Gradualism and punctuationism, genes and environment, adaptation and selection, progress and contingency, structures and functions, chance and necessity: biology is about making the extraordinary diversity and unpredictability of life its object of study. Despite intriguing developments in the field in recent years, what is still lacking - at least in Italy - is a solid tradition of philosophical studies on biology. This introduction retraces the great themes of the science of life from an evolutionist perspective, bridging a gap in the available literature.