The theories of reproduction that emerged at the end of the eighteenth century exhibited a range in experimental thinking about concepts of gender and sexuality. This essay focuses on the work of a writer who proposed an unusual alternative to polarity-based ideas of reproduction. Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1810) was a physicist and friend to the German Romantics and someone whose writing also shares many interests with German Naturphilosophie. The essay discusses how, inspired by ideas from the alchemical tradition, Ritter challenged conventional thinking about reproduction in two significant ways: by linking it to the idea of rotation, and by using the figure of the androgyne to understand reproductive models in terms of triads, rather than oppositional pairings. A further objective of this essay is to consider which aspects of the alchemical tradition proved the most useful for Ritter’s experimental thinking and to show how he integrated them with reflections on contemporary scientific developments around 1800.

十八世纪末出现的生殖理论在有关性别和性观念的实验思考中展现了一系列的内容。本文着重于一位作家的工作，他提出了一种不同于极性的复制观念的替代方法。约翰·威廉·里特（Johann Wilhelm Ritter，1776-1810年）是德国浪漫主义者的物理学家和朋友，他的著作也与德国自然哲学界有着许多共同点。本文讨论了在炼金术传统思想的启发下，里特如何以两种重要方式挑战传统的生殖观念：将其与轮换观念联系起来，并利用雄激素的身影从三合会角度理解生殖模型，而不是反对配对。本文的另一个目的是考虑炼金术传统的哪些方面对Ritter的实验思维最有用，并展示他如何将它们与1800年左右的当代科学发展相结合。