• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 584 0

carefully and we are all, I think I can say, impressed with its thoroughness. You have certainly made an exhaustive survey of reproduction on Earth. Moreover, with the possible exception of Miss Zeeg here, we are all agreed that you have made an overwhelming case for your hypothesis. I consider it now beyond doubt that life on Earth reproduces in the way you describe, using this strange device called “sex”. Some of the committee are less happy with your conclusion that many of the peculiar facets of the Earthling species known as human beings are a consequence of this sex thing: jealous love, a sense of beauty, male aggression, even what they laughingly call intelligence.’ The committee chuckled sycophantically at this old joke. ‘But,’ said Big Zag suddenly and loudly, looking up from the paper in front of her, ‘we have one major difficulty with your report. We believe you have entirely failed to address the most interesting issue of all. It is a three-letter question of great simplicity.’ Big Zag’s voice dripped sarcasm. ‘Why?’

Zog stammered: ‘What do you mean, why?’

‘I mean why do Earthlings have sex? Why don’t they just clone themselves like we do? Why do they need two creatures to have one baby? Why on earth do males exist? Why? Why? Why?’

‘Oh,’ said Zog quickly. ‘I tried to answer that question, but I got nowhere. I asked some human beings, people who had studied the subject for years. And they did not know. They had a few suggestions, but each person’s suggestion was different. Some said sex was a historical accident. Some said it was a way of fending off disease. Some said it was about adapting to change and evolving faster. Others said it was a way of repairing genes. But basically they did not know.’

‘Did not know?’ Big Zag burst out. ‘Did not know? The most essential peculiarity in their whole existence, the most intriguing scientific question anybody has ever asked about life on Earth, and they don’t know? Zod save us!’

From Ladder to Treadmill

What is the purpose of sex? At first glance, the answer seems obvious to the point of banality. But a second glance brings a different thought. Why must a baby be the product of two people? Why not three, or one? Need there be a reason at all?

About twenty years ago, a small group of influential biologists changed their ideas about sex. From considering it logical, inevitable and sensible as a means of reproduction, they switched almost overnight to the conclusion that it was impossible to explain why it had not disappeared altogether. Sex seemed to make no sense at all. Ever since, the purpose of sex has been an open question, and it has been called the queen of evolutionary problems.1

But dimly, through the confusion, an answer is taking shape. To understand it requires you to enter a looking-glass world, where nothing is what it seems. Sex is not about reproduction, gender is not about males and females, courtship is not about persuasion, fashion is not about beauty, and love is not about affection.

In 1858, the year Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace published the first plausible account of a mechanism for evolution, the Victorian brand of optimism known as ‘progress’ was in its prime. It is hardly surprising that Darwin and Wallace were immediately interpreted as having given succour to the god of progress. Evolution’s immediate popularity (and it was popular) owed much to the fact that it was misunderstood as a theory of steady progress from amoeba to man, a ladder of self-improvement.

As the end of the second millennium approaches, mankind is in a different mood. Progress, he thinks, is about to hit the buffers of overpopulation, the greenhouse effect and the exhaustion of resources. However fast we run, we never seem to get anywhere. Has the industrial revolution made the average inhabitant of the world healthier, wealthier and wiser? Uncannily (or, as a philosopher would have us believe, predictably) evolutionary science is ready to suit the mood. The fashion in evolutionary science is now to scoff at progress; evolution is a treadmill, not a ladder.