Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body | Neil Shubin | What a great book

books:

Your Inner Fish: A...

	Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body Neil Shubin Pantheon, 2008 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 77 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.

Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who discovered Tiktaalik?the "missing link" that made headlines around the world in April 2006?tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.

Shubin makes us see ourselves and our world in a completely new light. Your Inner Fish is science writing at its finest?enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

for more information click here

Deserving of the praise

As interesting and informative as other reviewers have promised it to be.
If one is a Creationist however, you will not like this book.

What a great book

I personally feel that this should be required reading for every biology or anatomy and physiology class in the country. I read the book over the summer and have been looking for ways to work it into my science class. It is a lucid explanation of why the human body is such a wonder and at times such a Rube Goldberg device. It all makes perfect sense in an evolutionary light. The author's opening chapters are enlightening in his explanation of the predictive power of the Theory of Evolution and how it has been tested repeatedly and supported by the evidence. I am very happy to see so many other teachers finding and utilizing this book with their classes.

for more information click here

Excellent primer on evolutionary processes

In terms of physical makeup, how did human beings get to be what they are? In order to provide some answers, the author's journey of discovery took him to a remote site in the Arctic to look for fossils. This site fit the requirements of containing exposed sedimentary rocks dating back some 370 million years ago, to the time when previously found fossils begin to show terrestrial rather than purely aquatic adaptations. With a combination of luck and skill, he succeeded in finding what he was looking for: the fossil remains of a creature that had the anatomy not quite of a fish but not quite of a land animal either. From that starting point, the author provides anatomical examples of how human adaptations - everything from limbs to teeth to the inner ear - can be seen to have evolved from much simpler organisms.

The study of fossils and anatomy does have its limitations in that only gross similarities can be noted; the process itself is hidden; and there is not much that can be done experimentally. But the subject matter can be approached from a different angle. The author recounts initial experimental methods in embryology that found an "organizer" site of cells that appears to control growth in embryos. When these types of cells of one species were substituted for another, they still enacted their role of organizing. Significant progress since the 1980s in genetics, especially the discovery of the Hox gene, has unlocked the role of DNA in explaining how the "organizer" works. Scientists can then search out the similarities of DNA in different species.

The author combines his knowledge of paleontology and anatomy with genetics and molecular biology to posit how single celled organisms could have developed the means to combine together over time to the point of developing bodies. The details here are rather sketchy - as this book is a primer not a technical work. The study is limited to a discussion of how certain anatomical structures developed as life became more complex. It is interesting to consider the external circumstances that were at work. The primary motivation for assuming more complexity appears to be the desire to evade predators. The first appearance of bodies appears to have coincided with a noticeable increase in oxygen in the earth's atmosphere.

One note: This book is about science not religion, but I could not help but being struck by an analogy the author draws between developing life and the construction of a building: the role of DNA in the cells of a body is analogous to there being a blueprint of a building in every brick. In other words, instead of the plans coming from the outside, life develops from plans from within. On the basis of this insight, it should be fair to say that intelligence has to be inside rather than outside; that is, the Intelligent Designer is not separate and apart from all of Creation.

for more information click here

There Really is Nothing (Entirely) New

This is a somewhat breezy overview of the deep links between humans and all other animals that have lived on earth, including not merely fish but worms, jellyfish and even the earliest one-celled creatures. Choosing different aspects of the human body (e. g. hands, heads, sense of smell, hearing, vision etc) Shubin describes how they developed from features present in ancient forms. The earlier forms often served quite different functions but were modified over eons of time in ways quite traceable through the fossil record or DNA. Indeed one of Shubin's main points is that the ancient forms were not replaced but were virtually endlessly modified over time to assume and support (often awkwardly) new functions and support different ways of life. The bodies of living animals (including humans) are thus in many respects Rube Goldberg devices, jury rigged amalgams of various parts, many of which originally served far different purposes.

Shubin writes clearly and with obvious enthusiasm for his subject. The book is short and is an overview intended for a general audience. It does not presume any scientific background nor does it present detailed argument or evidence for its positions. It is not aimed at those who are familiar with the field. There is a subtext against intelligent design, but this position is never explicitly articulated much less argued. It is present only in the implications that follow from Shubin pointing out how many of the modern forms fit their current functions clumsily. The drawings in the book, unfortunately, are only sometimes helpful. The book also has fairly extensive suggestions for further reading. Overall a very good, and very basic, work of popular biology.

for more information click here

Could have used an Inner Editor

I should confess up front that my not loving this book is partly my own fault. Given Shubin's academic pedigree -- and it is impressive -- I expected the work to be more substantive. That he decided to write for a more general audience is not so much a problem as a simple disappointment.

But that's only part of my issue with the book. Simply put, it's poorly written. While literary style is not the forte of the majority of scientists, you'd expect them to have at least relied on a competent editor. Most offensive of all was his labored redundancy; important sentences were deemed so important that they were sometimes used -- essentially verbatim -- multiple times; if a point could be made in a short paragraph, Shubin used three.

Still, he has some interesting stories to tell, and while their connections to broader concepts are sometimes forced in rather painful transitions, the episode and ideas should hold the attention of most general readers.

for more information click here