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

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Author name: Neil Shubin

: Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 611
EAN num: 9780375424472
ISBN number: 0375424474
Label: Pantheon
Manufacturer: Pantheon
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 240
Printing Date: January 15, 2008
Publishing house: Pantheon
Release Date: January 15, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 4473
Studio: Pantheon



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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 very 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.

Amazon.com Review:
Oliver Sacks on Your Inner Fish
Since the 1970 publication of Migraine, neurologist Oliver Sacks's unusual and fascinating case histories of 'differently brained' people and phenomena--a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a community of people born totally colorblind, musical hallucinations, to name a few--have been marked by extraordinary compassion and humanity, focusing on the patient as much as the condition. His books include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film), and 2007's Musicophilia. He lives in New York City, where he is Professor of Clinical Neurology at Columbia University.

Your Inner Fish is my favorite sort of book--an intelligent, exhilarating, and compelling scientific adventure story, one which will change forever how you understand what it means to be human.

The field of evolutionary biology is just beginning an exciting new age of discovery, and Neil Shubin's research expeditions around the world have redefined the way we now look at the origins of mammals, frogs, crocodiles, tetrapods, and sarcopterygian fish--and thus the way we look at the descent of humankind. One of Shubin's groundbreaking discoveries, only a year and a half ago, was the unearthing of a fish with elbows and a neck, a long-sought evolutionary 'missing link' between creatures of the sea and land-dwellers.

My own mother was a surgeon and a comparative anatomist, and she drummed it into me, and into all of her students, that our own anatomy is unintelligible without a knowledge of its evolutionary origins and precursors. The human body becomes infinitely fascinating with such knowledge, which Shubin provides here with grace and clarity. Your Inner Fish shows us how, like the fish with elbows, we carry the whole history of evolution within our own bodies, and how the human genome links us with the rest of life on earth.

Shubin is not only a distinguished scientist, but a wonderfully lucid and elegant writer; he is an irrepressibly enthusiastic teacher whose humour and intelligence and spellbinding narrative make this book an absolute delight. Your Inner Fish is not only a great read; it marks the debut of a science writer of the very first rank.

(Photo © Elena Seibert)

A Note from Author Neil Shubin

This book grew out of an extraordinary circumstance in my life. On account of faculty departures, I ended up directing the human anatomy course at the University of Chicago medical school. Anatomy is the course during which nervous first-year medical students dissect human cadavers while learning the names and organization of most of the organs, holes, nerves, and vessels in the body. This is their grand entrance to the world of medicine, a formative experience on their path to becoming physicians. At very first glance, you couldn't have imagined a worse candidate for the job of training the subsequent generation of doctors: I'm a fish paleontologist.

It turns out that being a paleontologist is a huge advantage in teaching human anatomy. Why? The best roadmaps to human bodies lie in the bodies of other animals. The simplest way to teach students the nerves in the human head is to show them the state of affairs in sharks. The easiest roadmap to their limbs lies in fish. Reptiles are a real help with the structure of the brain. The reason is that the bodies of these creatures are simpler versions of ours.

During the summer of my second year leading the course, working in the Arctic, my colleagues and I discovered fossil fish that gave us powerful new insights into the invasion of land by fish over 375 million years ago. That discovery and my foray into teaching human anatomy led me to a profound connection. That connection became this book.

Click on thumbnails for larger images

The crew removing the very first Tiktaalik in 2004
Ted Daeschler and Neil Shubin propecting for new sites (Credit: Andrew Gillis)
The valley where Tiktaalik was discovered (credit: Ted Daeschler, Academy of Natural Sciences)

The models of Tiktaalik being constructed for exhibition (Tyler Keillor, University of Chicago)
Me with one of the models (John Weinstein, Field Museum)








Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Book Club surprise--one of the best in my non-fiction list for 2008
As assigned reading for a book club, Your Inner Fish became for me a page-turning, fascinating read with enough described real-life excitement to generate my own mind-expeditions through the Arctic, voyages to the cliffs of Nova Scotia, and tedious hours in labs carefully excavating fragile fossil from ancient rock. I felt a little like an armchair Indiana Jones. The expedition leader is Professor Neil Shubin, who reads like a humble storyteller sitting around the fire after a hard day negotiating barren rock-strewn hills, wondering apprehensively about the significance of the find. There were times where I imagined my feet were sore and cold from the hard, relentless ground, stiff boots and endless climbing.

Professor Shubin is my age, as I gathered in the epilogue where he describes his experiences as a third grader watching the path of the Apollo 8 command module. His life-journey took him to a path through the museum doors into paleontology, with detours into embryology, evolutionary and cellular biology, and into the teaching career of anatomy and physiology. Along the way, he had the fortune to discover Tiktaalik, the walking fish, a remarkable "missing link" fossil that supported the evolution of amphibians.

As important as that discovery certainly is, I find that the writing does more for me: This book is a story about how exciting scientific endeavors can be. It incorporates the journeys of many great thinkers, and reminds us that we ride on the shoulders of some incredible thinkers and explorers of our past. I think the book could serve as a catalyst of excitement about the power of the scientific method, the importance of persistence and serendipity, and the spirit of adventure that must be the driving force for so many of research scientists who simply want to leave the world a better, more knowledgeable place for having done their lifework. (I would also suggest anything written by Professor Chet Raymo, among favorites of nature/science writers.)

The implications in this book are staggering. This is truly a short but amazingly descriptive primer into many facets of evolutionary biology, from DNA analysis to embryology and comparative anatomy, ultimately to "family trees" and a symbolic and explanatory walk through the local zoo. Having lived through a medical-school education, I found it refreshing. It reminded me about how interesting the questions regarding life can be, and about how, as we grow older, those questions take on new significance and interest, even passion.

And I think that's what Neil Shubin is ultimately: a passionate teacher from whom I gained much by his ongoing life's work. I'm envious of the medical students at the University of Chicago--and wish they had full time, appreciation, energy and opportunity to share this man's enthusiasm. Thanks for a great book club read, and for reminding me what an incredible world we ride upon, and share.





Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Excellent introduction to paleontolgy and evolution.
This book was a wonderful introduction to the subjects of evolution and paleontology. Shubin writes this book in a highly readable and exciting manner. One might expect books on these subjects to be somewhat staid, yet Shubing makes them very exciting. You will learn just how to closely related all life forms really are. While humans' relationship to other primates is now obvious, you will see how some of our body parts are simply performing other functions in other species, and how this explains why, for example, eyesight and hearing problems are so often connected. This book makes want to read more on these subjects, and for me rather conclusively dispels "creationism". I also admire the author for being such a polymath. While academics, especially in the sciences, have a reputation for being so pigeonholed that they know nothing, Shubin is a paleontologist, museum administrator, evolutionary scholar, amateur geologist, who also is knowledgeable enough about human anatomy to teach medical students! The only "downside", if you can see as that, is that the author assumes his readers have completed at least some basic college level science courses, but I feel that even those who haven't done those can easily follow this book.


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - A truly remarkable book
This is a genuinely remarkable book. The author combines his expertise in paleontology and anatomy with his true gift for clear, stylish writing to produce the best book about the evolution of humans that you're likely to find. The book traces all of our major "subsystems"-- hearing, vision, skeletal form, internal organs, skin, etc.-- back as far as possible, sometimes to the single-celled creatures who appeared at the beginning of life on earth. At the same time, he describes the latest research into DNA, which supports all of the paleontological evidence he details.

His point is that only by "embracing our inner fish" can we understand our place in the elaborate fabric of life. There is nothing at all random about evolution; everything has an origin somewhere and will no doubt be the predecessor of some later development. He writes strictly from a scientific point of view. You will find not a word about the current evolution vs. intelligent design controversy.

As I read, I was increasingly impressed by the author's economical style. That is, he is so clear and precise that he can very thoroughly discuss millions of years of evolutionary developments in just 200 pages, doing so comprehensively enough that nothing important is left out. Finally, his style makes the book just plain fun to read. There are not many authors who can do all of those things simultaneously.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and I recommend it most highly.


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Our Evolutionary Branch, Demystified
Neil Shubin, an evolutionary biologist who works as Provost of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, clearly chose the right career. In Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body, Shubin traces the history of our anatomy with a passion that leaps off the page. His conversational writing style, coupled with animated anecdotes and crisp descriptions, energized my reading so that two hundred pages seemed more like twenty.

The title of the book, Your Inner Fish, refers to the evolutionary history we humans share with other animals. Shubin, who also acts as Professor of Anatomy and Associate Dean at the University of Chicago, opens with the tale of how he co-discovered Tiktaalik roseae, sometimes called the "fish that crawled out of the water," in the Canadian Arctic in 2006. This groundbreaking find provides compelling evidence of an intermediate stage between fish and early limbed animals, and serves as an illustration of the "history of life within us," one example among many that Shubin highlights.

Of course, Charles Darwin predicted that transitional forms would illustrate a gradual evolutionary shift between two distinct groups, and Tiktaalik fits the bill. Like most fish, Tiktaalik possessed gills, scales, and webbed fins. Yet, it also sported innovations like wrists, lungs, and a mobile neck, and it denotes the earliest creature to possess all the bones of our arm, wrist, and palm. Previous to Tiktaalik, fish did not exhibit these joints. Thus, this creature laid the stepping-stones for later vertebrates to transition onto dry land.

The author tells us why we should care about this: "Virtually every illness we suffer has some historical component. ... [D]ifferent branches of the tree of life inside us - from ancient humans, to amphibians and fish, and finally to microbes - come back to pester us yesterday ... show[ing] that we were not designed rationally, but are products of a convoluted history."

He pinpoints the evolutionary history of our senses of smell, sight, and hearing, as well as that of our wrists, teeth, jaws, and skull, and he explains such common ailments as hiccups, hernias, and sleep apnea.

In a poignant passage about dissecting the human hand, Shubin recalls his personal introduction as a student to human anatomy. After spending months dissecting internal organs, he felt detached about the task before him. Seeing the hand jolted him back to reality: "[s]uddenly this mechanical exercise, dissection, became deeply and emotionally personal." Similarly, when he examined Tiktaalik's modified fin for the very first time, he felt that he had "uncovered a deep connection between my humanity and [that of] another being," which is the whole premise of his book.

Your Inner Fish provides a fascinating overview of the history of our own evolution, an introduction that is both readable and inviting. I suppose the simple explanations and introductory tone Shubin uses might give more well-read students seeking in-depth analysis or discussion, reason to criticize, but for a non-scientist reader such as myself, Shubin strikes the right note for piquing my interest further. And simply by asking what evolution from our animal ancestors really means for us, Shubin makes the book personally relevant in a modern context.

Shubin concludes with an inspiring message: "I can imagine few things more beautiful or intellectually profound than finding the basis for our humanity, and remedies for many of the ills we suffer, nestled inside some of the most humble creatures that ever lived on our planet."

Roxanne Enman


Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - Interesting read, aimed at a general audience
This is a good, informative book, aimed at an introductory audience. Shubin is a true renaissance-man, and he brings all facets of his expertise to bear on showing how all of us have ancestors in common with fish. The book is a fun read very accessible, and a highly recommended part of a laymen's library.

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