From the Interface Focus special issue: ‘Are there limits to evolution?’, organized by Simon Conway Morris, Jennifer F. Hoyal Cuthill and Sylvain Gerber:
Introduction is Open access:
Abstract The 11 contributions to this thematic volume touch on a large range of issues concerning the landscape of biological possibilities and the manner by which it may be traversed by evolving life forms. The contributors also consider how this landscape might be mapped by evolutionary biologists, with an emphasis on how one might identify the limits of such maps. While some agreements emerge on the question of limits on evolution, not surprisingly few contributors look towards the same horizons. Rather than providing a potted summary of the 11 papers, our aim in this introduction is to identify eight principal themes that might serve as common ground and, as importantly, to listen out for the sound of rushing subterranean waters that hint at caverns of concealed knowledge. By no means all of these themes are addressed by all authors, but in gathering the many strands of enquiry we hope that this will allow us to ask: What, if any, are the limits to evolution? (.pdf)
If there are limits to evolution, must there not be laws that govern it?
See also: What the fossils told us in their own words
Hat tip: Pos-Darwinista