1. Were scientists aware of “serious mathematical problems” with evolutionary theory since the 1920s–1940s?
A. A. Williams’s Evolution Disproved (1928)
Williams did publish Evolution Disproved in 1928, a book arguing against evolutionary theory. However, this work was not influential in mainstream scientific or mathematical biology and was not cited by evolutionary biologists as a foundational critique of the mathematics of evolution. It was more a polemic than a peer-reviewed scientific contribution.
(This claim generally appears in creationist/ID literature, but it’s not recognized as significant by historians of science.)
B. Murray Eden and Marcel-Paul Schützenberger (1950s–1960s)
It is true that Murray Eden (MIT) and Marcel-Paul Schützenberger (University of Paris) were among a group of scientists discussing mathematical models of natural selection and mutation. Their skepticism about specific probabilistic aspects of simple models did exist.
However, their work did not lead mainstream evolutionary theorists to conclude that evolutionary theory was mathematically untenable. Their conclusions reflected concerns about particular formulations and assumptions, not about the entire conceptual framework being impossible.
🧪 2. The 1966 Wistar Institute Symposium
📍 What the symposium really was
The symposium Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution was real, held April 25–26, 1966, at the Wistar Institute, and the papers were later published as a monograph (Wistar Institute Press, 1967).
It brought together mathematicians, engineers, and biologists (including Murray Eden, Marcel-Paul Schützenberger, Stanislaw Ulam, Ernst Mayr, Richard Lewontin, among others).
Sir Peter Medawar, a Nobel laureate biologist, chaired the symposium. His introductory remarks acknowledged dissatisfaction or questions about some aspects of neo-Darwinism among scientists at the time.
📉 What actually happened at the symposium
Some participants (especially the mathematicians and computer scientists) presented probability-based arguments suggesting that purely random mutation plus selection, under some simplistic assumptions, would seem unlikely to generate certain levels of complexity.
Marcel-Paul Schützenberger did conclude (in his paper) that there appeared to be a “gap” in neo-Darwinian theory under the assumptions of his formulation.
📊 Crucial nuance
This “gap” was not declared by the entire scientific community as proof that evolution was mathemat