The idea that living creatures bear copies of themselves – that humans birth babies, frogs lay frogspawn, chickens lay eggs, and so on – might seem obvious. But, as we learn in the opening chapters of Metamorphosis: A Natural and Human History, the idea that like breeds like is relatively new.

Historically, reproduction was a more chaotic affair. The ancients believed in ‘spontaneous generation’. Ovid’s Metamorphoses may be the most famous example of the genre, but the Roman poet was not alone in conceiving of change as abrupt and complete. The architect Vitruvius wrote ...

 

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