Nova has an exciting video Podcast on Tiktaalik. Nova's in-depth expose "Jugment day: Intelligent Design on Trial" discusses Tiktaalik. On Youtube we find many more fascinating videos about Shubin's book and his work.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. In Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin 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.
"Neil Shubin: Your Inner fish" a success by any standard
Neil Shubin's latest book on evolutionary theory is by all standards a great success. It ranks around 200 in Amazon books and first in Evolution Science Books. When I checked the book's availability in our library system there were close to 40 pending holds.
A sales rank of 200 means 225-250 books per week are sold. Compare this to a rank of 24,000 for Behe's boo "Edge of Evolution" sold at a bargain price of $6.99 down from $28.00 or 111,550 for the regular priced version. Those numbers translate to few copies per month being sold.
Neil Shubin is a professor of organismal biology at the University of Chicago. He, as part of a team of scientists, discovered the now infamous Titaalik transitional fossil which causes so much consternation amongst Intelligent Design Creationists. His book Your Inner Fish introduces its readers to an exciting overview of how our evolutionary history links us back to a common ancestor with fish. Of course, that's not where our common ancestry ends.
Sales Rank
54 Comments
MelM · 1 March 2008
I see "Your Inner Fish" at number 22 on the NYT hardcover nonfiction bestseller list. Great! I hope the book helps stiffen the opposition to introducing miracles into science (aka, creationism).
RBH · 1 March 2008
Paul Burnett · 1 March 2008
Along with "Your Inner Fish", I regularly refer the curious to Dr. Kevin Padian's "Padian's Critter's" slideshow and Dr. Barbara Forrest’s paper, “Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals”. I particilarly revel in giving out these links when being a troll on creationists' and other right-wing evolution-deniers' blogs.
PvM · 1 March 2008
RBH, you are right... Still funny....
Although I have lived in this country for quite a while, English still trips me up.
Paul Burnett · 1 March 2008
Moderator: Please remove self-proclaimed "Biblical Scholar and Scientist Extraordinaire" Clarence David Parsons' blatant advertisement for his bogus "Quest" books. He'll probably sell some of them to ignorant home-schoolers and gullible church schools, but "Quest" is not science by any stretch, and his presence here is a sign of his desperation at flogging his vanity-press pseudoscience.
Erik · 1 March 2008
Just happened upon your site and came to this page first. _Your Inner Fish_ was the book I finished before the one I am on now (_Monkey Girl_ ). Shubin has written a wonderful book, and though some who have more background in evolution science may find it too simplistic, it filled in more that a few gaps in my own knowledge. He is also a great writer, and it is a fascinating read. I would like to have paid a bit less for it, especially considering it length, but still worth the price.
rimpal · 1 March 2008
Stunning stuff from Shubin! Kids now want to do biology and especially evolutionary biology.
Ravilyn Sanders · 1 March 2008
Picked up this book and (and two more evolution for everyone and Scientists confront creationism) today and finished TIF in one sitting. Pleasantly surprised to see it being the lead story in PT.
One small quibble, Shubin misspells jury rigged as jerry-rigged at least five times. Hope he corrects it in the next print run.
At one place he says something like, "We have three kinds of cells in our eyes to detect three kinds of color, like the ink
jet printer uses inks of three colors ...". The engineer in me
says we use three inks in the printers because we have three kinds of cone cells in our eyes. Persumably ink jet printers designed for mammals with two kinds of cones might do with two color
inks and the printers meant for organisms without color vision
might be just black and white.
Overall a good book. Have already read the crown jewels in
PT's postings and links, the knee, the hiccups, the gonads etc.
But still learned new things about the development of the
12 cranial nerves, connections between the inner ear and the
lateral line in fish etc. Mentions with passion finding the
original Appolo 8 space capsule in the back room of a Chicago
museum etc.
The most interesting thing I learnt was about the bones of the middle ear. Every one knows they are the jaw bones of the reptiles. But learnt today that this fact was discovered full three decades before the
publication of The origin of Species. Interesting because one of the stupid arguments by the creationists go
like this: "The jaws of the reptiles have two articulation
points. The mammalian jaw has just one. If mammals evolved
from the reptiles, during the transition they could not open
or close they jaw, how did they eat?". Of course, mammals evolved from a common
ancestor to reptiles, not from reptiles. Anyway what
happened to that jaw bone of the reptiles was discovered
way back in 1830s!!
Matt Young · 1 March 2008
Shubin is probably conflating jury-rig with jerry-build. American Heritage Dictionary (but not Merriam-Webster) accepts jerry-rig as synonymous with jury-rig and gives that etymology. It's an example of evolution.
Science Nut · 2 March 2008
The web site...
http://www.news.com/5208-1008_3-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=8608&messageID=61109&start=-1
...says:
Although their etymologies are obscure and their meanings
overlap, these are two expressions. Something poorly
built is "jerry-built." something rigged up temporarily in a
makeshift manner with materials at hand, often in an ingenious
manner, is "jury-rigged." "Jerry-built" always has a negative
connotation, whereas one can be impressed by the cleverness of
a jury-rigged solution. Many people cross-pollinate these two
expressions and mistakenly say "jerry-rigged" or "jury-built."
I think the distinction of temporary vs. shoddy seems to separate the definitions. Maybe someone can read the usage in context to offer an opinion on right or wrong usage.
J. Grybowski · 2 March 2008
Actually, the tricky thing about language is that you can't really assign it "evolution" in the sense of biology -- languages don't reproduce, and a single person is not limited to just one. They are, however, imperfectly transmitted, and a community of speakers is a ripe place for new innovations. What actually sticks out of these mistaken usages and new coinages seems somewhat up to chance, but they contribute to a linguistic sphere that is constantly changing with the passage of time.
Ravilyn Sanders · 2 March 2008
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 2 March 2008
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 2 March 2008
Frank J · 2 March 2008
raven · 2 March 2008
Neil Shubin's book is apparently a must read book by the general community.
I just checked my local public library and they just got the book. There are a dozen holds on it already. This is unusual.
Just read Jennifer Clacks book Gaining Ground, The Origin and Early Evolution of Tetrapods. It strikes me that we now have a reasonably good transitional series of fossils for the evolution from fish to amphibians.
So much for the creo lies about gaps and no transitional fossils. We've also just barely scratched the surface in a literal and figurative sense. Much of the earth's surface is covered with sedimentary rocks, in some cases miles and miles deep. In another few decades or a century who knows how many more informative fossils will be found?
To do a thorough job we would have to carefully dig through thousands of cubic kilometers of rock. Somehow the funding for that never seems to be there. LOL
Matt Young · 2 March 2008
Languages do not reproduce, but neither do species, yet both evolve. The evolution of language seems to me to be at least analogous to evolution by natural selection as words are coined or their meanings are changed and then the new words or the new meanings compete for survival. On second thought, maybe changing of meaning is an example of gentic drift.
Jerry-build certainly implies shoddiness, whereas jury-rig implies a possibly clever improvisation. I forget who said it, but we shd probably resist changes that destroy unique meanings, as when we use unique to mean unusual and thus have no word that means unique. On that ground, if I were Shubin's editor, I wd resist jerry-rig because it will dilute the unique meaning of jury-rig.
Matt Young · 2 March 2008
Sorry, genEtic drift. I can't type.
TomS · 2 March 2008
One additional point in favor of the book: He points out that evolutionary understanding is useful in the study of medicine - in particular, anatomy.
Frank J · 2 March 2008
Dolly Sheriff · 2 March 2008
raven · 2 March 2008
Frank J · 2 March 2008
David B. Benson · 2 March 2008
The highest quality coffee-table books use ten inks to reproduce fine art, inlcuding photographs.
wamba · 2 March 2008
Neil Shubin’s book is apparently a must read book by the general community.
Wamba has not met the general, but has read Your Inner Fish and agrees that it a must read, and a fun read!
dave · 2 March 2008
Standard printers use four inks - CMYK which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Like paints, they work by colour subtraction, with the three colours when added together tending towards a muddy black, and the black ink being there to get a more accurate black. A better comparison would be with monitors or computer screens which use RGB - red green blue, which when added together produce white light. Back to Newton!
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 2 March 2008
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 2 March 2008
ABC/Larry · 2 March 2008
GvlGeologist, FCD · 2 March 2008
PvM · 2 March 2008
Stanton · 3 March 2008
Ichthyic · 3 March 2008
Banned Larry Wrote:
why is BANNED larry WRITING at all.
PvM · 3 March 2008
GvlGeologist, FCD · 3 March 2008
PvM,
Thanks for confirming my understanding of the rank issue. When Larry Farfromreadingcomprehension wrote his note, I at first thought to myself, "Is it possible that Pim was referring to #s of books and that Larry was right? Nah."
Larry? Larry? You there? any comment?
(Sorry for feeding the troll)
And I, too, am proud of my fishy, amphibious, and reptilian ancestors as well, as distasteful (or tasty!) as some of them might have been. Without them, where would we all be?
ABC/Larry · 3 March 2008
Stacy S. · 3 March 2008
I'm surprised you got to post here at all!!
Muffy St. Bernard · 3 March 2008
I hadn't heard of the book until I read the "tadpole hiccup" post here. Last week I went into our local mom & pop bookstore; I couldn't remember the author, but when I said "inner fish" they instantly lead me to the book. It is obviously selling well at their store.
I haven't read it yet, but it's sitting at home on my shelf, waiting.
Muffy St. Bernard · 3 March 2008
I bought two books that day at the same store: "Your Inner Fish"...and an enormous 2006 Oxford Dictionary.
The dictionary has entries only for "jerry-built" ("badly or hastily built with materials of poor quality") and "jury-rigged" ("makeshift; improvised").
No mention whatsoever of "jerry-rigged" or "jury-built." But the more people misuse the words, the more chance they become part of the language. I personally thought that "jerry-rigged" was the correct word.
Henry J · 3 March 2008
Of course, one could point out that neither pride nor shame is relevant to the accuracy of the conclusion that we're part of the fish clade. We yam what we yam.
Bill Gascoyne · 3 March 2008
GvlGeologist, FCD · 3 March 2008
David B. Benson · 3 March 2008
Larry is completely out-of-it, just MSU.
Just Bob · 3 March 2008
Proud of ancestors?
Larry, perhaps you're more proud of the DIRT, which is the ancestor of all mankind, according to Genesis.
Or are fish somehow more shameful as ancestors than a handful of mud?
PvM · 3 March 2008
Henry J · 3 March 2008
Bill Gascoyne · 4 March 2008
PvM · 4 March 2008
PvM · 4 March 2008
SteveG · 4 March 2008
Another book published by a professional scientist recently that is not only relevant to evolution but that explicitly deals with the scientific errors of creationist claims is the book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters by Donald R. Prothero, on issues about geology and paleontology, published late last year. Because of dealing with geological issues as well as paleontological issues, Prothero's book has relevance to young earth creationism as well as to old earth creationism.
Ichthyic · 4 March 2008
No you whine and accuse.
*bing*
that's what he's into.
he doesn't care about the subject at all.
or haven't you figured that out yet?
he's just nuts.
GvlGeologist, FCD · 5 March 2008
I just want to thank all that commented on Shubin's new book and piqued my interest. It gave me incentive to check with Amazon. I just ordered it, along with Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters (Donald Prothero), The Dinosauria (Dave Weishampel, who was my Paleo TA in undergrad!), and, sadly, a book on small engine repair.
I will enjoy reading them over our Spring Break. Well, maybe not the small engine repair book.
Tom Paine · 13 March 2008
Neil Shubin is coming to Ottawa, Ontario this weekend to speak at the Archives about the evolution of the human body, the theme of his "Your Inner Fish" book. There will be a model of Tiktaalik and casts of the bones and I am pretty stoked about this.
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