I argue that Darwinism is best described as a research tradition in which specific theories of how natural selection acts to produce common descent and evolutionary change are instantiated by specific dynamical assumptions. The current Darwinian research program is the genetical theory of natural selection, or the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. Presently, however, there is ferment in the Darwinian Research Tradition as new knowledge from molecular and developmental biology, together with the

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... loyment of complex systems dynamics, suggests that an expanded and extended evolutionary synthesis is possible, one that could be particularly robust in explaining the emergence of evolutionary novelties and even of life itself. Critics of Darwinism need to address such theoretical advances and not just respond to earlier versions of the research tradition.