I didn't add any quotes from the paper because I wanted others to read the paper and not just the quotes that I would write. You are probably right so I will do so in my next posts. Right now I wanted to define some of what the paper is concerned.
The problem for me is that whenever anyone wants to claim that new studies have either invalidated or replaced evolution, that this doesn't affect all the cases where evolution has been validated. One of the others to make similar claims to this paper is
Jeffery H Schwartz in "Missimg Links and
"Sudden Origins" (see threads)
My answers to the authors critique of genetic determinism is, so what. Evolution needs to act on hereditary information. Whether this hereditary information is genetic, protein, RNA, methylation patterns, or cell membranes, it does not change the fact that they all are hereditary.
This is also why I use "hereditary traits" rather than "frequency of alleles" in discussing evolution. If it's hereditary and it contributes to selection then it is part of evolution.
The author's argument for the paper being discussed is since there is more evidence that their are other forms of non-genetic inheritance will genetic determinism still survive. In the author's opinion no. He feels a more fully theory of the cell will develop out of epigenetic phenomenon.
All this does in my mind is add to the theories involved in evolution, but doesn't take any away.
Thus when we define the "theory of evolution" as the ∑(all theories) of how changes in hereditary traits occur in populations and are passed from generation to generation, we just have ∑
n+1 = ∑
n + 1 ... not very stunning when n = large.
Thanks.
Edited by RAZD, : last quote
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