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Hamilton and Brian Charlesworth in the 1960's and 1970's, and today they are empirically well supported. Their ideas were later mathematically formalized by William D. Instead, they argued, aging evolves because natural selection becomes inefficient at maintaining function (and fitness) at old age.

Williams, who realized that aging does not evolve for the "good of the species". This was understood in the 1940's and 1950's by three evolutionary biologists, J.B.S.

Since the cost of death to individuals likely exceeds the benefit to the group or species, and because long-lived individuals leave more offspring than short-lived individuals (given equivalent reproductive output), selection would not favor such a death mechanism.Ī more parsimonious evolutionary explanation for the existence of aging therefore requires an explanation that is based on individual fitness and selection, not on group selection. But this explanation turns out to be wrong. The famous 19th century German biologist, August Weissmann, for instance, suggested – similar to Lucretius – that selection might favor the evolution of a death mechanism that ensures species survival by making space for more youthful, reproductively prolific individuals (Weissmann 1891). The Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, for example, argued in his De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) that aging and death are beneficial because they make room for the next generation (Bailey 1947), a view that persisted among biologists well into the 20th century. For centuries, beginning with Aristotle, scientists and philosophers have struggled to resolve this enigma.