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Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Science & Technology (2020)In Some Assembly Required, Neil Shubin takes readers on a journey of discovery spanning centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life's immense diversity. An exciting and accessible new view of the evolution of human and animal life on Earth. From the author of national bestseller, Your Inner Fish, this extraordinary journey of discovery spans centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life's immense diversity.
Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.
We have now arrived at a remarkable moment, prehistoric fossils coupled with new DNA technology have given us the tools to answer some of the basic questions of our existence: How do big changes in evolution happen? Is our presence on Earth the product of mere chance? This new science reveals a multibillion-year evolutionary history filled with twists and turns, trial and error, accident and invention.
Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.
We have now arrived at a remarkable moment, prehistoric fossils coupled with new DNA technology have given us the tools to answer some of the basic questions of our existence: How do big changes in evolution happen? Is our presence on Earth the product of mere chance? This new science reveals a multibillion-year evolutionary history filled with twists and turns, trial and error, accident and invention.
267 pages, Hardcover
First published March 17, 2020
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February 5, 2021
"The poet William Blake wrote of seeing "the universe in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower." When you know how to look you can see billions of years inside the organs, cells and DNA in all living things and relish our connections to the rest of life on our planet."
To those who don't believe in evolution, I would say, isn't it a greater God who could create a world where everything came from everything and would be eternally connected? Where to the end of time, the history of all beings would be, in each being, connected to the very first one? I loved this book, the ending I quoted is a 'bible' to me.
The book is either a prequel or a sequel to Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, it doesn't really matter the order but they both hang together, and they are both 10 star books, reading them has expanded my world enormously.
If you like reading science books and don't mind putting a bit of work into it (I was continually rereading passages to make sure I understood them and where they were connected to previous ideas) then these two books (and Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind) are mind-expanding and since they are all very well written, very enjoyable too.
I could gush, right?
__________________
So I read Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body and was entranced by his description of how we were transformed from a fish body - starting with a neck - to our present, primate, bipedal form. This book is a marriage of palaentology and evolutionary biology. Right now I'm reading how stationary marine organisms transformed, evolved, into ... fish, and everything else.
Sea squirts held the key. They are tubes - water in one tube, nutrients sucked out, water pumped back out. Nothing much really, but like many marine organisms they have free swimming larvae. A tadpole-like stage, with a body, a notochord which is a stiffening rod and nerve tube (which will become a spine and spinal cord) and an eye. What happened, evolutionary speaking, is that some mutation stopped the sea squirt larval stage from settling on the sea bed and metamorphosing into a sea squirt and instead development took off from the tadpole stage towards free swimming fish.
Mutations are where the dna doesn't quite make a perfect copy and a gene is altered for expression, physically or by function or both. It might not be a good thing when it causes a disease or disorder, but it is the only way that evolution can work, a perfect copy of every gene would have had us all amoeba forever.
I ordered this book, Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA and was reading The Bilingual Brain: And What It Tells Us about the Science of Language while I waited for it to come. But it was so dry, when this came I put it to one side. Right now the details of evolution excite me.
Something lovely. I've always loved Ernst Haeckel's wonderful marine animal drawings Art Forms in Nature but I didn't know that ships going on explorations carried with them artists to document their discoveries. Haeckel was a fantastic artist as well as scientist. Photography is an art unto itself, but with the coming of that, we lost something. A photograph can never interpret as an artist's drawing or paiting can.
To those who don't believe in evolution, I would say, isn't it a greater God who could create a world where everything came from everything and would be eternally connected? Where to the end of time, the history of all beings would be, in each being, connected to the very first one? I loved this book, the ending I quoted is a 'bible' to me.
The book is either a prequel or a sequel to Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, it doesn't really matter the order but they both hang together, and they are both 10 star books, reading them has expanded my world enormously.
If you like reading science books and don't mind putting a bit of work into it (I was continually rereading passages to make sure I understood them and where they were connected to previous ideas) then these two books (and Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind) are mind-expanding and since they are all very well written, very enjoyable too.
I could gush, right?
__________________
So I read Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body and was entranced by his description of how we were transformed from a fish body - starting with a neck - to our present, primate, bipedal form. This book is a marriage of palaentology and evolutionary biology. Right now I'm reading how stationary marine organisms transformed, evolved, into ... fish, and everything else.
Sea squirts held the key. They are tubes - water in one tube, nutrients sucked out, water pumped back out. Nothing much really, but like many marine organisms they have free swimming larvae. A tadpole-like stage, with a body, a notochord which is a stiffening rod and nerve tube (which will become a spine and spinal cord) and an eye. What happened, evolutionary speaking, is that some mutation stopped the sea squirt larval stage from settling on the sea bed and metamorphosing into a sea squirt and instead development took off from the tadpole stage towards free swimming fish.
Mutations are where the dna doesn't quite make a perfect copy and a gene is altered for expression, physically or by function or both. It might not be a good thing when it causes a disease or disorder, but it is the only way that evolution can work, a perfect copy of every gene would have had us all amoeba forever.
I ordered this book, Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA and was reading The Bilingual Brain: And What It Tells Us about the Science of Language while I waited for it to come. But it was so dry, when this came I put it to one side. Right now the details of evolution excite me.
Something lovely. I've always loved Ernst Haeckel's wonderful marine animal drawings Art Forms in Nature but I didn't know that ships going on explorations carried with them artists to document their discoveries. Haeckel was a fantastic artist as well as scientist. Photography is an art unto itself, but with the coming of that, we lost something. A photograph can never interpret as an artist's drawing or paiting can.
April 20, 2020
A fascinating history of the evolution of life on earth
Evolutionary biology is one of my favourite subjects to read about. It is thrilling to see how life, once begun, was able to go from microscopic one-celled organisms to the abundance of life forms we see today.
Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA takes us on a journey from those microscopic single-celled organisms to life with all the complexities, varieties, and intelligence that abounds today. Tracing the history of paleontology, Neil Shubin explores the transformation of life forms through the fossil record. He then moves into the fields of embryology and molecular biology, relating many discoveries about evolution made since the discovery of DNA. He shows the interconnectedness of all life forms on earth, from the humblest one-celled organisms to us humans. He explains how almost every protein in the body is a modified version of ancient life forms, repurposed to perform new functions.
Evolution is not a straight path from simple to complex; rather, it branches off into myriad forms, genetic mutation after genetic mutation. Many of those mutations are detrimental to a species and those born with them will die out before passing on their DNA. However, sometimes a mutation provides an advantage, helping that individual to have more offspring than others of its kind, and those mutations, over many generations, can bring about new species.
It was fascinating to learn the history of genomes and the similarities in the genetic code of different creatures. For instance, the DNA that codes for gills in fish has been repurposed to develop lungs in land-dwelling creatures. The field of embryology showed how closely related we all are even before the advent of genetics. It is interesting to note how, "even though people don’t have gills, we have the swellings and clefts in our embryonic stages" and to see how with different species, old features were repurposed to bring about new organs with new uses and functions. For instance, the same genes that make hands and feet are used to make fins in fish and wings in birds.
One of the most interesting things I learned from this book is how it was the genetic material left over from a virus that eventually led to the ability of mammals to have pregnancies rather than lay eggs, and how a virus that infected one of our ancient ancestors left behind the DNA that codes for a protein that was then used to develop brains that can form memories. Mr. Shubin tells us that "by some estimates, 8 percent of our genome is composed of dead viruses, more than a hundred thousand of them at last count." I can't help but wonder what genetic material from Cov-19 might be left behind in the DNA of humans and how it might affect future generations.
Though not a lengthy book, "Some Assembly Required" is packed full of information providing proof of how life on Earth has evolved from the single-celled organisms which first appeared some 4 billion years ago.
A few cool quotes/facts from this book
• "Humans and chimpanzees are, at the level of proteins and genes, almost identical."
• "Nearly identical species of fruit fly differ from one another genetically more than humans and chimps do."
• "Some salamanders and frogs have twenty-five times more genetic material than humans," though much of it is meaningless stretches of junk DNA.
• "Over two-thirds of our entire genome is composed of strings of repeated copies of sequences with no known function."
• "Each kernel [of corn] is a separate embryo, a distinct individual" so when you eat an ear of corn, "you are eating over one thousand genetically distinct creatures."
If you find these tidbits interesting, you will probably love this book!
December 6, 2021
Shubin explains in plain language how evolution works to achieve the seemingly unexplainable such as the development of land animals with lungs and legs from fish with gills and fins, the development of flight from land animals, and much more. Shubin, a paleontologist, recounted his discovery of an ancient fish with a neck, elbows and wrist, in a prior book Your Inner Fish which I enjoyed. Here he uses the same style, ideal for those who don’t want to get weighted down by a lot of scientific lingo.
Shubin traces the history of discovery of creatures that serve as intermediaries beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing right up to the present day. He profiles many of the scientists involved from Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt and discovered fish that breathe air to Lynn Margulis who proposed that mitochondria were bacteria originally engulfed by another microbe and suffered decades of derisive criticism before her theory became widely accepted. He highlights the dramatic change in his lifetime of techniques used to analyze specimens. He likewise transitioned becoming a biologist to take advantage of the genetic revolution in science.
Underpinning many of his examples are five words from Darwin “by a change of function.” Another quote that applies is from playwright Lillian Hellman “Nothing, of course, begins when you think it did.” Lungs didn’t develop to help animals survive on land and feathers didn’t develop to help animals fly. Fish developed swim bladders that could fill with air to help them adjust buoyancy as they changed depth in the water. Some of these became used as lungs to supplement oxygen supply when the water was deficient. Some fish have both lungs and gills. Structurally the swim bladder and the lung are similar. What changed was the function.
Recent discoveries have revealed many carnivorous dinosaurs had feathers. Feathers did not develop in dinosaurs for flight. Feathers would have served as insulation and been useful in sexual display just as in birds. Perhaps most important when combined with the hollow bones, hinged wrists and winglike arms these predators had developed, feathers would have helped propel these land animals to catch their prey. Shubin states ‘biological innovations never come about during the great transition period they are associated with.”
Salamanders give us an example of the change from a water to a land animal. The larvae have gills, finlike limbs and flat tails well adapted to their life in the water, then they lose their gills and reconfigure their skulls, limbs and tails for life on land. Some salamanders can control these changes based on their environment. If the environment is dry, they metamorphize. If it is wet, they don’t, keeping their gills and aquatic properties. The speed and length of development from embryo to adult is another way changes in features evolve. Some DNA codes for proteins and some DNA serves as a switch to turn on or off a DNA segment that codes for proteins. If for example proteins that promote brain development are produced for a longer time then a larger more complex brain will develop.
Repurposing of genes precipitates many of the changes we see in evolution. The genes that make fin rays that lie at the end of a fish’s fins are used to make our hands. New genes do not have to developed; rather old ones are modified to a new purpose. New genes are often copies of existing genes. Duplicates proliferate throughout the genome. This means one of the copies can maintain its original purpose while the others take on new ones. For example, keratin, a protein important to the development of nails, skin and hair is produced by an ancient gene that has been copied into ones modified to produce versions of keratan tailored to support each tissue type. Genes that produce proteins that enable responses to varying light wavelengths or different smells have developed similarly. It’s a common story in the genome
Our genes also come from the outside. Viruses embed themselves in our genome to reproduce. Sometimes they stay there and can be modified and put to a useful purpose. The ARC gene looks very similar to HIV. It plays a very important role in our capacity for memory. Other genes such as one that helps the placenta function efficiently also arose originally from viral invasions. There are also what are called jumping genes, genes with a propensity to duplicate and move to far distant regions of the genome where they can be employed to help direct a process in an entirely different part of our body. Shubin notes that 60% of our DNA is made up of repeated sequences produced by jumping genes and 10% came from viruses.
Shubin’s presentation covers ground familiar to those who have read books about evolution and the genome. Those who enjoy more detailed books may not find it worthwhile and while I found little new aside from some of the historical profiles, I still liked it. For the reader who would like to know more about the ideas mentioned here and many that I left out; I highly recommend it. It’s only 200 pages, well written and very accessible.
Shubin traces the history of discovery of creatures that serve as intermediaries beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing right up to the present day. He profiles many of the scientists involved from Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt and discovered fish that breathe air to Lynn Margulis who proposed that mitochondria were bacteria originally engulfed by another microbe and suffered decades of derisive criticism before her theory became widely accepted. He highlights the dramatic change in his lifetime of techniques used to analyze specimens. He likewise transitioned becoming a biologist to take advantage of the genetic revolution in science.
Underpinning many of his examples are five words from Darwin “by a change of function.” Another quote that applies is from playwright Lillian Hellman “Nothing, of course, begins when you think it did.” Lungs didn’t develop to help animals survive on land and feathers didn’t develop to help animals fly. Fish developed swim bladders that could fill with air to help them adjust buoyancy as they changed depth in the water. Some of these became used as lungs to supplement oxygen supply when the water was deficient. Some fish have both lungs and gills. Structurally the swim bladder and the lung are similar. What changed was the function.
Recent discoveries have revealed many carnivorous dinosaurs had feathers. Feathers did not develop in dinosaurs for flight. Feathers would have served as insulation and been useful in sexual display just as in birds. Perhaps most important when combined with the hollow bones, hinged wrists and winglike arms these predators had developed, feathers would have helped propel these land animals to catch their prey. Shubin states ‘biological innovations never come about during the great transition period they are associated with.”
Salamanders give us an example of the change from a water to a land animal. The larvae have gills, finlike limbs and flat tails well adapted to their life in the water, then they lose their gills and reconfigure their skulls, limbs and tails for life on land. Some salamanders can control these changes based on their environment. If the environment is dry, they metamorphize. If it is wet, they don’t, keeping their gills and aquatic properties. The speed and length of development from embryo to adult is another way changes in features evolve. Some DNA codes for proteins and some DNA serves as a switch to turn on or off a DNA segment that codes for proteins. If for example proteins that promote brain development are produced for a longer time then a larger more complex brain will develop.
Repurposing of genes precipitates many of the changes we see in evolution. The genes that make fin rays that lie at the end of a fish’s fins are used to make our hands. New genes do not have to developed; rather old ones are modified to a new purpose. New genes are often copies of existing genes. Duplicates proliferate throughout the genome. This means one of the copies can maintain its original purpose while the others take on new ones. For example, keratin, a protein important to the development of nails, skin and hair is produced by an ancient gene that has been copied into ones modified to produce versions of keratan tailored to support each tissue type. Genes that produce proteins that enable responses to varying light wavelengths or different smells have developed similarly. It’s a common story in the genome
Our genes also come from the outside. Viruses embed themselves in our genome to reproduce. Sometimes they stay there and can be modified and put to a useful purpose. The ARC gene looks very similar to HIV. It plays a very important role in our capacity for memory. Other genes such as one that helps the placenta function efficiently also arose originally from viral invasions. There are also what are called jumping genes, genes with a propensity to duplicate and move to far distant regions of the genome where they can be employed to help direct a process in an entirely different part of our body. Shubin notes that 60% of our DNA is made up of repeated sequences produced by jumping genes and 10% came from viruses.
Shubin’s presentation covers ground familiar to those who have read books about evolution and the genome. Those who enjoy more detailed books may not find it worthwhile and while I found little new aside from some of the historical profiles, I still liked it. For the reader who would like to know more about the ideas mentioned here and many that I left out; I highly recommend it. It’s only 200 pages, well written and very accessible.
January 17, 2020
Very strong book on biology, very credibly written by the author.
I went into this thinking that this might be a bit of pop science or otherwise fluff, and was surprised to find the depth with which Shubin explores the recursive nature of biological organization from competition at the genome level all the way up to his own personal take on the paleontology of life.
Great book, if you like science, biology, people, society, or a curious to see how things work, might be worth picking this one up.
I went into this thinking that this might be a bit of pop science or otherwise fluff, and was surprised to find the depth with which Shubin explores the recursive nature of biological organization from competition at the genome level all the way up to his own personal take on the paleontology of life.
Great book, if you like science, biology, people, society, or a curious to see how things work, might be worth picking this one up.
May 12, 2020
In this wonderful book, palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin takes us on a grand history of evolution, demonstrating how the power of progress lies not in the caricature of millions of random changes, but on the way existing structures are constantly repurposed from one use to another - from bones and body segments, to “jumping genes” that move around the genome and are co-opted into new roles, to viruses and bacteria that become absorbed into whole new organisms and allow for wholesale reinvention.
He skillfully weaves the story of evolutionary development into the intellectual discovery of these processes - from before Darwin and Mendel right up to the present day with the Crispr CAS-9 technology, drawing parallels both in the fortunate accidents that lead to progress in both, as well as the fact that of right-time-right-place, that some advancements cannot bear fruit unless conditions are right but, when they are, they are all-but inevitable.
This does exactly what a popular science book should, giving the reader a deeper understanding of the subject while being thoroughly entertaining.
He skillfully weaves the story of evolutionary development into the intellectual discovery of these processes - from before Darwin and Mendel right up to the present day with the Crispr CAS-9 technology, drawing parallels both in the fortunate accidents that lead to progress in both, as well as the fact that of right-time-right-place, that some advancements cannot bear fruit unless conditions are right but, when they are, they are all-but inevitable.
This does exactly what a popular science book should, giving the reader a deeper understanding of the subject while being thoroughly entertaining.
June 4, 2020
Neil Shubin's Some Assembly Required is not without its merits. It contains a readable and succinct primer on the progress, not of evolution, but more the gradual peeling back of layers of the complexity underlying evolution by scientists through the ages. Shubin shines his modest spotlight on some of the unsung heroes of evolutionary biology, and escorts you around the museum of evolution's history, revealing what at first seem to be quaint bits of forgotten lore, but are actually major moments of scientific discovery. Esoteric research by passionate savants on everything from salamanders and corn to shrimp and chickens prove to be vital to our modern understanding of the inner-workings of DNA. The halls Shubin lead your through are familiar if you've ever read a book about evolution. It's the valuable stuff you never noticed up on the high shelves that's the most interesting thing here.
What left me a little unfulfilled was how padded it all seemed. As previously noted, a lot of this book is a recapping, and possibly a little fleshing out of, a lot of stuff you already know. It's like the author had some really cool ideas he wanted to share, but not quite enough to make for an entire book. On the one hand, I'm glad I got to read about the cool new stuff, but grew weary at how often I had to read through the old stuff again. That, plus Shubin's modest presentation left me wanting for a bit more excitement. There are some genuinely fascinating passages, as he gets into specific mechanisms at work inside the chromosomes or some ingenious method some scientist concocted to get at the heart of a hypothesis. But those moments are sporadic and fleeting.
In the end, Some Assembly Required felt like an interesting story being told by a drowsy old professor who forgot that he already told you that part of the tale. Worthwhile, to be sure, but not told with the vibrancy and verve that such an exciting story deserves.
If this book happens to be your portal into this world, and this is your first time to hear the tale, I can imagine Mr. Shubin's tour through the history of the field of evolution might pack more of a punch.
What left me a little unfulfilled was how padded it all seemed. As previously noted, a lot of this book is a recapping, and possibly a little fleshing out of, a lot of stuff you already know. It's like the author had some really cool ideas he wanted to share, but not quite enough to make for an entire book. On the one hand, I'm glad I got to read about the cool new stuff, but grew weary at how often I had to read through the old stuff again. That, plus Shubin's modest presentation left me wanting for a bit more excitement. There are some genuinely fascinating passages, as he gets into specific mechanisms at work inside the chromosomes or some ingenious method some scientist concocted to get at the heart of a hypothesis. But those moments are sporadic and fleeting.
In the end, Some Assembly Required felt like an interesting story being told by a drowsy old professor who forgot that he already told you that part of the tale. Worthwhile, to be sure, but not told with the vibrancy and verve that such an exciting story deserves.
If this book happens to be your portal into this world, and this is your first time to hear the tale, I can imagine Mr. Shubin's tour through the history of the field of evolution might pack more of a punch.
January 19, 2025
نیل شوبین در کتاب دگرگونیهای بزرگ کاوشی در دل تاریخ به ریشههای تکاملی انسان ارائه میکنه، و از خلال تاریخچه آناتومی، پیوندهای عمیقی بین بدن ما و اجداد دور دست موجودات زنده نشون میده. از یافتههای فسیلی گرفته تا بینشهای ژنتیکی، این کتاب به زبانی ساده و ملموس توضیح میده که چجوری تمامی اجزای بدن ما، از ستون فقرات گرفته تا دستها، ریشه در تغییرات عظیم گذشته دارن.
شوبین هنر نادری داره: اینکه پیچیدهترین مفاهیم علمی رو به روایتی در دسترس و گیرا تبدیل کنه. یکی از بزرگترین نقاط قوت این کتاب، تلفیق علم با مثالهای ساده روزمره است که حتی پیچیدهترین فرآیندهای بیولوژیکی رو برای خواننده روشن میکنه. با این حال، عمیقترین جنبهی این کتاب، پیام آن در مورد وحدت خلقت است؛ اینکه تمام زندگی روی زمین از همان رشتههای ابتدایی حیات سرچشمه گرفته و این زنجیره، همچنان ادامه دارد.
از سمت دیگه، ممکنه برای کسانی که اطلاعات پایهای در مورد بیولوژی ندارن، برخی بخشها کمی پیچیده باشه. همچنین، برخی مفاهیم کلیدی شاید به جزئیات بیشتری نیاز داشتن، تا افراد علاقهمند به مباحث پیشرفته تکامل هم به طور کامل رضایت پیدا کنن.
در نهایت، دگرگونیهای بزرگ یه کتاب کامل برای کشف گذشتهی مشترک و درک بهتر از جایگاه ما در طبیعته. این کتاب نگاهی تازه به بدن انسان و ریشههای پیچیدگیهای اون میده، و خواننده رو با حسی از شگفتی نسبت به زندگی و علم به حال خودش رها میکنه.
شوبین هنر نادری داره: اینکه پیچیدهترین مفاهیم علمی رو به روایتی در دسترس و گیرا تبدیل کنه. یکی از بزرگترین نقاط قوت این کتاب، تلفیق علم با مثالهای ساده روزمره است که حتی پیچیدهترین فرآیندهای بیولوژیکی رو برای خواننده روشن میکنه. با این حال، عمیقترین جنبهی این کتاب، پیام آن در مورد وحدت خلقت است؛ اینکه تمام زندگی روی زمین از همان رشتههای ابتدایی حیات سرچشمه گرفته و این زنجیره، همچنان ادامه دارد.
از سمت دیگه، ممکنه برای کسانی که اطلاعات پایهای در مورد بیولوژی ندارن، برخی بخشها کمی پیچیده باشه. همچنین، برخی مفاهیم کلیدی شاید به جزئیات بیشتری نیاز داشتن، تا افراد علاقهمند به مباحث پیشرفته تکامل هم به طور کامل رضایت پیدا کنن.
در نهایت، دگرگونیهای بزرگ یه کتاب کامل برای کشف گذشتهی مشترک و درک بهتر از جایگاه ما در طبیعته. این کتاب نگاهی تازه به بدن انسان و ریشههای پیچیدگیهای اون میده، و خواننده رو با حسی از شگفتی نسبت به زندگی و علم به حال خودش رها میکنه.
November 14, 2025
‘Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA’ by Neil Shubin is wonderfully informative! Frankly, I didn’t think it would be worth reading because I had read Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, and from the cover blurb I believed it would be a rehash from that book, with maybe a bit more information. I was absolutely wrong. Yes, it was about the same theme of identical genes being repurposed to suit whatever different animal body they were growing up (i.e. for example, fin/hand/paw). But this book was a very deep dive into DNA and genes, scientist biographies, and evolution.
I have copied the book blurb:
”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Readers' Favorite Science & Technology (2020)
The author of the best-selling Your Inner Fish gives us a lively and accessible account of the great transformations in the history of life on Earth--a new view of the evolution of human and animal life that explains how the incredible diversity of life on our planet came to be.
Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.
We have now arrived at a remarkable moment—prehistoric fossils coupled with new DNA technology have given us the tools to answer some of the basic questions of our existence: How do big changes in evolution happen? Is our presence on Earth the product of mere chance? This new science reveals a multibillion-year evolutionary history filled with twists and turns, trial and error, accident and invention.
In Some Assembly Required, Neil Shubin takes readers on a journey of discovery spanning centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life's immense diversity.”
Neil Shubin is an palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, and he not only writes a good science book, it is a good book to read for the non-scientist and general reader.
Quotes from the book:
“We know rocks can be probed for chemical evidence of life. Even if the fossils are long gone, the chemical signature of life could remain. If creatures were metabolizing carbon, then the altered carbon content should lie like a residue in the rock. Probing the rocks of East Greenland for their carbon, a team from Yale found evidence of life in rocks every older that the Apex Chert. They were 4 billion years old, dating to 500 million years after the formation of the planet and the solar system.”
“Using a mass spectrometer, a machine about the size of a household dishwasher, Schopf and his colleagues probed the carbon content of the grains in the rock and those in the filaments. The filaments had the carbon signature of life. What’s more, they represented at least five different kinds of living things. Some had the carbon fingerprint of creatures that had a primitive form of photosynthesis. Others looked like microbes known to metabolize methane as fuel.”
”New experiments reveal a multibillion-year history filled with cooperation, repurposing, competition, theft, and war. And that is just what happens inside DNA itself. With viruses continually infecting it, and its own parts at war with one another, the genome within each animal cell roils as it does its work in generation after generation. The outcome of this dynamism has been new organs and tissues, biological innovations that have changed the world.”
“The great transformations in the history of life have brought about wholesale shifts in how animals live and how their bodies are organized. The evolution of fish to land-living creatures, the origin of birds, and the beginnings of bodies themselves from single-celled creatures—these are but a small number of revolutions in the history of life.”
“Mivart was one of the first scientists to call attention to the observation that major transitions in evolution do not involve a single organ changing; rather, whole suites of features across the body have to change in concert.”
“Fossils show what life looked like in the distant past, and living creatures reveal how anatomical structures work, as well as how organs develop from egg to adult.”
“The genes that are used to build swim bladders in fish are the same ones used to make lungs in both fish and people. Having an air sac is common to virtually all fish; some use them as lungs, while others use them as buoyancy devices.”
“Living things do not inherit skulls, backbones, or cell layers from their ancestors—they inherit the processes to build them.”
“Each DNA sequence carries the instructions to make yet another sequence of molecules. Depending on the circumstances, a DNA sequence can be used as a template to make a protein or it can make copies of itself. To build a protein, the string of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs gets translated into a sequence of another type of molecule; amino acids. Different strings of amino acids, in turn, make different proteins.There are twenty different kinds of amino acids, and any one of them can reside at any point in the sequence. This code can produce an enormous number of different proteins.”
“The biggest protein in the human body, known as Titian, consists of a string of 34, 350 amino acids.”
“But now, by knowing the structure of the proteins of different animals, Pauling and Zuckerkandl could assess evolutionary relationships.”
“While the sizes, shapes and numbers of bones may differ in creatures that use wings to fly, flippers to swim, or hands to play piano, this one bone-two bones-little bones-digits pattern is always there. It is a grand anatomical theme, an ancient pattern that underlies the diversity of every creature with a limb skeleton.”
“Our DNA is not entirely an inheritance from ancestors. Viral invaders have inserted themselves and been put to work: our ancestors’ battles with them have been one of the many roots of invention.”
“In Shepherd’s senior year in college, as he was looking for a paper topic for a course in neurobiology, he ran across an article on a gene called Arc that appeared to be involved in making memories….Arc was forming hollow spheres, and these spheres were so big that they got stuck in the spaces inside the gel filter. He had seen versions of these spheres before, in his premedical training. The structure of the spheres was identical to those made by some viruses as they move from cell to cell in infect them…..Our ability to read, write, and remember the moments of our lives is due to an ancient viral infection that happened when fish took their first steps on land.”
“In the placenta, right at the boundary between the fetus and the mother, one protein has a very special role to play. Syncytin sits at this interface and serves as a molecular traffic cop as the mother and fetus exchange nutrients and waste products. A number of observations show that this protein is vital for the health of the embryo…..The more they looked, the more the team found that syncytin is essentially a viral protein that has lost its ability to infect other cells. This similarity between a mammalian protein and a virus led to a new idea. At some point in the distant past, a virus invaded our ancestors’ genome. That virus contained a version of syncytin. Instead of commandeering our ancestors’ genome to make endless copies of itself, the virus became neutered, lost its ability to infect, and then was put to work by a new master.”
The book is an excellent science book and a great read! It includes a Further Reading and Notes, section, and many illustrations adding clarity to the text.
I suggest buying a hard cover because who knows how long a factual non-fiction book with evolutionary history gleaned from rocks that are billions of years old, and descriptions of how scientists made their discoveries about DNA and genes, and how they found many of the same exact genes in the bodies of all types of living animals that have been repurposed according to the critter’s evolution (the discoveries of which Shubin explains with the general reader in mind), will be available to Americans?
I worry this and other science books will be made a crime soon if found on any bookshelves in American states with MAGA Republican and evangelical Christians in control of state government. American MAGA Republican/evangelical Christian governments have passed laws in 2024 and 2025 banning books already about slavery, violence against women by men, feminism and sexual diversity, and they have banned many history books and science books from public and school libraries in the states they control, making it a criminal offense with prison time if convicted of displaying books on the state banned book list. Universities and colleges in MAGA states are being pressured to fire many of their non-White employees, and have been forced to cancel all classes which used to teach history, philosophy and science subjects MAGA and evangelical Christians believe do not support “traditional American values” - meaning demands to only teach what science knowledge there is in the Bible (only Creationism) and only those subjects which support White Male Supremacy. God has demanded male domination over all females in the Bible. And as all Americans know, the pictures in our Bibles show Jesus is a blondish White man.
If you, gentler reader, want to know what WILL be taught to Americans in MAGA states, some enforced Christian studies are already starting in 2025 in some public schools and at school sports, and will be enforced in more schools in the future. The banning of non-fiction science and history books have already been done by law in MAGA/Republican states, along with fiction books, if they include Black history, Black characters, or lgbtq history or characters. It is forbidden to show banned science and history books and fiction novels to children under 18 years old or you will be sent to prison.
Evangelicals believe Jesus will come again and kill everyone who didn’t accept him into their heart and didn’t live by religious rules (rules which depend on whichever version of religion you practiced, which makes it doubly tough to be certain you believe in the correct version of Christianity, since being wrong means eternal burning in hell). According to evangelicals, evolution is fake news, because God never mentions it in the Bible, a book many Christians believe was written by God.
I couldn’t tell you which specific Bible many American evangelicals and MAGA Republicans are using. Among my evangelical family members, I have been offered dozens of versions as the one to believe in, always handed to me as The One, always written in simplified English words as apparently England’s King James version is too hard to read for today’s evangelicals, and always with the certainty the others will lead me into hellfire. There are over 900 known versions of the Bible in English alone, plus different Christian sects like Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. The Bible has been translated into at least over 4,000 languages, most of which I suppose are using simple easy words for today’s Christians.
As far as I know, there are thousands of different American evangelical churches who often feud with the others over what Bible to use and what God meant in the Bible evangelicals think he wrote in THEIR version of English translation. But whichever one it is God actually wrote, historically the earliest Christian Bibles appeared written in the Greek language with five sections originally written in Hebrew by Jews so necessarily they had to be translated from Hebrew into Greek, and then added to the front.
I don’t think the American evangelicals like this history much about the Bible being originally written in Greek and Hebrew, if they know about it, especially since they prefer a Jesus that looks like a blondish White male, not Jewish at all as he was in life. Plus, Jewish scholars often write that the English translations of their five books is wrongly translated from the original Hebrew.
Whatever the English version, in most English Bibles, God supposedly says he created everything in six days, and males have dominion over all life from week one, so that means science books like this one is blasphemy. ‘Some Assembly Required” explains how life on Earth has changed, some species dying out, some new species evolving into being, in the 4.5 billion years Earth has existed. According to evangelicals, the Earth is 6,000 years old, and not any single life form created by God can change because God created it, and he is eternal, and so are all of the life forms he made, and that is why evolution is fake news and no life form can die off, and new ones evolving from those made 6,000 years ago is plain wrong.
Sigh.
Every time I think this can’t get worse, I just read that more and more people don’t believe NASA sent men to the moon, or that men walked on the moon. Something to do with the American flag that was planted sticking straight out as if there was a wind? I guess they don’t know that the flag had a horizontal rod in the top hem? Or they don’t think science is real, so we couldn’t have built anything that great?
Americans certainly will no longer be that great technologically if the Bible becomes the only subject American males will learn in schools. Women won’t be allowed in school at all, of course.
I don’t know how America is going to keep a technological edge of any kind, gentler reader, under MAGA/Evangelical Christianity.
I have copied the book blurb:
”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Readers' Favorite Science & Technology (2020)
The author of the best-selling Your Inner Fish gives us a lively and accessible account of the great transformations in the history of life on Earth--a new view of the evolution of human and animal life that explains how the incredible diversity of life on our planet came to be.
Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.
We have now arrived at a remarkable moment—prehistoric fossils coupled with new DNA technology have given us the tools to answer some of the basic questions of our existence: How do big changes in evolution happen? Is our presence on Earth the product of mere chance? This new science reveals a multibillion-year evolutionary history filled with twists and turns, trial and error, accident and invention.
In Some Assembly Required, Neil Shubin takes readers on a journey of discovery spanning centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life's immense diversity.”
Neil Shubin is an palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, and he not only writes a good science book, it is a good book to read for the non-scientist and general reader.
Quotes from the book:
“We know rocks can be probed for chemical evidence of life. Even if the fossils are long gone, the chemical signature of life could remain. If creatures were metabolizing carbon, then the altered carbon content should lie like a residue in the rock. Probing the rocks of East Greenland for their carbon, a team from Yale found evidence of life in rocks every older that the Apex Chert. They were 4 billion years old, dating to 500 million years after the formation of the planet and the solar system.”
“Using a mass spectrometer, a machine about the size of a household dishwasher, Schopf and his colleagues probed the carbon content of the grains in the rock and those in the filaments. The filaments had the carbon signature of life. What’s more, they represented at least five different kinds of living things. Some had the carbon fingerprint of creatures that had a primitive form of photosynthesis. Others looked like microbes known to metabolize methane as fuel.”
”New experiments reveal a multibillion-year history filled with cooperation, repurposing, competition, theft, and war. And that is just what happens inside DNA itself. With viruses continually infecting it, and its own parts at war with one another, the genome within each animal cell roils as it does its work in generation after generation. The outcome of this dynamism has been new organs and tissues, biological innovations that have changed the world.”
“The great transformations in the history of life have brought about wholesale shifts in how animals live and how their bodies are organized. The evolution of fish to land-living creatures, the origin of birds, and the beginnings of bodies themselves from single-celled creatures—these are but a small number of revolutions in the history of life.”
“Mivart was one of the first scientists to call attention to the observation that major transitions in evolution do not involve a single organ changing; rather, whole suites of features across the body have to change in concert.”
“Fossils show what life looked like in the distant past, and living creatures reveal how anatomical structures work, as well as how organs develop from egg to adult.”
“The genes that are used to build swim bladders in fish are the same ones used to make lungs in both fish and people. Having an air sac is common to virtually all fish; some use them as lungs, while others use them as buoyancy devices.”
“Living things do not inherit skulls, backbones, or cell layers from their ancestors—they inherit the processes to build them.”
“Each DNA sequence carries the instructions to make yet another sequence of molecules. Depending on the circumstances, a DNA sequence can be used as a template to make a protein or it can make copies of itself. To build a protein, the string of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs gets translated into a sequence of another type of molecule; amino acids. Different strings of amino acids, in turn, make different proteins.There are twenty different kinds of amino acids, and any one of them can reside at any point in the sequence. This code can produce an enormous number of different proteins.”
“The biggest protein in the human body, known as Titian, consists of a string of 34, 350 amino acids.”
“But now, by knowing the structure of the proteins of different animals, Pauling and Zuckerkandl could assess evolutionary relationships.”
“While the sizes, shapes and numbers of bones may differ in creatures that use wings to fly, flippers to swim, or hands to play piano, this one bone-two bones-little bones-digits pattern is always there. It is a grand anatomical theme, an ancient pattern that underlies the diversity of every creature with a limb skeleton.”
“Our DNA is not entirely an inheritance from ancestors. Viral invaders have inserted themselves and been put to work: our ancestors’ battles with them have been one of the many roots of invention.”
“In Shepherd’s senior year in college, as he was looking for a paper topic for a course in neurobiology, he ran across an article on a gene called Arc that appeared to be involved in making memories….Arc was forming hollow spheres, and these spheres were so big that they got stuck in the spaces inside the gel filter. He had seen versions of these spheres before, in his premedical training. The structure of the spheres was identical to those made by some viruses as they move from cell to cell in infect them…..Our ability to read, write, and remember the moments of our lives is due to an ancient viral infection that happened when fish took their first steps on land.”
“In the placenta, right at the boundary between the fetus and the mother, one protein has a very special role to play. Syncytin sits at this interface and serves as a molecular traffic cop as the mother and fetus exchange nutrients and waste products. A number of observations show that this protein is vital for the health of the embryo…..The more they looked, the more the team found that syncytin is essentially a viral protein that has lost its ability to infect other cells. This similarity between a mammalian protein and a virus led to a new idea. At some point in the distant past, a virus invaded our ancestors’ genome. That virus contained a version of syncytin. Instead of commandeering our ancestors’ genome to make endless copies of itself, the virus became neutered, lost its ability to infect, and then was put to work by a new master.”
The book is an excellent science book and a great read! It includes a Further Reading and Notes, section, and many illustrations adding clarity to the text.
I suggest buying a hard cover because who knows how long a factual non-fiction book with evolutionary history gleaned from rocks that are billions of years old, and descriptions of how scientists made their discoveries about DNA and genes, and how they found many of the same exact genes in the bodies of all types of living animals that have been repurposed according to the critter’s evolution (the discoveries of which Shubin explains with the general reader in mind), will be available to Americans?
I worry this and other science books will be made a crime soon if found on any bookshelves in American states with MAGA Republican and evangelical Christians in control of state government. American MAGA Republican/evangelical Christian governments have passed laws in 2024 and 2025 banning books already about slavery, violence against women by men, feminism and sexual diversity, and they have banned many history books and science books from public and school libraries in the states they control, making it a criminal offense with prison time if convicted of displaying books on the state banned book list. Universities and colleges in MAGA states are being pressured to fire many of their non-White employees, and have been forced to cancel all classes which used to teach history, philosophy and science subjects MAGA and evangelical Christians believe do not support “traditional American values” - meaning demands to only teach what science knowledge there is in the Bible (only Creationism) and only those subjects which support White Male Supremacy. God has demanded male domination over all females in the Bible. And as all Americans know, the pictures in our Bibles show Jesus is a blondish White man.
If you, gentler reader, want to know what WILL be taught to Americans in MAGA states, some enforced Christian studies are already starting in 2025 in some public schools and at school sports, and will be enforced in more schools in the future. The banning of non-fiction science and history books have already been done by law in MAGA/Republican states, along with fiction books, if they include Black history, Black characters, or lgbtq history or characters. It is forbidden to show banned science and history books and fiction novels to children under 18 years old or you will be sent to prison.
Evangelicals believe Jesus will come again and kill everyone who didn’t accept him into their heart and didn’t live by religious rules (rules which depend on whichever version of religion you practiced, which makes it doubly tough to be certain you believe in the correct version of Christianity, since being wrong means eternal burning in hell). According to evangelicals, evolution is fake news, because God never mentions it in the Bible, a book many Christians believe was written by God.
I couldn’t tell you which specific Bible many American evangelicals and MAGA Republicans are using. Among my evangelical family members, I have been offered dozens of versions as the one to believe in, always handed to me as The One, always written in simplified English words as apparently England’s King James version is too hard to read for today’s evangelicals, and always with the certainty the others will lead me into hellfire. There are over 900 known versions of the Bible in English alone, plus different Christian sects like Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. The Bible has been translated into at least over 4,000 languages, most of which I suppose are using simple easy words for today’s Christians.
As far as I know, there are thousands of different American evangelical churches who often feud with the others over what Bible to use and what God meant in the Bible evangelicals think he wrote in THEIR version of English translation. But whichever one it is God actually wrote, historically the earliest Christian Bibles appeared written in the Greek language with five sections originally written in Hebrew by Jews so necessarily they had to be translated from Hebrew into Greek, and then added to the front.
I don’t think the American evangelicals like this history much about the Bible being originally written in Greek and Hebrew, if they know about it, especially since they prefer a Jesus that looks like a blondish White male, not Jewish at all as he was in life. Plus, Jewish scholars often write that the English translations of their five books is wrongly translated from the original Hebrew.
Whatever the English version, in most English Bibles, God supposedly says he created everything in six days, and males have dominion over all life from week one, so that means science books like this one is blasphemy. ‘Some Assembly Required” explains how life on Earth has changed, some species dying out, some new species evolving into being, in the 4.5 billion years Earth has existed. According to evangelicals, the Earth is 6,000 years old, and not any single life form created by God can change because God created it, and he is eternal, and so are all of the life forms he made, and that is why evolution is fake news and no life form can die off, and new ones evolving from those made 6,000 years ago is plain wrong.
Sigh.
Every time I think this can’t get worse, I just read that more and more people don’t believe NASA sent men to the moon, or that men walked on the moon. Something to do with the American flag that was planted sticking straight out as if there was a wind? I guess they don’t know that the flag had a horizontal rod in the top hem? Or they don’t think science is real, so we couldn’t have built anything that great?
Americans certainly will no longer be that great technologically if the Bible becomes the only subject American males will learn in schools. Women won’t be allowed in school at all, of course.
I don’t know how America is going to keep a technological edge of any kind, gentler reader, under MAGA/Evangelical Christianity.
November 18, 2022
Not quite up to “Your Inner Fish,” but pretty darned good. He ventures into molecular biology this time, both as a writer and professionally. The results are uneven, but definitely worth reading, even if he lost me a time or two.
OK, here's the best review I saw online: https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2020...
"What Shubin gets at is that evolution takes shortcuts. Rather than inventing new traits from scratch, it repurposes existing ones. Examples Shubin gives are air-breathing in fish, which was repurposed to make lungs in land animals, and feathers on dinosaurs that originally evolved in a different context, but were repurposed for flight. Shubin has spent a research career working on our fishy ancestor, Tiktaalik rosaea, which was the subject of "Your Inner Fish."
Back already? Here's the author on your DNA: it's packed so tightly that if unwound and stretched out, each strand would be about six feet long. The DNA in all 6 trillion of your cells, if similarly stretched out, would reach almost to Pluto!
And here's Lynn Margulis (1938-2011), discoverer of endosymbosis, one of my scientific heros. She fought for years to get her ideas accepted: "I don't consider my ideas controversial. I consider them right."
Here's the WSJ review which led me to read the book. (Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
"In “Some Assembly Required,” as well as his previous popular-science masterpiece “Your Inner Fish,” the biologist Neil Shubin shows himself to be a natural storyteller and a gifted scientific communicator. This new work catches us up on the latest progress in understanding such complicated cases—and there has been a lot of it, some providing the kind of hard, tangible evidence that many scientists once thought would be impossible to find without a time machine. But a time machine is effectively what Mr. Shubin and his colleagues at the University of Chicago and elsewhere have found by studying fossils, and by studying the natural variation that occurs in contemporary species such as salamanders."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-ass...
OK, here's the best review I saw online: https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2020...
"What Shubin gets at is that evolution takes shortcuts. Rather than inventing new traits from scratch, it repurposes existing ones. Examples Shubin gives are air-breathing in fish, which was repurposed to make lungs in land animals, and feathers on dinosaurs that originally evolved in a different context, but were repurposed for flight. Shubin has spent a research career working on our fishy ancestor, Tiktaalik rosaea, which was the subject of "Your Inner Fish."
Back already? Here's the author on your DNA: it's packed so tightly that if unwound and stretched out, each strand would be about six feet long. The DNA in all 6 trillion of your cells, if similarly stretched out, would reach almost to Pluto!
And here's Lynn Margulis (1938-2011), discoverer of endosymbosis, one of my scientific heros. She fought for years to get her ideas accepted: "I don't consider my ideas controversial. I consider them right."
Here's the WSJ review which led me to read the book. (Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
"In “Some Assembly Required,” as well as his previous popular-science masterpiece “Your Inner Fish,” the biologist Neil Shubin shows himself to be a natural storyteller and a gifted scientific communicator. This new work catches us up on the latest progress in understanding such complicated cases—and there has been a lot of it, some providing the kind of hard, tangible evidence that many scientists once thought would be impossible to find without a time machine. But a time machine is effectively what Mr. Shubin and his colleagues at the University of Chicago and elsewhere have found by studying fossils, and by studying the natural variation that occurs in contemporary species such as salamanders."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-ass...
January 6, 2021
Neil Shubin é um cientista de mão cheia que trabalhou com fósseis transicionais, aqueles fósseis que representam bem a transição de grupos de organismos, como dos peixes para os vertebrados terrestres. Daí o seu primeiro livro, Quando Éramos Peixes: Uma viagem pelos 3,5 mil milhões de anos de história do corpo humano.
E como muitos cientistas dessa área, ele também teve que colocar um pé na água da biologia molecular, para ver como o DNA marca essa transição entre os organismos. Este livro marca essa mistura de evolução, fósseis, embriologia e como nossos genomas mostram grandes transições entre os organismos.
É um livro cheio de exemplos, história da ciência e grandes descobertas da biologia recontando como entendemos como o DNA funciona e como organismos são formados. E como isso tudo mostra lindamente grandes transições entre os animais que recontam a evolução humana. É praticamente um curso express de biologia que recomendo muito, mesmo para quem é da área, principalmente pelo panorama geral que poucas pessoas sabem passar.
E como muitos cientistas dessa área, ele também teve que colocar um pé na água da biologia molecular, para ver como o DNA marca essa transição entre os organismos. Este livro marca essa mistura de evolução, fósseis, embriologia e como nossos genomas mostram grandes transições entre os organismos.
É um livro cheio de exemplos, história da ciência e grandes descobertas da biologia recontando como entendemos como o DNA funciona e como organismos são formados. E como isso tudo mostra lindamente grandes transições entre os animais que recontam a evolução humana. É praticamente um curso express de biologia que recomendo muito, mesmo para quem é da área, principalmente pelo panorama geral que poucas pessoas sabem passar.
May 25, 2025
A very readable and interesting book covering the "evolution" of theory of evolution. The consensus is (was?) that we evolved in a straight line from a common ancestor billions of years ago but recent new insights from sequencing of the DNA states that it might not be so straightforward after all.
January 12, 2021
Highly readable and very interesting book on the genetics of evolution. Some surprising (well, to me) tidbits: a substantial part of our DNA consists of captured viruses, lots of evolution happens, as was already predicted by Darwin, by repurposing a capability that is already present, jumping genes are also fun. For more info see this or this review.
March 16, 2020
A Grand and Glorious Trek Towards Understanding Evolution’s Greatest Mysteries
Fasten your seat belts and allow yourself to trek across the vast expanse of Earth’s biological history with University of Chicago evolutionary developmental biologist and vertebrate paleobiologist Neil Shubin as your guide in his remarkably terse, quite riveting, “Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA”. This is the most compellingly readable recent popular science book I’ve come across, with Shubin giving readers a relentlessly remarkable and insightful account of the history of science pertaining to biological evolution, developmental biology and paleobiology, as well as how recent discoveries – especially those from Shubin’s laboratory – have greatly enhanced our understanding of the mechanisms behind the major transformations of evolution as seen from both the fossil record and the genomes of living organisms. Having studied with two of the foremost scientist writers of the past century and a half, Stephen Jay Gould and Ernst Mayr, Neil Shubin has written a book destined to be remembered as one worthy of comparison with their very best; an instant classic of popular science literature offering readers much of the same sense of grandeur and wonder and literary eloquence found in his mentors’ popular scientific writing.
If there is one major message to be taken from reading Shubin’s book, then it is an understanding of Natural Selection as a nonrandom process, in which a vast spectrum of living material from molecules to organs and appendages, has been repurposed for entirely new functions constituting major evolutionary transformations in the history of life, whether it has been the development of those traits that allowed archaic bony fish to become eventually, masters of the land and air via their tetrapod descendants, or something more minute – but no less profound – than the emergence of pregnancy in placental mammals. Shubin offers readers a view of biological evolution and the history of life that is substantially more complex, and more nuanced, than from those who mistakenly view Natural Selection as a random process; a recently published example, Columbia University physicist – and World Science Festival co-founder - Brian Greene’s “Until The End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe”, reads like a contemporary endorsement of the very “adaptationist programme” – “evolutionary just so stories” – condemned by invertebrate paleobiologist Stephen Jay Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin in their justly celebrated “Spandrels of San Marco” paper. Here Shubin takes readers on a journey describing how exaptations – the term coined by Gould and vertebrate paleontologist Elisabeth Vrba in their "sequel” Exaptation paper – or rather, repurposed traits which Charles Darwin had defined as those “accompanied by a change in function” – have had in shaping the history of Earth’s biodiversity, from microbes to vertebrates.
Shubin introduces us to a cast of characters - including many whose careers seem genuinely stranger than fiction – whose contributions to evolutionary theory, developmental biology, genetics and paleobiology inspired current research in these fields and, in many cases, helped enhance our understanding of biological evolution, especially in unlocking the secrets behind such incredible evolutionary transformations as the conquest of the land by vertebrates closely related to the bony fish that developed lungs for an aquatic existence millions of years before their descendants ventured onto land or the conquest of the air by feathered dinosaurs. In the same opening chapter (“Five Words”) where Darwin’s observation on traits having a change in function was written in response to criticism by a protege of Thomas Henry Huxley’s, St. George Jackson Mivart, Shubin introduces us to the eccentric Baron Franz Nopsca, whose thinking about dinosaurs as actively running land animals anticipated John Ostrom’s, whose reexamination of the skeleton of Archaeopteryx and discovery of Deinonychus led to a radical transformation into our understanding of how most dinosaurs lived, especially the lineage which gave rise to feathered dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx, and eventually, to modern birds. In one of the final chapters (“Mergers and Acquisitions”), Shubin introduces us to the iconoclastic Lynn Margulis, who never wavered in her belief in asserting that she was right in recognizing how the eukaryotic cells of plants and animals arose through “merging” bacterial cells with different functions into one larger cell, demonstrating how Margulis’ important insight into evolutionary history has greatly revolutionized our understanding of that history.
Throughout the book, Shubin demonstrates how research into fields as seemingly dissimilar from each other as paleobiology and molecular biology have yielded similar, often identical, results towards our understanding of the mechanisms behind evolutionary transformations like the evolution of flight in some feathered dinosaurs. Such breakthroughs have been made possible through the development of new tools and techniques, from computers to gene-editing procedures like CRISPR-Cas, that were unknown to 19th and early 20th Century biologists. Shubin demonstrates that we are living in a genuinely “golden age” of scientific achievement in our understanding of the mechanisms of biological evolution and how they have shaped the course of the history of life on our planet. Much to his credit, Shubin has done this by being an exceptional storyteller capable of writing superb prose, making this journey into scientific discovery one that is as memorable and electrifying as such great works of contemporary literature like William Gibson’s debut novel “Neuromancer” and Frank McCourt’s debut memoir “Angela’s Ashes”. Shubin has offered readers a captivating journey into the history of biology and our understanding of biological evolution that most will remember long after they finish reading “Some Assembly Required”.
Fasten your seat belts and allow yourself to trek across the vast expanse of Earth’s biological history with University of Chicago evolutionary developmental biologist and vertebrate paleobiologist Neil Shubin as your guide in his remarkably terse, quite riveting, “Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA”. This is the most compellingly readable recent popular science book I’ve come across, with Shubin giving readers a relentlessly remarkable and insightful account of the history of science pertaining to biological evolution, developmental biology and paleobiology, as well as how recent discoveries – especially those from Shubin’s laboratory – have greatly enhanced our understanding of the mechanisms behind the major transformations of evolution as seen from both the fossil record and the genomes of living organisms. Having studied with two of the foremost scientist writers of the past century and a half, Stephen Jay Gould and Ernst Mayr, Neil Shubin has written a book destined to be remembered as one worthy of comparison with their very best; an instant classic of popular science literature offering readers much of the same sense of grandeur and wonder and literary eloquence found in his mentors’ popular scientific writing.
If there is one major message to be taken from reading Shubin’s book, then it is an understanding of Natural Selection as a nonrandom process, in which a vast spectrum of living material from molecules to organs and appendages, has been repurposed for entirely new functions constituting major evolutionary transformations in the history of life, whether it has been the development of those traits that allowed archaic bony fish to become eventually, masters of the land and air via their tetrapod descendants, or something more minute – but no less profound – than the emergence of pregnancy in placental mammals. Shubin offers readers a view of biological evolution and the history of life that is substantially more complex, and more nuanced, than from those who mistakenly view Natural Selection as a random process; a recently published example, Columbia University physicist – and World Science Festival co-founder - Brian Greene’s “Until The End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe”, reads like a contemporary endorsement of the very “adaptationist programme” – “evolutionary just so stories” – condemned by invertebrate paleobiologist Stephen Jay Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin in their justly celebrated “Spandrels of San Marco” paper. Here Shubin takes readers on a journey describing how exaptations – the term coined by Gould and vertebrate paleontologist Elisabeth Vrba in their "sequel” Exaptation paper – or rather, repurposed traits which Charles Darwin had defined as those “accompanied by a change in function” – have had in shaping the history of Earth’s biodiversity, from microbes to vertebrates.
Shubin introduces us to a cast of characters - including many whose careers seem genuinely stranger than fiction – whose contributions to evolutionary theory, developmental biology, genetics and paleobiology inspired current research in these fields and, in many cases, helped enhance our understanding of biological evolution, especially in unlocking the secrets behind such incredible evolutionary transformations as the conquest of the land by vertebrates closely related to the bony fish that developed lungs for an aquatic existence millions of years before their descendants ventured onto land or the conquest of the air by feathered dinosaurs. In the same opening chapter (“Five Words”) where Darwin’s observation on traits having a change in function was written in response to criticism by a protege of Thomas Henry Huxley’s, St. George Jackson Mivart, Shubin introduces us to the eccentric Baron Franz Nopsca, whose thinking about dinosaurs as actively running land animals anticipated John Ostrom’s, whose reexamination of the skeleton of Archaeopteryx and discovery of Deinonychus led to a radical transformation into our understanding of how most dinosaurs lived, especially the lineage which gave rise to feathered dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx, and eventually, to modern birds. In one of the final chapters (“Mergers and Acquisitions”), Shubin introduces us to the iconoclastic Lynn Margulis, who never wavered in her belief in asserting that she was right in recognizing how the eukaryotic cells of plants and animals arose through “merging” bacterial cells with different functions into one larger cell, demonstrating how Margulis’ important insight into evolutionary history has greatly revolutionized our understanding of that history.
Throughout the book, Shubin demonstrates how research into fields as seemingly dissimilar from each other as paleobiology and molecular biology have yielded similar, often identical, results towards our understanding of the mechanisms behind evolutionary transformations like the evolution of flight in some feathered dinosaurs. Such breakthroughs have been made possible through the development of new tools and techniques, from computers to gene-editing procedures like CRISPR-Cas, that were unknown to 19th and early 20th Century biologists. Shubin demonstrates that we are living in a genuinely “golden age” of scientific achievement in our understanding of the mechanisms of biological evolution and how they have shaped the course of the history of life on our planet. Much to his credit, Shubin has done this by being an exceptional storyteller capable of writing superb prose, making this journey into scientific discovery one that is as memorable and electrifying as such great works of contemporary literature like William Gibson’s debut novel “Neuromancer” and Frank McCourt’s debut memoir “Angela’s Ashes”. Shubin has offered readers a captivating journey into the history of biology and our understanding of biological evolution that most will remember long after they finish reading “Some Assembly Required”.
August 20, 2020
I really enjoyed this book, but I feel Shubin writes very condescendingly about female scientists. Throughout the book he mentions mostly male scientists (discusses Watson and Crick with no mention of Franklin) and when he does mention female scientists they are interns or they had a lucky chance (read: don't really deserve to be there). His male scientists are brilliant, and geniuses while his female scientists just happen to be in the right place at the right time. There are plenty of notable scientists of both sexes involved in the history of evolution, genetics, and DNA sequencing. Shubin's patronizing writing about female scientists irked me.
June 10, 2021
Good things first. They are~
1. The writing is very lucid and logical, without becoming frivolous or egomaniac.
2. Almost the entire history of study of evolution and the keystones in terms of genetics have been touched upon.
3. Several women scientists and pioneers, whose achievements had been overlooked by contemporary academia, get due recognition in this book.
The bad~
There is absolutely nothing new here for us, who have already covered the terrain through the works of Zimmer et.al. Infact, thanks to the hype about this book I came to realise one basic thing. The Bible-belt Trumpist rednecks have put the study of evolution under tremendous stress in U.S of America. That's why the East Coast celebrity press tries to blow every book on Evolution out of proportion by declaring it as THE book. This one is good, but there's nothing great here.
Nevertheless, study of evolution and genetics always helps, especially if the book is so well-written.
Recommended.
1. The writing is very lucid and logical, without becoming frivolous or egomaniac.
2. Almost the entire history of study of evolution and the keystones in terms of genetics have been touched upon.
3. Several women scientists and pioneers, whose achievements had been overlooked by contemporary academia, get due recognition in this book.
The bad~
There is absolutely nothing new here for us, who have already covered the terrain through the works of Zimmer et.al. Infact, thanks to the hype about this book I came to realise one basic thing. The Bible-belt Trumpist rednecks have put the study of evolution under tremendous stress in U.S of America. That's why the East Coast celebrity press tries to blow every book on Evolution out of proportion by declaring it as THE book. This one is good, but there's nothing great here.
Nevertheless, study of evolution and genetics always helps, especially if the book is so well-written.
Recommended.
December 21, 2020
این کتاب با عنوان «دگرگونی بزرگ» ترجمه و منتشر شده. اپلیکیشن طاقچه با هشتاددرصد تخفیف گذاشته بودش. خریدم و بیش از همه از ترجمهی روانش کیف کردم. معلومه انتشارات مازیار، که تابهحال کتابی ازش پخونده بودم، در زمینهی ترجمهی کتابهای علمی ید طولایی داره.
من بدون داشتن دانشی دربارهی زیستشناسی (در حدی که درست تفاوت بین ژن و ژنوم و... را نمیدونم) تونستم کتاب را تموم کنم و لذت ببرم. کتاب روایی است، یعنی بهصورت مخاطبپسندی نوشته شده و تاریخچهی کشفیات و تحقیقات در زمینهی ژنتیک را تعریف میکنه، ولی بهنظرم سیر تاریخیاش کاملاً خطی نیست و بعضی جاها وقتی از پیشرفتهای پژوهشی یکی تعریف میکنه انگار مستقل از پیشرفتهایی که قبلاً تعریف کرده داره صحبت میکنه.
بههرحال، بهنظرم برای اینکه کسی بخواد جذب بحث ژنتیک بشه و شروع به مطالعه در این زمینه بکنه کتاب بسیار خوبی است.
من بدون داشتن دانشی دربارهی زیستشناسی (در حدی که درست تفاوت بین ژن و ژنوم و... را نمیدونم) تونستم کتاب را تموم کنم و لذت ببرم. کتاب روایی است، یعنی بهصورت مخاطبپسندی نوشته شده و تاریخچهی کشفیات و تحقیقات در زمینهی ژنتیک را تعریف میکنه، ولی بهنظرم سیر تاریخیاش کاملاً خطی نیست و بعضی جاها وقتی از پیشرفتهای پژوهشی یکی تعریف میکنه انگار مستقل از پیشرفتهایی که قبلاً تعریف کرده داره صحبت میکنه.
بههرحال، بهنظرم برای اینکه کسی بخواد جذب بحث ژنتیک بشه و شروع به مطالعه در این زمینه بکنه کتاب بسیار خوبی است.
October 18, 2025
A book that, through the history of discoveries that have led to identifying the reasons why some species have evolved in a certain way and others have not, seeks to sow the seeds of understanding in the minds of those who, like me, may not remember science very well.
Furthermore, evolutionary biology also provides many keys to understanding evolutionary leaps that probably would not have happened if it weren't for viruses and their DNA. Now I have to go and read the previous book, because the subject seems really interesting.
Un libro che attraverso la storia delle scoperte che hanno portato ad identificare le ragioni per cui alcune specie si sono evolute in un certo modo ed altre no, cerca di gettare un semino di comprensione nei cervelli di chi magari, biologia non se la ricorda proprio benissimo, tipo me. Inoltre questo tipo di ricerca fornisce anche moltissime chiavi di lettura per dei salti evolutivi che se non fosse probabilmente stato per i virus ed il loro DNA, non sarebbero accaduti. Ora devo andarmi a leggere il precedente, perché l'argomento sembra proprio interessante.
Furthermore, evolutionary biology also provides many keys to understanding evolutionary leaps that probably would not have happened if it weren't for viruses and their DNA. Now I have to go and read the previous book, because the subject seems really interesting.
Un libro che attraverso la storia delle scoperte che hanno portato ad identificare le ragioni per cui alcune specie si sono evolute in un certo modo ed altre no, cerca di gettare un semino di comprensione nei cervelli di chi magari, biologia non se la ricorda proprio benissimo, tipo me. Inoltre questo tipo di ricerca fornisce anche moltissime chiavi di lettura per dei salti evolutivi che se non fosse probabilmente stato per i virus ed il loro DNA, non sarebbero accaduti. Ora devo andarmi a leggere il precedente, perché l'argomento sembra proprio interessante.
May 4, 2022
This is a book that will either reinforce one's views of the accuracy of what has been teased from nature concerning the working of evolutionary processes, cause one to examine what they think they know, or stimulate those who do not understand or even who might have in the past rejected biological evolution as being possible to again delve into the field.
Abounding in vignettes of the discoveries and the temerity of those who spent their professional lives in the pursuit of portions of the inner working of organism, of cells, of the DNA molecule, Dr. Shubin's text is clean, clear, and immensely comprehensible.
A must for old biology majors like me and for those who want to have an intro into the subject.
Note: My first read of this was right after the book was released in early 2020, and have just completed a re-read in May 2022.
Abounding in vignettes of the discoveries and the temerity of those who spent their professional lives in the pursuit of portions of the inner working of organism, of cells, of the DNA molecule, Dr. Shubin's text is clean, clear, and immensely comprehensible.
A must for old biology majors like me and for those who want to have an intro into the subject.
Note: My first read of this was right after the book was released in early 2020, and have just completed a re-read in May 2022.
October 11, 2025
Neil Shubin's book provides an update of advances in our understanding of how evolution works including at the species and cell levels. Topics like organelles, symbiosis, genome sequence palindromes, independently evolved multiples, and nonrandom variations. As it turns out, the path of evolution is not a continual line of progress fueled by random change. Instead, evolution is constrained by the kinds of change that are possible. For example, marsupial evolution on the isolated Australian continent has often followed paths similar to those of mammals in the rest of the world.
Reading about the quiet UCLA genetics researcher, Susumu Ohno (1928-2000) who weighed paper cutouts of pictures of chromosomes from numerous, different species shows how low-tech, low-cost investigatory methods can be surprisingly effective. Ohno concluded that the similar weights of the cardboard cutouts showed that the weights of the chromosomes were the same in different mammals. This similarity held true despite large differences in the number of chromosomes in the various species.
When cells divide, chromosomes are copied and mistakes can happen. The presence of a single extra chromosome can bring about dramatic changes.
It's no great surprise that there are over 600,000 species of flowering plants in the world. More than half of them have duplicate sets of chromosomes.
And two-thirds of our genome is composed of repeated sequences.
Duplication can set the basis for change at every level of the genome. What if, Ohno postulated, an engine for evolutionary change was gene duplication.
So, how does one go about evaluating whether it's natural selection or gene duplication as being the controlling process for the genesis of life's diversity? How big of a deal is this question?
Earlier in his book the author writes, "If you think of DNA as a molecule that contains information, it is as if we have millions of supercomputers in every cell."
In part, due to art providing a means for scientists to communicate complex ideas and findings to a broader audience and thereby making them more accessible and understandable, I like this relevant quote from Lisa Herfeldt, a German silicone-gun caulk artist:
“It interests me that there are things in our bodies happening that also have their own life,” she says. “Things you can’t see or control.”
A moment of reflection is worth having here. What becomes clear is a necessity of reevaluation. In the context of consciousness, sentience and intentionality how do mammals, plants, fungi, genome functions, red blood cells, stem cell differentiation, artificial intelligence and say mineral crystals compare?
Lots to consider. For example: Cells differentiate by activating or turning off specific genes in their DNA. Although all cells in an organism have the same genes, they express different subsets of these genes. For a variety of evidence, the mother's central nervous system (in mammals) is not exactly essential for the successful and complex process of stem cell differentiation in a developing fetus. Additionally, the genes that are turned on direct the production of specific proteins, which then carry out specialized functions and determine the cell's structure and function.
Though, there's no doubt about the importance of maternal well-being: Prioritizing maternal mental well-being, including addressing stress, anxiety, and depression, is crucial for optimal child development.
Over the last several years, I've read related fascinating narratives such as 'The Overstory' by Richard Powers and 'Entangled Life' by Merlin Sheldrake, describing the decentralized intelligence capabilities of fungi kingdom organisms, though 'The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth'
book by Zoë Schlanger deserves the blue ribbon.
Some proponents of plant sentience argue that the dismissal of plant cognition is a result of anthropocentric biases and a lack of rigorous investigation into their complex physiology. (i.e., plants are sentient beings that nurture their young, care for the sick and injured, feed the ecosystem with the molecules of life, feel pain and stress).
While research continues to reveal the sophisticated capabilities of plants, there is currently no scientific evidence to support the claim that plants are sentient.
The DNA of almost any plant or animal can now be edited quickly at low cost. Parts of the genome of plants and animals can now be quickly and cheaply rewritten. Can high speed, CRISPR methods be used to change and better understand the way fish breathe and modify their fins into limbs?
Neil Shubin's book reinforces notions that genomes facilitate change. When the gene pool of a species becomes as stagnant as a mud puddle, say due to urban islands, then nothing good is in store for that particular plant or animal. What's the relationship between new ideas, change and the DNA of multicellular organs? Do ideas about change have genetic origins?
Consider, for a moment, that change, such as the current transition from transactions dependent on cash to a cash-less society may have its origin with genomes. What new economic pathways develop due to this one transitory, intermediate step destined to vanish in the fog of elapsed time?
Books that spark new ways of thinking about sentience and intentionality deserve to be read and discussed.
Reading about the quiet UCLA genetics researcher, Susumu Ohno (1928-2000) who weighed paper cutouts of pictures of chromosomes from numerous, different species shows how low-tech, low-cost investigatory methods can be surprisingly effective. Ohno concluded that the similar weights of the cardboard cutouts showed that the weights of the chromosomes were the same in different mammals. This similarity held true despite large differences in the number of chromosomes in the various species.
When cells divide, chromosomes are copied and mistakes can happen. The presence of a single extra chromosome can bring about dramatic changes.
It's no great surprise that there are over 600,000 species of flowering plants in the world. More than half of them have duplicate sets of chromosomes.
And two-thirds of our genome is composed of repeated sequences.
Duplication can set the basis for change at every level of the genome. What if, Ohno postulated, an engine for evolutionary change was gene duplication.
So, how does one go about evaluating whether it's natural selection or gene duplication as being the controlling process for the genesis of life's diversity? How big of a deal is this question?
Earlier in his book the author writes, "If you think of DNA as a molecule that contains information, it is as if we have millions of supercomputers in every cell."
In part, due to art providing a means for scientists to communicate complex ideas and findings to a broader audience and thereby making them more accessible and understandable, I like this relevant quote from Lisa Herfeldt, a German silicone-gun caulk artist:
“It interests me that there are things in our bodies happening that also have their own life,” she says. “Things you can’t see or control.”
A moment of reflection is worth having here. What becomes clear is a necessity of reevaluation. In the context of consciousness, sentience and intentionality how do mammals, plants, fungi, genome functions, red blood cells, stem cell differentiation, artificial intelligence and say mineral crystals compare?
Lots to consider. For example: Cells differentiate by activating or turning off specific genes in their DNA. Although all cells in an organism have the same genes, they express different subsets of these genes. For a variety of evidence, the mother's central nervous system (in mammals) is not exactly essential for the successful and complex process of stem cell differentiation in a developing fetus. Additionally, the genes that are turned on direct the production of specific proteins, which then carry out specialized functions and determine the cell's structure and function.
Though, there's no doubt about the importance of maternal well-being: Prioritizing maternal mental well-being, including addressing stress, anxiety, and depression, is crucial for optimal child development.
Over the last several years, I've read related fascinating narratives such as 'The Overstory' by Richard Powers and 'Entangled Life' by Merlin Sheldrake, describing the decentralized intelligence capabilities of fungi kingdom organisms, though 'The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth'
book by Zoë Schlanger deserves the blue ribbon.
Some proponents of plant sentience argue that the dismissal of plant cognition is a result of anthropocentric biases and a lack of rigorous investigation into their complex physiology. (i.e., plants are sentient beings that nurture their young, care for the sick and injured, feed the ecosystem with the molecules of life, feel pain and stress).
While research continues to reveal the sophisticated capabilities of plants, there is currently no scientific evidence to support the claim that plants are sentient.
The DNA of almost any plant or animal can now be edited quickly at low cost. Parts of the genome of plants and animals can now be quickly and cheaply rewritten. Can high speed, CRISPR methods be used to change and better understand the way fish breathe and modify their fins into limbs?
Neil Shubin's book reinforces notions that genomes facilitate change. When the gene pool of a species becomes as stagnant as a mud puddle, say due to urban islands, then nothing good is in store for that particular plant or animal. What's the relationship between new ideas, change and the DNA of multicellular organs? Do ideas about change have genetic origins?
Consider, for a moment, that change, such as the current transition from transactions dependent on cash to a cash-less society may have its origin with genomes. What new economic pathways develop due to this one transitory, intermediate step destined to vanish in the fog of elapsed time?
Books that spark new ways of thinking about sentience and intentionality deserve to be read and discussed.
April 6, 2021
Ніл Шубін - палеонтолог, який відкрив тіктааліка, потенційну "проміжну ланку" між рибами та амфібіями, що описано в його давнішій праці "Внутрішня риба". Тут він продовжує теми з тієї книжки: як нові органи еволюціонують зі старих через зміну функції, як ДНК вказує на спільне походження несхожих частин тіла несхожих тварин тощо. Власне, у відгуках нарікують на те, що тут він багато повторюється. Але я надто давно читав "Внутрішню рибу", тому мені було в будь-якому разі цікаво, тим більше що автор пише простою мовою і заодно розповідає історії з життя біологів. Крім "старих" тем, тут також є про найновіші відкриття з генетики, включаючи технологію CRISPR-Cas9. Певна відсутність фокусу і цілісності розповіді в другій половині книжки погіршує загальне враження, але несуттєво.
December 18, 2023
I absolutely adore reading science books for pure enjoyment, not because they're required for school
Starting this book i was against Darwins hypothesis however as I delved into each chapter i started having second thoughts which seems crazy honestly!! AND halfway through, I found myself leaning towards belief in evolution (not fully convinced tho)
It's been thrilling, interesting, and downright enjoyable, I just wish I had come across this book before tackling evolution in school
Starting this book i was against Darwins hypothesis however as I delved into each chapter i started having second thoughts which seems crazy honestly!! AND halfway through, I found myself leaning towards belief in evolution (not fully convinced tho)
It's been thrilling, interesting, and downright enjoyable, I just wish I had come across this book before tackling evolution in school
June 4, 2020
This is such a wonderfully accessible book on a seemingly esoteric subject, that being the four billion years of genetic mutation and adaptation that has powered evolution from (relatively) simple single-celled organisms to the diversity and complexity of life we see today.
Very frequently, commentators and critics of this field of study have seen the entire mechanism of this backwards. Laughingly bringing up the uselessness of wings in flightless birds like penguins...until they see them swim. Bizarrely questioning why such a finely evolved creature as the human male would have useless nipples...when it turns out that evolution works in efficiencies and it is in fact much simpler to evolve humans who all have this appendage, though only functional in half the population. This has been previously called, "a strange inversion of reasoning." As Dan Dennett has remarked, "exactly!"
This work from Neil Shubin chronicles the history of genetic modification and how our contemporary understanding of genes, genetic mechanisms, DNA, and evolution at the genetic level. This interest was spurred by Darwin's famous reply to early critiques of his work failing to explain how various functional appendages could have been formed from ancestors who would have had no use for them. The adaptation was possible not through a change of organs, but, "by a change of function."
Those who read regularly on evolution may not find a great deal of new material here, however the chronological narrative that Shubin has put together makes for a wonderful history of our understanding of genetic mechanisms and the figures behind their discovery which have not only allowed us to confirm the observations of Darwin and others but have now allowed us to create our own mechanisms (CRISPR as an example) to directly edit this genetic content. Wonderful reading
Very frequently, commentators and critics of this field of study have seen the entire mechanism of this backwards. Laughingly bringing up the uselessness of wings in flightless birds like penguins...until they see them swim. Bizarrely questioning why such a finely evolved creature as the human male would have useless nipples...when it turns out that evolution works in efficiencies and it is in fact much simpler to evolve humans who all have this appendage, though only functional in half the population. This has been previously called, "a strange inversion of reasoning." As Dan Dennett has remarked, "exactly!"
This work from Neil Shubin chronicles the history of genetic modification and how our contemporary understanding of genes, genetic mechanisms, DNA, and evolution at the genetic level. This interest was spurred by Darwin's famous reply to early critiques of his work failing to explain how various functional appendages could have been formed from ancestors who would have had no use for them. The adaptation was possible not through a change of organs, but, "by a change of function."
Those who read regularly on evolution may not find a great deal of new material here, however the chronological narrative that Shubin has put together makes for a wonderful history of our understanding of genetic mechanisms and the figures behind their discovery which have not only allowed us to confirm the observations of Darwin and others but have now allowed us to create our own mechanisms (CRISPR as an example) to directly edit this genetic content. Wonderful reading
September 24, 2023
Το καλύτερο βιβλίο για φέτος και όχι μόνο .
Ως λάτρης της εκλαϊκευμένης επιστήμης και ειδικότερα της βιολογίας αυτό το ανάγνωσμα με καθήλωσε .
Το ίδιο βέβαια είχε καταφέρει ο Neil Shubin,O άνθρωπος που ανακάλυψε το Tiktalik ,με το προηγούμενο του βιβλίο "Το ψάρι μέσα μας "
Εδώ λοιπόν αυτός ο μεγάλος εξελικτικός μας ξεδιπλώνει την ιστορία των ανακαλύψεων σε διάφορες πτυχές - κλειδιά της εξελικτικής θεωρίας .
Μορφολογία,εμβρυολογία ,απολιθώματα ,κάθε ανακάλυψη επιβεβαίωνε η και εμπλούτιζε την πανέμορφη και ίσως πιο σημαντική ιδέα που σκαρφίστηκε ανθρώπινος νους .
Κοινή καταγωγή ,κληρονομικότητα ,φυσική επιλογή ,εξέλιξη
Κομμάτια παζλ που ενώνονται και φτιάχνουν το δέντρο της ζωής .
Ενα απολαυστικό ταξίδι με όσο τεχνικές πληροφορίες χρειάζονται σε τέτοιες περιπτώσεις.
Ως λάτρης της εκλαϊκευμένης επιστήμης και ειδικότερα της βιολογίας αυτό το ανάγνωσμα με καθήλωσε .
Το ίδιο βέβαια είχε καταφέρει ο Neil Shubin,O άνθρωπος που ανακάλυψε το Tiktalik ,με το προηγούμενο του βιβλίο "Το ψάρι μέσα μας "
Εδώ λοιπόν αυτός ο μεγάλος εξελικτικός μας ξεδιπλώνει την ιστορία των ανακαλύψεων σε διάφορες πτυχές - κλειδιά της εξελικτικής θεωρίας .
Μορφολογία,εμβρυολογία ,απολιθώματα ,κάθε ανακάλυψη επιβεβαίωνε η και εμπλούτιζε την πανέμορφη και ίσως πιο σημαντική ιδέα που σκαρφίστηκε ανθρώπινος νους .
Κοινή καταγωγή ,κληρονομικότητα ,φυσική επιλογή ,εξέλιξη
Κομμάτια παζλ που ενώνονται και φτιάχνουν το δέντρο της ζωής .
Ενα απολαυστικό ταξίδι με όσο τεχνικές πληροφορίες χρειάζονται σε τέτοιες περιπτώσεις.
April 18, 2021
Genetics, while fascinating, can be a tough subject for a good popular science read - too technical and requiring a lot of knowledge. Fortunately, Neil Shubin has a gift for explaining even the most complicated things in a clear and simple way. Some parts of this book were still a challenge for me but overall the effort was worth it. I was familiar with many of the ideas from other publications but here you will find many of them assembled in a consistent story. Highly recommended for anyone interested in evolutionary biology.
November 19, 2025
Some Assembly Required; Decoding Four Billion Yeas of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA is a recent (2020) and easily read account of the most significant transformative steps in the history of life on Earth, as currently understood by paleontological and biological science. Neil Shubin is a popular science writer of evolutionary biology (Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, 2009), on faculty at the University of Chicago and Provost of the Field Museum of Natural History. He was once a graduate student Teaching Assistant under Stephen Jay Gould.
In eight short chapters, this newer book consists of several topical essays in evolutionary science. In each, he introduces the topic with the biography of one or several critical originators of the particular concept and then explains both the mechanism and the import of their contributions, bringing in the work of other later contributors. This not simply a chronological progression of the field, such as Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, by Richard Fortey, but a conceptual progression. One recurring theme is the profound change that has taken place in our times - as the basis of the science has moved from morphology to genetics. With an amateur interest in the field, having read just a few books in it, I came away with not just some particular new learnings, but more importantly, some easily retained principles that connect the facts, and will continue to drive future developments.
1 Five Words
2 Embryonic Ideas
3 Maestro in the Genome
4 Beautiful Monsters
5 Copycats
6 Our Inner Battlefield
7 Loaded Dice
8 Mergers and Acquisitions
One shortcoming of the work is a need for more graphical illustration, especially of the DNA processes – I found myself relying on my memories of the excellent figures and animations of Biology: The Science of Life, by Stephen Nowicki.
In eight short chapters, this newer book consists of several topical essays in evolutionary science. In each, he introduces the topic with the biography of one or several critical originators of the particular concept and then explains both the mechanism and the import of their contributions, bringing in the work of other later contributors. This not simply a chronological progression of the field, such as Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, by Richard Fortey, but a conceptual progression. One recurring theme is the profound change that has taken place in our times - as the basis of the science has moved from morphology to genetics. With an amateur interest in the field, having read just a few books in it, I came away with not just some particular new learnings, but more importantly, some easily retained principles that connect the facts, and will continue to drive future developments.
1 Five Words
2 Embryonic Ideas
3 Maestro in the Genome
4 Beautiful Monsters
5 Copycats
6 Our Inner Battlefield
7 Loaded Dice
8 Mergers and Acquisitions
One shortcoming of the work is a need for more graphical illustration, especially of the DNA processes – I found myself relying on my memories of the excellent figures and animations of Biology: The Science of Life, by Stephen Nowicki.
February 8, 2025
kind of a greatest hits of evolutionary biology. communicated very well and thoroughly engaging.
March 10, 2021
A luscious book! By the author of Your Inner Fish which is also one of my favorites.
Author Neil Shubin explains how our genome codes for our development. It's not just a blueprint! It's more of a recipe. Like an egg is an egg, but boiling it, frying it or scrambling it result in very different kinds of breakfast. And throw one in a cake and it becomes cake.
Like somebody wound up inside a cell and became enslaved for perpetuity...she and all the offspring she would ever produce went from being a wee independent organism to a cog in the machine from which would spring all animal life.
(I'm on a roll now...) This little organelle and her entire family have been responsible for providing energy to all our cells for the past gazillion years and yet have stubbornly retained their very own genome. Mitochondria, of course. This is not the whole gist of the book of course; I just always get hung up on the whole"I Contain Multitudes"/Lynn Margulis stuff.
In addition somewhere along the line we have snared viruses, stripped them if their individuality and put them to work ... Shubin explains how these viruses made pregnancy possible. It's complicated but amazing.
"Every complex cell has 2 families of life inside it, one of its nucleus and another whose ancestors were once free-living blue-green algae or bacteria."
The book talks about a lot more than that. Science history, paleontology, parallel evolution and lots on genetics. Well written, scopey and absolutely nothing not to like in this book. Just read it, OK? Because there is really no way I can write a coherent review on insufficient doses of coffee and a husband playing "Delta Dawn" repeatedly in my ear.
Author Neil Shubin explains how our genome codes for our development. It's not just a blueprint! It's more of a recipe. Like an egg is an egg, but boiling it, frying it or scrambling it result in very different kinds of breakfast. And throw one in a cake and it becomes cake.
Like somebody wound up inside a cell and became enslaved for perpetuity...she and all the offspring she would ever produce went from being a wee independent organism to a cog in the machine from which would spring all animal life.
(I'm on a roll now...) This little organelle and her entire family have been responsible for providing energy to all our cells for the past gazillion years and yet have stubbornly retained their very own genome. Mitochondria, of course. This is not the whole gist of the book of course; I just always get hung up on the whole"I Contain Multitudes"/Lynn Margulis stuff.
In addition somewhere along the line we have snared viruses, stripped them if their individuality and put them to work ... Shubin explains how these viruses made pregnancy possible. It's complicated but amazing.
"Every complex cell has 2 families of life inside it, one of its nucleus and another whose ancestors were once free-living blue-green algae or bacteria."
The book talks about a lot more than that. Science history, paleontology, parallel evolution and lots on genetics. Well written, scopey and absolutely nothing not to like in this book. Just read it, OK? Because there is really no way I can write a coherent review on insufficient doses of coffee and a husband playing "Delta Dawn" repeatedly in my ear.
April 30, 2020
This is a solid, albeit very short, introduction to the social and scientific history of our understanding of the body plan since Darwin to modernity. The body plan being how it is that an organisms body is constructed. As you may be able to imagine, Darwin answered the question of how biology is a coherent subject with a single framework, but failed to concoct an explanation for how organisms bodies keep coming about. Ya know, it's a weird thing to think about. That being, how sex produces another being. A natural question of course is how? Is there a minuscule person built in the womb, fully baby looking, and fully human till birth that simply grows in scale? Or is it more complicated. These reflections were naturally the first to arise as people came to know modern genetics and all of its minutiae. Eventually of course, after many years of speculation, hard word in laboratories, and tireless scientific scrutiny we have arrived at our understanding of the world with technologies such as CRISPR which can edit the genome in incredibly short time periods.
Recommended for:
those looking for an introduction as to how organisms are constructed, how we came to know what we know on the subject, and who the minds were that left bread crumbs for the rest of us to be a bit less lost in thinking about the natural world
Recommended for:
those looking for an introduction as to how organisms are constructed, how we came to know what we know on the subject, and who the minds were that left bread crumbs for the rest of us to be a bit less lost in thinking about the natural world
October 25, 2020
I don't think "emphatic", the word of the decade, appears in this book. This is weird. Show me another book written in the last 10 years that doesn't contain "emphatic".
What does appear in this book is evolution. A lot of it. In fact, it's entirely about evolution. But it's not the usual evolution stuff you learn in school. It's cell and molecular (DNA) level evolution. And even though I have a largely vestigial undergrad degree in cell and molecular biology, there was a lot of new material in this book for me. I especially enjoyed the parts about embryos. If you want to know the particulars of evolution, for instance, how we think multicellular organisms developed from unicellular organisms (not the endosymbiotic theory), or how life went from aquatic to terrestrial, you need to read this book. One really interesting theme in evolution, and possibly this review, is that things don't start when we think they do. Read to find out exactly what this means! I really recommend this book for the information that it contains. It answers a lot of specific questions that I didn't even know I had.
The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because, to me, biology alone is a thumb. A big, beautiful, useful thumb. But when we add history to biology, in my mind, the thumb shrinks to a pinky finger (this makes more sense if you have read the book).
What does appear in this book is evolution. A lot of it. In fact, it's entirely about evolution. But it's not the usual evolution stuff you learn in school. It's cell and molecular (DNA) level evolution. And even though I have a largely vestigial undergrad degree in cell and molecular biology, there was a lot of new material in this book for me. I especially enjoyed the parts about embryos. If you want to know the particulars of evolution, for instance, how we think multicellular organisms developed from unicellular organisms (not the endosymbiotic theory), or how life went from aquatic to terrestrial, you need to read this book. One really interesting theme in evolution, and possibly this review, is that things don't start when we think they do. Read to find out exactly what this means! I really recommend this book for the information that it contains. It answers a lot of specific questions that I didn't even know I had.
The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because, to me, biology alone is a thumb. A big, beautiful, useful thumb. But when we add history to biology, in my mind, the thumb shrinks to a pinky finger (this makes more sense if you have read the book).
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