2009 Spring Literary Launch - Your Inner Fish

"Launch" into the spring with a great book! The book we have selected fits with the Year of Evolution theme and events around the Philadelphia region for Darwin's 200th birthday--"Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body," by Neil Schubin. Students enrolled in LING 001U and GEOSC 021H must have the book completed before the semester begins to be ready for in-class discussions during the first week of classes.All honors students will meet during the spring semester for book discussions with their honors peers and honors faculty.

Book Synopsis

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.

Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape,
on the day the first book was written.
~ Yevgeny Zamyatin ~

Your Inner Fish does an amazing job taking scientific concepts and breaking them down into understandable, interesting chapters. I enjoyed seeing the similarities between my body and long dead creatures. -- Adrienne Showalter

The book was alright. I don't know whether it really proves anything, though. Similarities between creatures' structures, bones, etc., can just as easily point to a common design as to evolution. There is more convincing evidence out there. -- Mary-Therese Capaldi

I found "Your Inner Fish" very interesting. One of the most interesting facts was how the human middle ear bones developed. I could not believe they were once a reptile jaw. Another fact that I found interesting was the gradual development of the human eye. One last thing was how human are susceptible to disease and other viruses. -- John Formento