Though the idea of unpredictable evolutionary change is fundamental to the philosophy of Darwinian naturalism, Dougherty uncovers a common tendency among the proponents of naturalism to smuggle in a hand-picked group of timeless absolutes from the outset of inquiry. From the start, evolution is made curiously immune to itself. The recognition of the fact that the mechanisms governing the evolutionary process must themselves be subject to evolution and change is the dawn of a new era in the philosophy of naturalism.