Abstract
While numerous reviews on the problem of sex exist, the historical side of the research in this field is often only loosely covered. Here, I provide a more detailed historical overview by analyzing the contributions of four of the most influential biologists: Charles Darwin, August Weismann, Ronald Fisher and John Maynard Smith. More specifically, I discuss why these four biologists became interested in the significance of sex in the first place, describe their respective theories on sexual reproduction and in which context those theories were developed. This approach provides a general overview over the conceptually important changes in the history of the research of sex. Most importantly, it shows that not only the potential answers on the existence of sex have evolved, but also the question itself.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Patrick Meirmans for his many valuable comments to the manuscript, as well as Richard Burian, Lawrence Kirkendall and Curt Lively for interesting discussions on the history of the research on sex. The manuscript improved further through the constructive criticism by two anonymous reviewers. I am also indebted to the resources providing online access to the books, articles and letters by Fisher (http://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/coll/special/fisher/), Darwin (http://darwin-online.org.uk/; http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/) and Weismann (http://www.esp.org/). Much of this research has been done with support from the Norwegian Research Council.
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Meirmans, S. (2009). The Evolution of the Problem of Sex. In: Schön, I., Martens, K., Dijk, P. (eds) Lost Sex. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2770-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2770-2_2
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