In order to fully comprehend Epictetus's philosophy of life, I had to excogitate each individual aspect of his handbook.

To cogitate is to ponder something. An example sentence would be: She wanted to cogitate before giving him a definite answer.

Ummm......... it depends what you mean........ all I can think of is 'to make' and 'making'......... hope this helps ;)

If ponder is used as a verb, as in "to ponder": chew on, cogitate, consider, contemplate, deliberate, entertain, excogitate, meditate, mull, muse, reflect, revolve, ruminate, study, think, think out, think over, think through, turn over, weigh

The thesaurus gives growth, progress, unfolding, evolvement & development.

If you mean synonyms for the scientific theory of biological evolution, I can think of:

Evolutionary Biology

Darwinism

Darwinian Evolution

Evolutionary Theory

There are related things like Evo-Devo (evolutionary developmental biology) , evolutionary psychology, etc.