Thanks to one of our international men of mystery, I’m able to bring you the opening remarks from the chairman of the 1966 Philadelphia symposium on the mathematical challenges to Neo-Darwinism that long preceded my own conclusive mathematical disproof of evolution by natural selection, regardless of the Dawkinsian “probably” that has recently been appended to what is now more formally known as the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Sexual Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow.
Ladies and gentlemen: I want to make just a few introductory remarks. I think it is the distinguishing mark of all true biologists as opposed to mere sectarian specialists that they are deeply interested in the mechanism of evolution. As Dr. Kaplan has explained, the immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought of as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called neo-Darwinian Theory. This dissatisfaction has been expressed from three quarters and is not only scientific.
First of all, religious: Where once the complaint was that evolution happened at all, now the complaint generally is that it happens without Divine motivation. Many of you will have read with incredulous horror the kind of pious bunk written by Teilhard de Chardin on this subject, if Professor Schultzenberger will excuse my putting it that way.
Then, there are philosophical or methodological objections to evolutionary theory. They have been very well voiced by Professor Karl Popper — that the current neo-Darwinian Theory has the methodological defect of explaining too much. It is too difficult to imagine or envisage an evolutionary episode which could not be explained by the formulae of neo-Darwinism.
Finally — and these are really, I think, the only objections that should concern us — there are objections made by fellow scientists who feel that, in the current theory, something is missing, and we look forward to hearing their formulation of what, precisely, is missing. These objections to current neo-Darwinian theory are very widely held among biologists generally; and we must on no account, I think, make light of them. The very fact that we having this conference is evidence that we are not making light of them.
Sir Peter Medawar, National Institute for Medical Research, 24 April 1966
It’s rather remarkable that within ten years of these professional biologists publicly declaring that they must, no on account, make light of the mathematical objections to their pet theory, my high school biology teacher was telling me that the science was settled and no intelligent, educated person would even consider doubting the sacred Neo-Darwinian dogma.
How things change! Thanks to developments in genetic science, we now have conclusive mathematical evidence of the absolute impossibility of both Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian evolutions. The hoary old dragon of Darwin has been slain, once and for all. It may not have stopped twitching yet, and the faithful are still hoping against hope for a revisionist third coming, but any impartial and sufficiently numerate observer will admit that it is clearly pining for the fjords.