Across the world, birth rates are in decline. This phenomenon has particularly affected developed countries, where the number of children born consistently falls short of that required for generational replacement.

In De-Fecundity, the mathematician and philosopher Olivier Rey surveys the principal arguments advanced against bearing children. What emerges is the portrait of an extraordinary moment, one without parallel in human history: that of a society seriously willing to consider - indeed, justify - its own demise.

Olivier Rey is a member of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology in Paris and teaches philosophy at Panthéon-Sorbonne University. He has published numerous works, notably on the role of science in the contemporary world and the transformations it has unleashed, our increasingly problematic connection to the legacies of the past, questions of scale, and statistical reasoning.