I agree about the "eye thing"...  please...  The title of the article is admittedly a bit "click-bait" but just a little ways in, it turns out to be worthwhile reading after all (my opinion). It's really just an overview of all the layers of historical development relating to evolutionary thinking. They're not arguing for anything. The author actually did a pretty good job with it. The discussion of plasticity was interesting too.  

Personally, I find myself falling into the Koonan camp (near the end of the article): "People should get used to theories not fitting together. Unification is a mirage... In my view there is no – can be no – single theory of evolution,” ... “There cannot be a single theory of everything. Even physicists do not have a theory of everything.” 

So maybe the answer is... there is no answer - I'm not sure why is this so hard for us to get used to (?) 

In the meantime, I did download the referenced 2017 Futuyma paper to see what all this extended synthesis business is/was about.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2016.0145

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