Since the beginning of time, people have wondered how new life comes into the world. How does sex lead to babies? How does a baby “know how” to turn into an adult?

This fascinating and very fun book is about the long quest to understand how reproduction and growth happen, especially in the years before the invention of the microscope and the discovery of genetics and DNA. But it could be subtitled “How the Persistence of Misogyny and Religion Warped Science and Impeded Scientific Advancement for Literally Thousands of Years” and could serve as a case study in epistemology.

From the time of the Enlightenment, there has been the assumption (and more strongly, assertion) that science was grounded in observations and experimental data. But in fact, observers don’t operate in a vacuum; rather, the very questions they ask, the language they use, and the sense they impart to what they see is determined by the sociopolitical environment in which they live, helping to shape their understanding. Knowledge thus rests upon social and historical conditions from which escape is often difficult if not impossible, because, in part, such a supporting framework is invisible.

Moreover, as Erich Fromm argued in Escape From Freedom, “the influence of any doctrine or idea depends on the extent to which it appeals to psychic needs in the character structure of those to whom it is addressed.” (p. 83)

As for gender bias and the resultant devaluing of women’s importance, it has long influenced scientific inquiry. Until relatively recently, scientists studying the question of “where do babies come from” were convinced that women were inferior, or mutilated men. They could not even conceive [sic] of a significant role for women in creating life. Since their conceptual lenses were thus shaded with bias, they fit what they could see into a Procrustean bed which ensured men played a dominant role in such an important process.

The greatly influential Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC), for example, believed that it was male sperm that caused the development of an embryo in the female uterus. According to this theory, the male produces a ‘seed' which forms an ‘egg' when mixed with menstrual blood (the ‘soil’). The ‘egg’ then develops into a fetus inside the mother according to the information contained within the male 'seed’ alone. That theory survived for some 2000 years, with only slight modifications. (It was Aristotle who promulgated the idea that females were just “mutilated males.”) After all, the role that semen played was more evident than women’s role in the process. Wasn't she just the field into which the seed was sown? (But then, why did so many babies resemble their mothers?)

Religious concerns and beliefs have also muddied the waters. How could new life develop without the active involvement of a designer?

As Dolnick tells the story, the main theories about reproduction reflected both gender and religious prejudices. They were split between the belief in and search for a seminal [sic] role for semen from men, or a mysterious (but invisible) egg in the female. (Such theorists were known as either “spermists” or “ovists.”)

A popular argument, informed by religious beliefs, was one Dolnick calls the “Russian Nesting Dolls” theory, or more formally, preformationism - i.e., the idea that God (who, the Bible said, created all of life in seven days) put tiny versions of all human bodies for all time into the semen, and these got passed on through the generations until that human’s time had come. That had to be a lot of semen! [And if actual lives were part of semen, how could God let so many of them be eliminated when, for example, semen was spilled out through masturbation? Indeed, this widespread practice aroused (sic) religious wrath in part because it did seem to involve the killing of potential human beings.]

The growth of beings was another conundrum. Something had to be providing a template, and DNA was totally beyond the imagination of pre-20th Century scientists. No one even thought to look for a mechanism by which such a process could occur at least until Darwin.

Some came close, like the Dutch microbiologist, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, but as Dolnick laments, he “was done in by ideological blinders,” mainly related to gender bias. Nevertheless, his pioneering work with microscopy led the way for others to see the smaller elements that are involved in conception.

Lazzaro Spallanzani, an Italian Catholic priest and biologist (1729-1799) came close with his meticulous experiments. Most notably, he crafted “boxer shorts” for frogs to see if pregnancy could result if no sperm were released by the male frogs. (It could not, of course.) Still, the truth eluded scientists who could not see anything smaller than the “little animals” (spermatozoa) they took for parasites.

The biggest breakthrough prior to the discovery of DNA did not take place until 1876. Oscar Hertwig (1849-1922) was a German biologist working in Naples, Italy who studied sea urchins, inter alia. The beauty of studying sea urchins, as Dolnick reports, is not only that fertilization takes place outside of the body where the process is visible, but that sea urchin eggs are transparent. Thus, Hertwig could actually see that fertilization occurred when a single sperm penetrated an egg and their nuclei fused. He even speculated that something in the nuclei of these reproductive cells passed on hereditary characteristics. (It was 1944 before experiments demonstrated that the substance responsible for biological inheritance is a nucleic acid, DNA.)

The book ends with the discoveries of Hertwig - the question of where babies come from had pretty much been answered. Dolnick concludes on a wry note:

“We think there is something magical about getting a rabbit out of a hat, the writer John Stewart Collis once observed. Not so. The real magic is getting a rabbit out of a rabbit.”

Evaluation: I thoroughly enjoyed this exploration of how people came to understand the most basic question about existence: how does it even happen? As Dolnick points out, if you think about it, in a time when you had no technological tools to see inside the body, and knew nothing about the mechanism of inheritance, how would you make sense of it all? His tour through the history of theories, false starts, and stabs at answers, is wonderfully entertaining. ( )

I received a copy of this book for free courtesy of the GoodReads first reads program in exchange for an honest review.

This book proved irresistible to me. It is a history of the perplexing question as to where exactly babies come from, and all of the bizarre theories that it bred over time. Instead of mocking the beliefs of the earlier civilizations, it takes a wry and respectful view. In truth, it is amazing that we know the answer to that question even now, and the fact that things such as mammalian eggs were theorized long before they could even be seen is astonishing.

This book is full of wonder, and it does much to restore wonder to the act of reproduction. While it is a bit bizarre that, for instance, even after spermatozoa were seen they were for ages thought of as little more than parasites - the author explains how natural the thought was, given that at the same time period the world was proven to be full of such animalcules. Equally bizarre might be seen the thought of ovaries as 'female testicles' and testicles themselves serving as nothing more than counterweights - until you really start to think how little of reproduction is in fact intuitive.

The book is amusing, even laugh out loud funny at times, but deeply respectful all the same. It restores to life a humor and wonder that we sometimes take for granted, given what we now know. Sure, every biology textbook in the world takes these facts as elementary - but isn't it amazing all the same? I can't recommend this book enough to anyone curious about the history of where babies come from, and what we've believed over the years.

This book has proven a delightful, informative, and surprisingly fascinating history of one of life's most basic questions.

And yes, there is a chapter about frogs wearing pants. ( )

Pop-science history in comic mode, I found this endlessly fascinating and funny! Dolnick traces the history of the scientific inquiry into the mystery of where babies come from, starting with the investigations of Leonardo Da Vinci, in the 1490s, (though he summarizes the thinking up to Leonardo, going back to the Egyptians & Greeks) all the way up to Oscar Hertwig's observation of the fertilization of a sea urchin egg in 1875. His stories of enterprising scientists and the challenges, both technological and conceptual, that they faced are effectively linked (though, as he says, the story is not one that proceeds in an orderly way, but, rather, by fits and starts, with mad dashes down blind alleys) and amusingly told, complemented by instructive illustrations and delightfully wide-ranging and occasionally illuminating footnotes.

To give a sense of Dolnick's style, here is a bit from the chapter “Frogs in Silk Pants,” on Lazzaro Spallanzani, who made a close study of frog sex in the late 1740's, from which comes the illustration on the cover of my edition.

”He sat at his workbench with cramped fingers and weary eyes, cutting and sewing dozens and dozens of tight-fitting, miniature boxer shorts made of silk. For frogs.

The point of the boxers was to prevent the male's semen from reaching the female's eggs. Would the females become pregnant even so, as the “seminal aura” sent out its ghostly waves? Or would the shorts, which were wax-coated as an additional safeguard, serve as a full-body condom?

Spallanzani did not describe the boxers in any detail, and though he was a skilled artist, he made no drawings (it is tempting to picture the shorts as adorned with hearts or even with frogs). “The idea of the breeches, however whimsical and ridiculous it may appear, did not displease me,” he wrote gamely, “and I resolved to put it into practice,” He wrestled the males into their outfits. Undeterred, they sought out the females with their customary eagerness, Spallanzani wrote, “and performed, as well as they could, the act of generation.”

Then he gathered up the eggs. Half came from the females, who had mated with boxer-clad males, half from females whose partners had carried on au naturel. Spallanzani peered at the two sets of eggs. Which would grow into tadpoles?”

You have to admire that sort of dedication and ingenuity, right? This is a wonderfully entertaining and engaging story. ( )