ANDRZEJ KRAUZEThe Scientist’s bread-and-butter stories are those about the intricacies of biology: neuronal networks, metabolic pathways, immune regulation, molecular dynamics, etc. But for too long, we’ve given short shrift to the one event that sets these processes in motion in almost all of the planet’s multicellular organisms: sex. So we have devoted an entire issue to the subject, its motivations, its attendant behaviors and physiology, its evolution, and its future.
We humans have created many euphemisms for sex: the horizontal mambo, the old in-and-out, gland-to-gland combat, making the beast with two backs, a roll in the hay, the four-legged frolic, bumping uglies. These playful turns of phrase bear testament to the fact that we’ve tethered emotion, sentiment, and memory to a basic physiological process. Is it really surprising that evolution’s most complex brain entangled the biological imperative with so much emotion and meaning? Sex fascinates us, inspires us, scares and uplifts us. It can embolden and empower. It can demean and degrade.
But sex, like so many other biological phenomena, is neither beautiful nor ugly, good nor bad. It simply is. In the cold light of scientific fact, our large brains are also capable of ...
