Ever since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality - Softcover

Potts, Malcolm; Short, Roger

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521644046 ISBN 13: 9780521644044

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Eminent scientists Malcolm Potts and Roger Short view the broad panorama of human sexual and reproductive behaviour to reveal an inextricable mixture of nature and nurture - a combination of innate actions which have evolved over the millennia to adapt us to a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, overlain by more recent cultural constraints imposed by civilization. For each of life's milestones - sexual intercourse, conception, pregnancy, birth, puberty, love, marriage, parenting, menopause and death - they describe the biology behind our actions and consider how pressures imposed by various historical and contemporary cultures have further influenced our behaviour. By looking back at the past they attempt to make sense of the present, to see how and why these cultural modifications arose, how they have contributed to the richness of human sexual behaviour, and what our biological and cultural inheritance can teach us about safeguarding the continuation of our species.

About this title

Reviews

Potts (public health, Univ. of California, Berkeley) and Short (perinatal medicine, Univ. of Melbourne) "hope to show that there is little in the natural world that cannot be explained by biological evolution." Beginning with Darwinian theory and applying findings from the field of primate behavior, the authors attempt to make sense of the complexities of human sexuality for the lay reader. examining birth, puberty, love, marriage, sex, conception, pregnancy, parenting, menopause, and death. Unfortunately, they add little to the existing literature. Peculiarly organized, often blithely superficial and incomplete, filled with repetition and redundancy, unsupported generalizations, and stereotypes, their book is also peppered with errors of fact and interpretation and opinions masquerading as science, e.g., "Individuals with a homosexual orientation must be continually recruited by some process from parents with a normal heterosexual orientation." Not recommended.?James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521644046
• ISBN 13: 9780521644044
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 268