Genes, Girls, and Gamow

by James D Watson

Humans, just like all other species in nature, are largely unaware of the evolutionary logic behind their design. They know what they want, but they don’t usually know why they want it. The ultimate (albeit largely unconscious) goal of all human behaviour is reproductive success. We do what we do, ultimately, to make as many copies of our genes as possible. In particular, virtually everything men do has the ultimate goal of impressing women, so that, hopefully, some of them would agree to have sex with them and have their children. Men do everything they do in order to get laid.