View source for Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

{{infobox
|title=Your Inner Fish
|author=Neil Shubin
|reviewer=Magda Healey
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=An accessible, concise but brimming with detail and anecdote book showing how human bodies carry an inheritance that goes to the very  beginning of life on Earth and demonstrating the fundamental unity of all living organisms. Recommended, especially for those with a little background
in natural sciences.
|rating=4.5
|buy=Maybe
|borrow=Yes
|format=Paperback
|pages=256
|publisher=Penguin
|date=January 2009
|isbn=978-0141027586
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141027584</amazonuk>
|amazonus=<amazonus>0375424474</amazonus>
}}
Every living thing on the planet had parents. This is a law of biology so
fundamental that it's usually taken for granted, but it holds the key to the
phenomenon known as descent with modifications, which is the mechanism of
evolution. As the process leaves signatures of ancestral features in the
descending organisms, we can learn about our own bodies from studying the
whole "tree of life": the way our body is constructed and the way it works;
how a complete individual with lungs and heart, skull and feet, ears and
eyes is assembled from the initial clump of cells.

With incredible breadth but not getting bogged down in detail, Shubin looks
to fossil evidence, development of embryos and analysis of DNA to
convincingly present his picture of the unity of life on Earth and the
origins of our own characteristics. As in Wislawa Szymborska's poem, the
hand that made a flint axe, and the hand that made a spaceship is a ''hand
née fin'': and the bones in this hand are uncannily identical to the
bones in a flipper of a long extinct proto-amphibian whose fossils Shubin
dug out in the freezing Canadian Arctic. The chapters dealing with embryonic
development and its genetic regulators as well as the nitty-gritty of the
human ear were particularly riveting.

Both style and content would suggest that the intended audience of ''Your
Inner Fish'' consists of young(ish) people with no knowledge of biology
beyond basic school level, though I have spotted a few terms that could do
with an explanation for those who might have forgotten even that.
Nevertheless, it's a very accessible book: the vocabulary is as jargon-free
as possible and specialist terms are introduced only when necessary, never
for the sake of just presenting a label for something.

Shubin explains the physiological processes and anatomical structures in a
lively, simple, easy to visualise terms and enlivens his account with jokes,
anecdotes and comparisons to modern life and even pop-culture. These might
be occasionally annoying but mostly are actually very useful (I will never
forget that sponges can re-assemble after being put through a sieve - you
need to read the book to see why it was made so memorable; and a kitchen
recipe for extracting the "white glop" of DNA might come useful one day).
There is enough descriptive detail and anecdote to maintain interest, but
Shubin never loses his fundamental focus on the Big Idea and there are handy
summaries and brief reiterations of the key points to help the reader keep
on track too.

Shubin freely draws on his own experience in the field and this personal
angle provides anecdote, interest and often introduces new sections. It's
interesting, well told and useful as it sheds some additional light on how
the science is done in the field and in the lab. It also allows him to show
how seemingly obscure details that individual scientist tend to study (e.g.
teeth in proto-mammals who lived millions of years ago) are meaningful in
the greater story of life on Earth and can help understand how our own human
bodies evolved, how they are constructed and how they work.

The title captures perfectly the underlying idea of the whole book: our own
bodies carry an inheritance that goes to the very beginning of life on
Earth. The fundamental unity of all living (and now extinct) organisms is
shown again and again; while clues to better understanding of human anatomy
and physiology can be found in simpler vertebrates (e.g. sharks), other
animals (fruit flies) and even sponges.

I always find it rather wonderful how the most modern, cutting age science
can provide not only knowledge about the nature of the world, but also
demonstrate how we are a part of it. A brain that can question this
connection is, luckily, the same brain that is capable of understanding at
least a fraction of the history of its own emergence from the primeval slime
of first bacteria.

Recommended, especially for those with little knowledge of natural science
and for those who were ever, even momentarily confused by the ideas of
"intelligent design".

Thanks to the publishers for sending this volume to the Bookbag.

If you like books that show not only what science discovers but how and
by whom it's done you might like [[In Search of Memory]]. It also shows how research on seemingly very different organisms
can help understand human functioning. If you are interested in the history of Earth as a planet, as well as life on it, you should read Ted Nield's [[Supercontinent]].

{{toptentext|list=List Of Books To Celebrate Charles Darwin's 200th Anniversary}}

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