really was a pleasure another book recommended by Wendy although what I liked most about it was possibly not the most obvious things about the book From very early on I was in a bit of a world of my own and had started to wonder what to make of the fact that palaeontologists tend to make such wonderful science writersIve said it before but I think Gould is a better writer than Dawkins and that is a big statement for me as I tend to prefer an English voice over an American one I dont mean that to be rude but there are many similarities between British English and Australian English than I think there are with American English but Gould is in a class of his own I get Gould I understand him much readily than I understand other science writers and I think this is because I really understand his notions of development and change His book Lifes Grandeur or Full House in the States is perhaps one of the greatest books on evolution ever written as someone who had read many many books on evolution before I had read Lifes Grandeur I really didnt think I would ever fundamentally learn anything new about evolution again this book showed me just how limited my understanding of evolution really was The only other book to come close to teaching me anew something I thought I knew well enough was Deep Time Although Your Inner Fish didnt fundamentally change my view on the world I think it might if you havent read much on evolutionary biology Even if you have there is much of interest hereBut Ive distracted myself the thing that had me fascinated throughout this book was the idea that it was so well written and again written by a palaeontologist What is it that makes them such good writers Well I think it might have something to do with the fact that while the rest of science is focused on specialising to a nearly absurd level palaeontologists are reuired to be generalists They need to know geology to know how old rocks are they need to know chemistry to know how bodily processes or rock processes or uranium processes work they need to know physics or at least physical chemistry to understand why fossils dont form in basalt and they absolutely need to know a little theology because well because you know why Also anatomy DNA and physiology of many many animalsSomeone once said all science is either physics or it is stamp collecting I think this book goes uite some way to showing that 'stamp collecting' has very many payoffs and physics has little to be uite so smug aboutI think it might be the fact that there is so much they need to know so many bits and pieces of knowledge the fact that they need to be generalists that makes them such good science writers And this guy really is a very good science writerYears ago I worked with a couple of Fundamentalist Christians When we were talking one day one of them became outraged and said to me “Do you really think Im related to a FISH”I had no idea how to answer him at first Given Christians are uite fond of fish Peter and all that well and those stickers they put on the back of their cars it took me a second to work out the problem I had also been expecting APE so when he got worked up over fish well I wasnt sure what had happened I told him it was worse than he even imagined I didn't want him to take it personally but actually I thought he was related to a bacteria He didnt seem to find this a much comforting notion and looked at me as if I was completely insane He wasn't the first he won't be the lastThis book does not waste time arguing with fundies and that has to be a good thing Already there has been far too many trees cut down and turned to paper in a pointless attempt to achieve the impossible that is to convince those who have no interest in understanding that their God just didnt create the worldyears ago Ive decided that it is best to just ignore these people They have self selected themselves to a life of ignorance and blindness unfortunately nothing can be done for them and whilst this is terribly sad it is nonetheless a fact of lifeWhat this book does do is work its way through your body and show interesting little facts about residual properties we have that are there due to our ancestry And not just our paternal grandfather Herbert St George but those fish my fundamentalist friend was so outraged over And down into the deep dark past when we were not even yet fish back when we were yeast or something similar Because that is one of the truly fascinating insights that fundamentalist Christians will never get to grasp the theory of evolution allows us to make remarkable predictions about how we live and how we have come to be the way we are Those predictions allow us to delve into our genetic heritage and to make sense of where we have come from and that knowledge that insight is not barren in the sense that saying God did it is barren but rather allows us ways to potentially find solutions to some of our lifes ongoing ills For me the end of this book was by far the most interesting the part where he explains why some many of us suffer from haemorrhoids or varicose veins or hernias Our inner fish can sometimes seem to have had it in for us His explanation of the evolutionary choices that are made by animals I mean that metaphorically obviously particularly around whether to see in colour or in black and white is truly fascinating I also learnt what is happening in my ear when I drink too much alcohol and the room starts spinning and who would have thought that your eyes would tend to move to the right due to this misperception of a spinning room FascinatingIn fact the book is full of little bits of information about bodily processes I have experienced but never really understood And that is always a nice thing to find out We do tend to spend uite a bit of time in our bodies and being told what they are up to can be uite somethingThis book is worth reading for his discussion on embryology alone if you know nothing about this fascinating subject you should rush out and get hold of this book I also enjoyed it for the stuff about dolphins not being able to smell due to their on again off again relationship with the sea I also enjoyed him talking about the nerves in the face and how these twist and turn in ways one would never get them to do if one was designing their function from scratch so to speak Not that this was actually what interested me what really interested me was the discussion of the various muscles of the face that make us frown and smile or do things like that I had a chickenegg moment where I wondered which came first the ability to frown to display perplexity or was this something that was selected for so that the muscle become honed over time or generations ratherThis was a fascinating book with lots of asides to chew over if you are interested in how we got here and how much of our inner fish is still obvious about us this is a great book to read now it is my turn to recommend it Your Inner Fish presents simply and straightforwardly a view of life that shows how much we are a part of this world no matter how much we want to think we are above it Shubins easy going style with fascinating details is very engaging Beyond the structural and developmental similarities of different species outlined in the book most compelling were the discussions of placing a gene from one species in the embryo of another that seems distantly related The results were startling For example a mouse gene for eye development placed in a fruit fly embryo caused normal fruit fly eyes to develop Even amazing is that the gene Noggin from a sea anemone placed in a frog embryo had the same effect as the frog gene would It appears that all animals are made out of basically the same stuff I felt humbled and enlightened learning about my deep connection to nature Your Inner Fish is a wonderful book everyone can enjoy It was refreshing to see recent and not so recent discoveries about evolution of the body and brain put into an accessible book My medium rating reflects the limited impact I got from the book due to a former career in developmental neurobiology and past reading of inspired writing on evolution from the likes of Gould Dawkins and Wilson Still its sexy and cool to hear about how structures evolved for one purpose get adapted for new functions when opportunities for expansion of life emerge Thus it was for fish making the transition to land life as amphibians by “repurposing” bony structures of fins as forms that comprise bones of the limbs and pawshands That Shubin was involved in finding the rare fossils of transition forms above the Arctic circle brings some valuable authenticity to his story He is in his element as well when he covers the lineage of the bones of the mammalian inner ear from bones of the jaws of ancient fish And he does a pretty good job keeping it lively when he covers basic embryology behind basic body plans limb development and the evolution of teeth smell and eyes He has to spread himself so thin that the molecular genetic revolution spawned by the discovery of pattern genes called Hox and how cell fates are determined gets such a light treatment that much of the wonder and magnificence of these advances dont really shineThe hook
for the general reader is an altering of your mindset as highlighted in the books title ie like Russian nesting dolls the forms and patterns of our fish ancestors lie within us The concept of lineage from one parent to another assures continuity even further back he notes that he could have called the book “Your Inner Fly” given the analogous roles that Hox genes play in their development Looking at the advances from the fish side of things his playful perspective leads to a section near the end called “Why History Makes Us Sick” In many ways we humans are the fish euivalent of a hot rod Beetle Take the body plan of a fish dress it up to be a mammal tweak and twist that mammal until it walks on two legs talks thinks and has superfine control of its fingersand you have a recipe for problems We can dress up a fish only so much without paying a price In a perfectly designed worldone with no historywe would not have to suffer everything from hemorrhoids to cancer Thats a pretty punchy way of looking at things and he tries to make good on the conclusions by diverse examples of diseases and problems with our bodies that reflect on its evolutionary history He just ran out of space in apage book to do the subject justice Somehow I miss the creative ability of Lewis Thomas to highlight the concept of mitochondria as bacterial invaders enslaved in all cells with the sentence along the lines of “I sometimes wonder whether I am taking my mitochondia for a walk or whether they are taking me for a walk” Shubin just doesnt have such wonderful skill in writing Few do and many readers can still learn much from a decent B lecturer.