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Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, From Pointless Bones to Broken Genes
Rezumat
We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often—two hundred times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake.
As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. The human body is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our greatness: as Lents shows, humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them.
A rollicking, deeply informative tour of humans' four billion year long evolutionary saga, Human Errors both celebrates our imperfections and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.
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Recenzii
I wanted to like this book more. But it has serious flaws. Lents neglects not only key personalities who shape his world view, but whole areas of research, e.g. palaeontology. It exercises hyperbole at the cost of accuracy, evident in the chapter on junk DNA. A more reasonable discussion would at least mention the huge amount of research in epigenetics; there is more to DNA than protein-encoding.
Then there's the constant assertion that humans are considerably worse adapted than other animals. But there's no real attempt to justify this view; for this, you would also need to be sure that animals are extremely well adapted to their environments. Rare human diseases and disorders are given disproportionate attention, so to use this as an argument for "human errors" Lents should be pretty sure that other animals don't themselves suffer from rare diseases; of course, such logical analysis is blissfully omitted.
As a positive, Lents does attempt to pull together many areas of scientific thought, although if you want to study these in more detail you're out of luck: there's no bibliography. We start with unneeded bones, then genes, the last chapter drifts off into psychology, the epilogue is more about survival of the human species. If you can spare the time, you will find it more rewarding to cover each area in more detail:-Palaeontology / evidence for evolution: Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil ShubinHistory of genetics: The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha MukherjeeEpigenetics: The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey [more technical, not covered by Lents, eye-opening nonetheless]Behavioural psychology: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel KahnemanDevelopment of civilisation / scientific method: Cosmos by Carl SaganMy core problem is why this book and why now. There's nothing really groundbreaking, no layman's course on the cutting edge of genetic research, no new discoveries to share with the world. It's an amalgamation and simultaneous watering down of some of the earlier works listed above.
Then there's the constant assertion that humans are considerably worse adapted than other animals. But there's no real attempt to justify this view; for this, you would also need to be sure that animals are extremely well adapted to their environments. Rare human diseases and disorders are given disproportionate attention, so to use this as an argument for "human errors" Lents should be pretty sure that other animals don't themselves suffer from rare diseases; of course, such logical analysis is blissfully omitted.
As a positive, Lents does attempt to pull together many areas of scientific thought, although if you want to study these in more detail you're out of luck: there's no bibliography. We start with unneeded bones, then genes, the last chapter drifts off into psychology, the epilogue is more about survival of the human species. If you can spare the time, you will find it more rewarding to cover each area in more detail:-Palaeontology / evidence for evolution: Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil ShubinHistory of genetics: The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha MukherjeeEpigenetics: The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey [more technical, not covered by Lents, eye-opening nonetheless]Behavioural psychology: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel KahnemanDevelopment of civilisation / scientific method: Cosmos by Carl SaganMy core problem is why this book and why now. There's nothing really groundbreaking, no layman's course on the cutting edge of genetic research, no new discoveries to share with the world. It's an amalgamation and simultaneous watering down of some of the earlier works listed above.
Evolution does not mean we are continually moving towards perfection. Mutations happen by chance, and they may or may not be good for us. If they don’t kill us and if they don’t stop us reproducing, they stick around.Human Errors details some of these ‘errors’ and includes some fascinating examples. Our dodgy knees are a hangover from our primate days, and were never meant to support us standing up. Our retinas are the wrong way round and we’d be much better off if we had the eyes of an octopus.There are chapters which focus on the more serious consequences of these errors – such as hereditary diseases and autoimmune conditions which lead the body to attack itself.I was fascinated by the chapter on reproduction and loved the image of menopausal orca whales leading hunting packs of young males, but when I thought about it later, I wasn’t clear whether the author thinks the menopause in humans is an error at all.There’s also an epilogue which is more speculative. Lents’ argument seems to be that the inventiveness of humans allows us to outpace our errors, or even turn them into strengths. However these strengths can also be weaknesses. He argues that selfishness and short-term thinking may well lead humanity to destroy itself and the planet. This seems to be more about philosophy than science.Overall though, this is an informative and entertaining read for a non-scientist like me and the quirky examples make the underlying facts more memorable.*I received a copy of Human Errors from the publisher via Netgalley.