The main aim of this dissertation is to disentangle the ambiguous attitude of evolutionary biologists towards organic progress, i.e. the idea that some change towards the better occurs over evolution. This is done by identifying two questions: I) Are there any theoretical arguments for using the normative terms “good” and “better” within evolutionary theory? II) If there are, can we clarify the idea that some “change towards the better” is conceptually implied by evolutionary theory? I argue that there are specific kinds of value, i.e. organic values, which allow us to meaningfully speak about improvements concerning living beings. A large part of this dissertation is devoted to show how this applies to local scales, before broadening the investigation to progress at a global scale. In the last chapter, I venture beyond evolutionary theory to discuss progress in human cultural evolution and more specifically in the technological domain.