be seen as recovering several Darwinian insights within a more flexible and pluralistic theoretical framework than the gene-centred and comparatively rigid structure of the ES.