The literature of science offers no more brazen invitation than the opening paragraphs of a new book on the molecular biology of sex by London geneticist Steve Jones.
"Ejaculate, if you are so minded and equipped, into a glass of chilled Perrier," he begins. "There you will see a formless object, but look hard enough -- or at least so eighteenth-century biologists believed -- and a baby appears: the male's gift to the female, whose only job is to incubate the child produced with so much labor by her mate. So central seemed a husband's role that his wife was a mere seedbed, a step below him in society, in the household, and, most of all, in herself. Foolish of course, and quite wrong, for biology proves that man, and not woman, is the second sex."
With just so many words, Jones limns a revolution in human sexual biology that mirrors an equal transformation in the political and social understanding of the relations between men and women. In "Y: The Descent of Men," Jones explores this changing state of masculinity with considerable relish by deconstructing the curious genetics of the male Y chromosome.
This is a sexual and scientific revolution still in progress. Indeed, Jones writes so near the cutting edge of research that at times his insights have been overtaken by scientific findings made public in the months since his book was published. In this sense, Jones has been sideswiped by the speeding juggernaut of science -- an occupational hazard for those authors who seek to explicate the esoterica of experimental research to the general public.
Any flaw in the timeliness of the scientific findings he reports in no way diminishes the deeper pleasure of this book. In seeking to understand the biological question mark known as the male of the species, Jones plumbs more enduring truths of human sexuality.
For the real question of biology, Jones suggests, is why men? And why so many?
In the beginning, there was no sex -- at least not in the way we normally conceive it. Gender was triggered not by the internal workings of genes and chromosomes but by an arbitrary external influence, such as temperature. For many species, that is still the meaning of hot sex. The difference between a male and female crocodile or sea turtle is a thermometer reading as the egg is being incubated.
