Sex car?
The book begins with a furious prelude Michael Lange, WDR 5, October 20th, 2006 Quote: Why is there sex? To increase TV ratings, to have fun, to multiply? Michael Lange: It quickly becomes clear that sex is part of nature - both animal and human. Quote: Without sex, there would be no sex life and no morning after, no Romeos and Juliets, no discussions about homosexuality and no technical innovations like the waterbed. Furthermore, as Henry Miller wrote in Sexus, “sex is one of the nine causes of reincarnation. The other eight are uninteresting.” Michael Lange: So the basis for an interesting book has been laid. But beware! It's going to be challenging, because the book by the non-biologist Christian Göldenboog delves deep into the abysses of the theory of evolution. Because here lies the key to why we still have to grapple with sex to this day. Quote: Why was this masterpiece created by Mother Nature over a billion years ago? Why do neuroses, missionary positions and simultaneity weather, fathers and mothers, X and Y chromosomes exist? Why all the fuss? Michael Lange: In fact, nature does not need sex to reproduce. The reproduction of individuals, the preservation of the species, the spread of hereditary factors and also natural evolution according to the laws of mutation and selection... All of this also works without two genders, without sex. Nevertheless, nature doggedly holds on to the concept of sexuality. She fuses female and male cells into a new living being. Citation: The merging of genetic information from two ancestors into a single offspring is the essential characteristic of sex in multicellular organisms such as plants, fruit flies, marsupial mice or homo sapiens. Michael Lange: But why sex? One thesis seems convincing: Sexual reproduction promotes the constant mixing of genes within a species. This is how the species adapts. This can be important for the survival of long-lived organisms in particular. They develop a great variety with the most diverse gene combinations through sex. This is how a species can survive even when the environment is changing rapidly. Because there is a high probability that some of the existing gene combinations will make life easier in the changed environment. Short-lived organisms, on the other hand, do quite well without sex. Because with them, mutation and selection take place much more quickly. Yet even the simplest bacteria have something akin to sex. Citation: Amazingly, sexual processes existed before popes, gods, evolutionary biologists, communards, and ethicists racked their brains about sexuality: bacteria that lived among themselves for the first two billion years of life on earth constantly unite, exchanging genes as they do so , but without merging in the process. Michael Lange: Every answer raises new questions. That is why Christian Göldenboog has not limited himself to collecting information. He asked renowned experts. In conversations with the evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith and the population geneticist Luca Cavalli-Sforza, he delved deeply into the scientific discussion. Some of the discussions with the experts are reproduced verbatim and are not always easy to understand. The jumble of different arguments grows as you read. Luckily, Christian Göldenboog keeps relaxing with casual remarks. Quote: We are trapped in sex, but the male and female genes responsible for it have interests of their own. Sex is a genetic battle between the sexes with far-reaching practical consequences. Thus, romantic people should beware of the illusion that all genes work in harmony to produce a healthy child. "War in the womb" or "conflicts over the placenta" have been the buzzwords that geneticists have used to describe the processes during pregnancy for some time the reader to keep an overview, which confirms the thesis from the beginning of the book: Sex is complicated. It would be easier without sex, but the world would be missing something.
