Evolution is entirely about reproduction

Excerpt: “And evolution isn’t really about survival at all. It’s entirely about reproduction.”
My comment: Darwin suggested that “conditions of existence” needed to be detailed before natural selection could be understood. Others bastardized his perspective and incorporated random mutations theory, which has no explanatory power when it comes to telling us what is selected, or how it is selected.
For contrast, the “conditions of existence” obviously include nutrient-dependent life, and nutrients metabolize to pheromones that control reproduction. Thus, we now have the epigenetic (gene x environment) perspective that was unavailable to Darwin, and this current perspective has been largely ignored by evolutionary theorists.
Adaptive evolution incorporates the nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled “conditions of existence” sans random mutation theory. One can readily incorporate nutrient-dependent amino acid substitutions; thermodynamics of intracellular signaling and protein biosynthesis; and epigenetic effects on pheromone-controlled organism-level thermoregulation in species from microbes to man. But first, it is essential to dispense with random mutations theory.
Excerpt: “Focusing on either mutation alone or selection alone can lead to the following misconceptions, respectively: that evolution is completely random, and that evolution results in perfectly optimized organisms.”
My conclusion: Adaptive evolution is not completely random; it is completely dependent on nutrients and their metabolism to pheromones.