Nothing in biology begins when you think it does
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Evolution: Education and Outreach Open Access
BOOK REVIEW
Nothing in biology begins when you think it does Review of Shubin, N. 2020. Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life,from Ancient Fossils to DNA. Pantheon Books, New York Norman Johnson*
Abstract Neil Shubin has written an excellent, accessible book explaining how innovations in biology evolve. The key insight— one provided by Darwin but fleshed out by biologists over the subsequent century and a half—is that the precursors of traits involved in innovations usually were present in the ancestors but had a different function. In this book, Shubin also provides rich biographical detail of the scientists involved in the discoveries. Most semesters I teach “Writing in Biology” to undergraduates, mostly of which are juniors and seniors. Among the assignments is a review of a non-fiction book in biology from the last ten years. In the process of teaching the class multiple times, I have cultivated a list of recommended books. Although I allow students the freedom to choose books not on the list (with my approval), most choose one from the list. One of my aims for assigning a book review and cultivating this list is to motivate students to read more long-form works in their major. We are blessed with an abundance of excellent books— some by scientists, others by science journalists and writers—in so many areas of biology from genetics to paleontology to medicine, among others. If they are not reading at least some of these works, students are missing out on a vital part of their education. A perennial favorite on my list has been Neil Shubin’s (2008) Your Inner Fish. In this relatively short work, Shubin traced the steps taken to find Tiktaalik, a fossil that has transitional features between a fish-like existence and an amphibian one. Shubin displayed how the process of science works while discussing both the paleontological and the genetic work that led to the discovery of *Correspondence: [email protected] Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 01003, USA
Tiktaalik. In addition, Shubin discussed the ramifications of the fact that we evolved from a fish. But time marches on. Your Inner Fish is now a dozen years old and is no longer on my cultivated list. While that may not seem like such a long time to a fifty-something instructor—I have mugs that are twice as old—it is more than half the age of a traditional college student who was in elementary school when Your Inner Fish came out. Moreover, many fields in biology—including genomics—have substantially advanced since 2008. Our ability to sequence genomes has drastically improved. We can easily edit genes with CRISPR something that was not even on the horizon in 2008. The good news is that Neil Shubin now has a new, excellent book—Some Assembly Required—that will go on my list. The premise of Shubin’s new book is the same as the challenge Darwin received from one of his critics, the iconoclastic St. George Mivart. A generation younger than Darwin, Mivart was working
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