Hi mobioevo;
I'm not really interested in critiquing or defending a certain author's (somewhat dated) opinion on certain issues. I'd rather discuss the issues on their own merits.
That is, if you wish to dicuss the notion of 'genetic determinism', and/or the supposed role played by that supposed phenomenon in heredity and/or evolution, and/or the role that epigenetics plays in evolution, that would suit me far better.
In that light, when you say--
My answers to the authors critique of genetic determinism is, so what.
I think that just about everybody has now denied and distanced themselves from the old, 'genetic determinism' model. The answer to your 'so what' is that the selectionist approach to evolution, being dependent upon Fisher, Haldane, and Wright's RM+NS model, does not hold water if those random mutations are not solely responsible for, and do not entirely compel, phenotypic traits and their variations. That is, how can random genetic mutations be the cause of evolution if genes are not the determining cause of traits? If, as modern science shows, 'genes' do not 'cause' traits, that is, do not compel and determine traits but only enable and facilitate their development, then how can random genetic mutation be said to be responsible for the origins of biological novelty? To enable and to facilitate is not the same as to cause.
Mechanisms are compelling causes, not the conditions that enable them to operate. A forest fire is not caused by dry timber, although that does enable one; only a flame from a fire started by a match or a lightning bolt is the direct, immediate and compelling cause. If 'genes' are only the 'dry timber' wrt evolution and development, then what is the 'flame'?
Evolution needs to act on hereditary information.
How so? This sounds good, but what does it really mean? For one thing, evolution is an action, not an actor.
Whether this hereditary information is genetic, protein, RNA, methylation patterns, or cell membranes, it does not change the fact that they all are hereditary.
Again, meaning what? Pre-existing? That won't account for novelty, for origins, for evolution.
A knowledge of epigenetic phenomenon only confirms that what is the hereditary unit is the ultimate source of selection.
Says who? From wikipedia, 'epigenetics'--
"Epigenetics is distinct from epigenesis, which is the long-accepted description of embryonic morphogenesis as a gradual process of increasing complexity, in which organs are formed de novo (as opposed to preformationism).
However, because all of the cells in the body inherit the same DNA sequences (with a few exceptions, such as B cells), cellular differentiation processes crucial for epigenesis rely almost entirely on epigenetic rather than genetic inheritance from one cell generation to the next. [bold added]
Since morphogenesis is responsible for the actual trait, and since the expressed trait is all that 'natural selection' has to work with, and since morphogenesis relies upon epigenetic, ('not genetic'), inheritance, then the 'gene' cannot be "the ultimate source of selection". Even assuming, [which I do not], that 'selection' means anything.