Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
by: Neil Shubin
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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 humor 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 first rank.(Photo © Elena Seibert)A Note from Author Neil ShubinThis book grew out of an extraordinary circumstance in my life.On account of faculty departures, I ended up directing the humananatomy course at the University of Chicago medical school.Anatomy is the course during which nervous first-year medicalstudents dissect human cadavers while learning the names andorganization of most of the organs, holes, nerves, and vessels in thebody. This is their grand entrance to the world of medicine, aformative experience on their path to becoming physicians. At firstglance, you couldn't have imagined a worse candidate for the job oftraining the next generation of doctors: I'm a fish paleontologist.It turns out that being a paleontologist is a huge advantage inteaching human anatomy. Why? The best roadmaps to humanbodies lie in the bodies of other animals. The simplest way toteach students the nerves in the human head is to show them thestate of affairs in sharks. The easiest roadmap to their limbs lies infish. Reptiles are a real help with the structure of the brain. Thereason 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 fishthat gave us powerful new insights into the invasion of land by fishover 375 million years ago. That discovery and my foray intoteaching human anatomy led me to a profound connection. Thatconnection became this book.Click on thumbnails for larger images
Product Description:
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.
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 humor 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 first rank.(Photo © Elena Seibert)A Note from Author Neil ShubinThis book grew out of an extraordinary circumstance in my life.On account of faculty departures, I ended up directing the humananatomy course at the University of Chicago medical school.Anatomy is the course during which nervous first-year medicalstudents dissect human cadavers while learning the names andorganization of most of the organs, holes, nerves, and vessels in thebody. This is their grand entrance to the world of medicine, aformative experience on their path to becoming physicians. At firstglance, you couldn't have imagined a worse candidate for the job oftraining the next generation of doctors: I'm a fish paleontologist.It turns out that being a paleontologist is a huge advantage inteaching human anatomy. Why? The best roadmaps to humanbodies lie in the bodies of other animals. The simplest way toteach students the nerves in the human head is to show them thestate of affairs in sharks. The easiest roadmap to their limbs lies infish. Reptiles are a real help with the structure of the brain. Thereason 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 fishthat gave us powerful new insights into the invasion of land by fishover 375 million years ago. That discovery and my foray intoteaching human anatomy led me to a profound connection. Thatconnection became this book.  |  |  |
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Product Description:
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.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- Ayurveda, Science, and History
Reading this book reminded me of the new book by Frank John Ninivaggi, MD at Yale. Ayurveda: A Comprehensive Guide To Traditional Indian Medicine for the West says similar things. It broadens one's views on health, evolution, our biological selves, and ecological intimacy with nature. Two highly intelligent scientists give us a look into reality, with reference to its possible meaning for humankind. Wow! how great is the human mind!!
Rating: 
- 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 ... Read More
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
Rating: 
- 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 ... Read More
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
- Ayurveda, Science, and HistoryReading this book reminded me of the new book by Frank John Ninivaggi, MD at Yale. Ayurveda: A Comprehensive Guide To Traditional Indian Medicine for the West says similar things. It broadens one's views on health, evolution, our biological selves, and ecological intimacy with nature. Two highly intelligent scientists give us a look into reality, with reference to its possible meaning for humankind. Wow! how great is the human mind!!
- Could have used an Inner EditorI 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 ... Read More
- What a great bookI 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 ... Read More
- There Really is Nothing (Entirely) NewThis 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 ... Read More
- Excellent primer on evolutionary processesIn 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 ... Read More
