Your Inner Fish
Ratings23
Average rating3.8
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.From the Hardcover edition.
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A bit of a difficult read at times, I found, the writing being much mire focused than I was expecting on pure geology and fossils, but beyond that, some really fascinating stuff and a very clear and thought-provoking light shed on many aspects of evolution.
For curious people like myself who revel in understanding things, why things are the way they are, it's a real treat.
You know a book was good when you can clearly remember it months or years down the line, and still recommend it to people...
Surprisingly engaging while also in-depth. This is a really quite beautiful work covering a tiny slice of our evolution from fishes to land-dwellers to mammals, primarily via adaptations in small skull bones. Through that journey Shubin describes what we know and how we know it, with fascinating side trips into geology, microbiology, history, and more.
This is not a niche book; I think it would be quite suitable for someone just learning about evolution or someone (like me) who thought he wouldn't get anything useful out of yet another book on the subject (I was wrong).
Neil Shubin is a paleontologist who delves briefly into the history of the human body by way of fossils and DNA evidence. Sure, I learned stuff... like how interconnected all the species really are; and that mammals have three bones in the inner ear while other species have fewer; and that there's a gene called Sonic hedgehog; and how to extract DNA using common household appliances and items you could easily buy in a store (a blender is involved and I'm easily reminded of the Bass-O-Matic). But, really this short book (just over 200 pages) was a bit of a slog to get through (although the explanations are clear enough). I've read other non-fiction that was much more compelling. But if you've an interest in fossils and DNA and where we came from, you might find this enlightening. But since this book deals with actual science, I definitely wouldn't recommend this book to Creationists. Though I suppose a Creationist wouldn't be picking up a title like this one in the first place. They're probably looking for something more along the lines of Your Inner Godliness: A Journey Into the Four Thousand Year History of the Human Body. But I digress.
