The Mating Game (In Search of the Meaning of Sex). A book about the biological and evolutionary pathways of sex, gender and reproduction. I picked this book up years ago because I liked the physics book of the co-author John Gribbin, so I figured a book of his on biology and in particular sex, would be a good read. I know I had this for a while, but when I picked it up to read the receipt was still inside. I bought this book in 2001. It's taken me ten years to get around to reading it in a week. Or more rightly 3 days as I started this seriously on Friday.
The book is fascinating, but at times my lack of knowledge in the biological realm made it hard work. Fortunately I was right in my assessment of the author and more often than not he made the distinctions and explanations clearer through metaphor and repetition/reference so that I could catch up.
Interesting facts, women could easily reproduce without men, but would be at serious biological disadvantage in defence against disease and environment. Not that men are the answer, but certainly 'alien' DNA and male sperm and the work of recombinant DNA scours out the faults and mutations that are deleterious to breeding and evolving the best etc...
One of the best chapters was on Sex and Society, and how both incest and homosexuality are explained in evolutionary terms. It seems that regardless of your leanings and meanings, incest avoidance is a built in measure to our biology for sound reasons, bugger all to do with our culture. It seems that biology drove that moral ground forward, not that we learned that it's bad. Same with homosexuality, it's in nature and it's rife in history, but why hasn't it bred out? A long and complicated answer more to do with the state of when and how homosexuality is expressed as well as the "you are or you aren't" fallacy where everything is black and white (but really isn't) comes into play.
Not for everyone, but interesting to dip into a field I usually don't get that involved in. This book is not about behaviour, but about biological factors.
Fascinating.
Next Week: A book on schizophrenia, on alternate theories of history (what if scenarios), possibly some fiction or maybe something random. Who knows?
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