Why We Do It

OVER THE LAST THIRTY YEARS, many scientists have come to insist that our behavior is governed by our genes--above all when it comes to sex, which, we are told, is how genes perpetuate themselves. Not so, argues evolutionary biologist Niles Eldredge in this powerful book. Sex certainly seems to us more complicated than a matter of our DNA struggling to survive, and that's because it is. Eldredge directly confronts those who would cast us as puppets of biological imperatives rooted deep in our hunter-gatherer past. Their models, he points out, are based on lower forms of life. In humans, there is an intricate interplay between meeting our needs for day-to-day survival, sex, and reproduction ("the human triangle")--further complicated by cultural forces (customs, laws) that routinely override selfish-gene behavior. Authoritative and delightfully combative, "Why We Do It challenges us to rethink the assumptions of today's science in the important task of understanding ourselves.