Well said!

A Toast to Evolvability and Its Promise of Surprise - New York Times: "As scientists see it, these and others of nature’s fancy feats forward are clearly the result of large-scale evolutionary forces, but the precise mechanisms behind any given innovation remain piquantly opaque. For some researchers, the conventional gradualist narrative, in which organisms evolve over time through the steady accretion of many mincing genetic mutations, feels unsatisfying when it comes to understanding true biological novelty."

Modularity may be one part of the equation as the author mentions. I think a bigger part is the evolution of sexual selection and the ability to subconsciously recognize key traits in others, the effects of environment on how the brain experiences attraction and for whom, the mechanisms behind the transfer of epigenetic traits, and the processes by which cells fix transcription errors. Then there is similarly the notion of hybridization and rapid mutation in the presence of radiation... alas, we still have much to learn.