The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin (PDF)

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**Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)**From one of our finest and most popular science writers, and the best-selling author of Your Inner Fish, comes the answer to a scientific mystery as big as the world itself: How are the events that formed our solar system billions of years ago embedded inside each of us? In Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin delved into the amazing connections between human bodies—our hands, heads, and jaws—and the structures in fish and worms that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. In The Universe Within, with his trademark clarity and exuberance, Shubin takes an even more expansive approach to the question of why we look the way we do. Starting once again with fossils, he turns his gaze skyward, showing us how the entirety of the universe’s fourteen-billion-year history can be seen in our bodies. As he moves from our very molecular composition (a result of stellar events at the origin of our solar system) through the workings of our eyes, Shubin makes clear how the evolution of the cosmos has profoundly marked our own bodies.WITH BLACK-AND-WHITE LINE DRAWINGS THROUGHOUT

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Booklist *Starred Review* Walt Whitman yawped, “I contain multitudes,” and in Your Inner Fish (2008), Shubin confirmed him by demonstrating how the evolution of life on earth is inscribed in the human body. Now Shubin shows that all creation, from the big bang on, is packed in there, too. Hard to swallow? Well, ingestion had little to do with it. But analogize rocks and bodies, both of which bear “the signature of the great events that shaped them.” Shubin relates the discoveries of eight such events and their signatures. The big bang gave us the atoms of our bodies. The formation of the solar system, by allowing earth so much water, helped determine our size, shape, and functionality. The “big whack” that gouged the moon out of the earth established the rhythms of everything from days and months to each person’s sleep cycle and cell division. The manufacture of oxygen by single-celled creatures licensed the growth of bigger ones, such as ourselves, and also their aging. Plate tectonics set the limits of our habitation, from the womb to the Tibetan plateau. Catastrophes besides the moon-gouging shaped our innate adaptability. The global carbon cycle that enabled the ice ages colored our vision. Climate change molded our genes. In short, universal history made us what we are. Wow. –Ray Olson Review **Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)**“What is special about the book is its sweep, its scope, its panorama—how physics, biology, geology, chemistry and seemingly every other science are brought to bear on the most intricate details of human life…In ‘Auguries of Innocence’ Blake wrote with rapture about the ability ‘To see a world in a grain of sand, / And a heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, / And eternity in an hour.’ Shubin’s ability to do all this comes from long experience, not blissful Blakean innocence. But the two ends somehow wrap around and meet: They tap into the same awe, and this makes science seem a very uplifting enterprise indeed.” —Wall Street Journal “Hooray! A new book by Neil Shubin (Your Inner Fish) has just been published: The Universe Within. This book is, quite literally, cosmic: a profound story told with Shubin’s usual clarity and passion.” —Oliver Sacks, author of Hallucinations “A truly delightful story of how human beings and life on Earth are connected to the wider universe. We don’t observe reality from outside; we’re embedded deeply within in it, and it shows. Neil Shubin is a sure-handed and entertaining guide to the big picture of how we came to be.” —Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and author of The Particle at the End of the Universe “What better young paleontologist to tie together the physical and biological aspects of our universe to comprehend the emergence of modern humans. Engagingly written, The Universe Within, is sure to enlighten all who peruse this stimulating book.” —Donald Johanson, author of Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind “A fascinating, accessible tour of how life on Earth, include our own, has been shaped by many upheavals in our planet’s long history. Full of surprising, yet profound insights, Neil Shubin’s The Universe Within is also a celebration of the humans whose curiosity and genius have, in a very short time, transformed our understanding of our ever-changing world.”—Sean B. Carroll, author of Remarkable Creatures “This is beautiful story, beautifully told. Our very bodies store within them the entire arc of cosmic history, and Neil Shubin’s tale weaves, with great authority, accuracy and a wonderfully light touch, a grand synthesis that manages to incorporate forefront research in astronomy, geology, paleontology, and genetics. He captures not only the excitement of the scientific enterprise, but also the many personalities from many different fields, countries, and eras, each of whose lifelong contributions have helped continue to further reveal the ever more subtle and remarkable cosmic connections that each of us has with the cosmos.” —Lawrence M. Krauss, Director of the Origins Project and Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and the author of numerous books including The Physics of Star Trek, Quantum Man, and most recently A Universe from Nothing “‘We are stardust,’ goes the old song, but most of us don’t give the fact much thought. The Universe Within will change that. Neil Shubin roots around our physiology and finds the history of the cosmos lodged in our cells. And in the process, he makes the familiar wondrous.” —Carl Zimmer, author of Evolution: Making Sense of Life and A Planet of Viruses“Engrossing…An intelligent, eloquent account of our relations with the inanimate universe.” —Kirkus, starred review “We sometimes forget just how closely we humans are bound to the rest of the cosmos in both our bodily composition and our history. Nobody is better placed to remind us than Neil Shubin, and he does so with brio in his fascinating page-turner The Universe Within.” —Ian Tattersall, author of Masters of the Planet “From the finest scientific detail to the biggest picture, Shubin understands who we are and why we are here, and even what we need to do to keep going. The magic of his writing is that you can open to any page and in a paragraph or two witness an entire revelation. If you really want your mind blown, read the whole thing. Shubin weaves very human stories into an earthly and universal narrative that without this book might seem too vast or two miniscule to matter.” —Craig Childs, author of Apocalyptic Planet “A volume of truly inspired science writing…Shubin deftly balances breadth and depth in his search for a ‘sublimely beautiful truth.’” —Publishers Weekly“Walt Whitman yawped, ‘I contain multitudes,’ and in Your Inner Fish (2008), Shubin confirmed him by demonstrating how the evolution of life on earth is inscribed in the human body. Now Shubin shows that all creation, from the big bang on, is packed in there, too…In short, universal history made us what we are. Wow.”—Booklist starred review “Biologist Shubin’s grand tour of human origins goes beyond the well-worn Carl Sagan line, ‘We’re made of star stuff’…Even those familiar with the basic underpinnings of how we evolved will find The Universe Within engaging. It is laced with Shubin’s own fossil-hunting adventures and filled with colorful tales of historical figures.” —Scientific American “The biblical passage, ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return,’ is a poignant reminder of our fragile place in the world. It also reminds us how deeply we are connected to the earth, the water, the air and to the other creatures who roam the land. Shubin’s The Universe Within is a further reminder of this critical relationship…The Universe Within gives us an appreciation of how we are just small specks and small moments in time.” —Bookpage “Shubin, takes us on an exhilarating ride through the workings of science and gives a fascinating glimpse into the vast universe’s many constituents…To read The Universe Within is to arrive at all sorts of wonders…Shubin illuminates our inner and outer selves and our world, and demonstrates how beautifully connected, transitory, rare, and changeable we are.” —Book Browse “An illuminating account of how life on earth is shaped by the rhythms of the cosmos…Shubin’s gift for storytelling is rooted in such shifts of scale, from the cosmic to the quotidian…‘Every astronomer is a paleontologist’, notes Neil Shubin, but on the evidence of this dazzling excursion into life, the universe and everything, every palaeontologist is also a biologist, a physicist and a cosmologist rolled into one, a magical storyteller whose work succeeds in reminding us how at home we are in our universe.” —The Times Literary Supplement “Entertaining.” —METRO newspaper About the Author Neil Shubin is the author of the best-selling Your Inner Fish, which was chosen by the National Academy of Sciences as the best book of the year in 2009. Trained at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of California at Berkeley, Shubin is associate dean of biological sciences at the University of Chicago. In 2011 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Prologue Having spent the better part of my working life staring at rocks on the ground, I’ve gained a certain perspective on life and the universe. My professional aspiration—uncovering clues to the making of our bodies—lies inside the baked desert floor or deep within the frozen Arctic. While this ambition may seem eccentric, it is not much different from that of colleagues who peer at the light of distant stars and galaxies, map the bottom of the oceans, or chart the surface of barren planets in our solar system. What weaves our work together are some of the most powerful ideas that mankind has ever developed, ones that can explain how we and our world came to be. These notions inspired my first book, Your Inner Fish. Inside every organ, cell, and piece of DNA in our bodies lie over 3.5 billion years of the history of life. Accordingly, clues to the human story reside within impressions of worms in rock, the DNA of fish, and clumps of algae in a pond. While I was thinking about that book, it became clear that worms, fish, and algae are but gateways to ever deeper connections—ones that extend back billions of years before the presence of life and of Earth itself. Written inside us is the birth of the stars, the movement of heavenly bodies across the sky, even the origin of days themselves. During the past 13.7 billion years (or so), the universe came about in the big bang, stars have formed and died, and our planet congealed from matter in space. In the eons since, Earth has circled the sun while mountains, seas, and whole continents have come and gone. Discovery after discovery in the past century has confirmed the multibillion-year age of Earth, the sheer vastness of the cosmos, and our species’ humble position in the tree of life on our planet. Against this backdrop, you could legitimately wonder if it is part of the job description of scientists to make people feel utterly puny and insignificant in the face of the enormity of space and time. But by smashing the smallest atoms and surveying the largest galaxies, exploring rocks on the highest mountains and in the deepest seas, and coming to terms with the DNA inside every species alive today, we uncover a sublimely beautiful truth. Within each of us lie some of the most profound stories of all. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin”The Universe Within” is a fun journey to what connects us to the cosmos. Professor Shubin the author of the best-selling ”

⭐” provides readers with a wonderful and accessible book that connects the dots to our human origins. Using his background in paleontology and the converging knowledge from biology and physics; we end up with an enjoyable instructive book that is perfect for the layperson. This 240-page book is composed of the following ten chapters: 1.Rocking Our World, 2. Blasts from the Past, 3. Lucky Stars, 4. About Time, 5. The Ascent of Big, 6. Connecting the Dots, 7. Kings of the Hill, 8. Fever and Chills, 9. Cold Facts, and 10. Mothers of Invention.Positives:1. Great science writing. Professor Shubin is an excellent author who is able to convey the main points to a general audience.2. Well-researched and engaging book. This book covers many areas of science with ease, from the big bang until the present.3. Professor Shubin shares his firsthand adventures with readers which make for an enjoyable read.4. Great use of illustrations, maps and photos that add value to book.5. The main idea of this book, made plainly clear, “All the galaxies in the cosmos, like every creature on the planet, and every atom, molecule, and body on Earth are deeply connected. That connection begins at a single point 13.7 billion years ago”.6. Good explanation of how rocks tie us to the past.7. Many great stories of scientists behind important discoveries.8. The importance of properties of light. How chemistry evolved.9. A little astronomy for good measure and how it relates to humans.10. A lot of amazing tidbits interspersed throughout the narrative. “It is a virtual certainty that within the next billion years the sun will run through its hydrogen fuel, expand, and become superhot. In the process, Earth will almost certainly lose its water”.11. How to determine time…many convergences of interest. “Earth spins slower and slower with each passing moment…” Biological clocks.12. Fossils, ancient species…the evolution of species. Fossils and rock layers.13. The fascinating balance of oxygen between the forces that produce it and those that consume it.14. The scientists and observations that led to plate tectonics. “Girl talk”. Continental drift.15. The discovery of extinctions.16. The evolution of our planet. The impact of carbon dioxide. The cycle of carbon. “The rise of the Tibetan Plateau led to the shift from a warm Earth to a cold one; it did so by pulling carbon from the air via erosion of rock”.17. The “cold” hard facts. The ice age theory. The regular intervals that they occur. “Earth’s orbit changes in three major ways. Over 100,000 years Earth’s orbit goes from the shape of an oval to a more circular pattern. During 41,000 years Earth rocks back and forth about 2 degrees. And in the course of 19,000 years Earth’s tilt wobbles like a top”. The ice ages are correlated to the changing orbit, tilt, and gyration of Earth…how cool is that?18. Human evolution. Biology and culture.19. Further reading section. Good sources.Negatives:1. Did not take advantage of links in the Kindle version.2. As wonderful as this book is it really is intended for the layperson and as a result lacks depth.3. The book is heavily weighted in favor of geology.In summary, this was a fun book to read. Professor Shubin is an engaging author who does a wonderful job of conveying his main ideas to the public. The book is about the thrill of the scientific hunt. In this case, it was about the hunt for discoveries that link humans to our cosmos. As wonderful as this book is, it’s not in the same league as his masterpiece, “Your Inner Fish”; be that as it may, it’s a solid, accessible book. If you are a layperson and want to learn what connects us all, by all means pick up this book, I highly recommend it!Further suggestions: ”

⭐” by Brian Switek, ”

⭐” by Donald R. Prothero, ”

⭐” by Brian Clegg, ”

⭐” by Sam Kean, ”

⭐” by Gregory Cochran, ”

⭐” by Adam Frank, ”

⭐” by Spencer Wells, ”

⭐” by Jerry A. Coyne, , “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond, “A Universe from Nothing” by Lawrence Krauss, and ”

⭐” by Brian Cox.

⭐Terrific book as are all of Dr Shubin’s books

⭐I just finished reading, this week, “The Universe Within” (2013) by Dr. Neil Shubin, a noted paleontologist and Associate Dean of Biological Sciences at the prestigious University of Chicago. This is a very informative book, extremely broad in scope, which explains in non-technical language the origin of the Universe, the Solar System, the Earth, life, and the inner workings of the human body, in scientific detail. Reading it was like watching “Cosmos” (the acclaimed TV series explaining the scientific workings of the Universe) with a different spin.I learned a lot from this book and wish that it had been written earlier and I had it available to use as a source in my college courses on Geography and early Ancient History (which I began with an account of “Natural History”, the period when life existed on earth before the advent of human beings). Speaking of history, this book (like “Cosmos”) repeatedly explains the story of the men and women who made major scientific discoveries and, a times, tells of the academic disputes that raged, in the past century, over these discoveries (which often upset long held ideas and beliefs about the natural history of the Earth and the origin of the Universe).What did I learn from this book? I will tell you only a few things, since my space is limited. 1) The distance of the stars from the earth (measured in light years) can be scientifically measured by the quality of the light they emit. 2) Those stars which are furthest out, in distant galaxies, are billions of light years away, showing that the Universe is billions of years old. 3) The stars emit red shifted light which shows that they are moving away, further and further out into space. 4) Projecting their movement back into time, all their “stuff” can be seen as emerging from a single point in space, where it emerged in one “Big Bang”.5) This “stuff” initially included only that of three light atoms, Helium, Hydrogen, and Lithium, which formed the earliest components of the earliest stars. 6) The stars, over time, fused these light atoms into heavier ones, including Oxygen, Carbon, and Iron. (All atoms heavier than Helium were originally formed by nuclear fusion in the stars.) 7) Amazingly, when a star has become “heavy” enough to form iron, in its core, it becomes unstable and eventually explodes (in a super nova, usually) 8) Such explosions spread ‘clouds” of matter (including many elements) throughout the galaxy, where the star is located. 9) The lighter of these elements fuse into new stars. The heavier elements remain as clouds around the new star.10) These clouds of heavier elements often coalesce (as they did in our Solar System) into planets. 11) Our planet was formed with an iron core, with oxygen and carbon in its surface and atmosphere. 12) The Carbon and Oxygen of the earth eventually became a major part of the life that evolved on earth, including that of human beings, 13) Given all this, we and all other living beings on earth are made (as Carl Sagan famously said) of “star stuff”. (Again, science indicates that all elements, including those inside us, were originally created inside of stars, through the process of fusion.) These facts only scratch the surface of the wealth of scientific information which this wonderful book explains.

⭐I read ‘Your Inner Fish’ when it came out a few years ago, and I was deeply impressed. Shubin is a good writer and an excellent scientist with the rare gift of being able to explain complicated ideas succinctly. The excellent material in that book (the roots of human anatomy in much earlier organisms), combined with the great writing, made for a fascinating read.I had pretty high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, like much popular science, it is more biography than science. I know publishers believe that the ordinary person is more interested in people than cold, hard facts, but I’m sure this isn’t the case.The theme of ‘The Universe Within’ is that within every human life is a history stretching back to the beginning of the cosmos. This is conveyed incredibly well in the earlier chapters, when we’re dealing with the origins of the universe itself and of the matter that constitutes everything that exists. Each of the atoms in the human body has a truly ancient and diverse history – iron, for instance, produced within the hearts of stars and fired out through supernovae. We get a few choice facts, like the fact that Jupiter’s mass played a huge role in determining the mass of the earth and, consequently, its inhabitants. This part is exceptionally good science writing, and it seems to suggest that what we’ll get in the rest of the book is a chronological account of how these atoms came together to become the things we know and love.No such luck. Once the earth has formed, we get a few mini-biographies of the scientists who conducted research on the composition of the earth (almost inadvertently referring to their research), and then biographies of biologists who resolved some problems in biogeography, and then a few more biographies of specialists on human evolution. No subject thereafter is introduced without a biography, and so instead of seeing the world as made up of ever-more-complex structures resulting from the properties of the universe – which could have been a really breath-taking thing to recount – we see it couched within human lives. This makes it readable but, frankly, not of very lasting interest.It is also much more superficial as it goes along, presumably because of the space taken up by biography. Shubin takes us up to the rise of ‘civilisation’ in the form of Natufian sedentism and agriculture in the early Holocene (introduced, of course, by a short biography of Dorothy Garrod), but this discussion is short, fails to explain why such things arose, and so on. I appreciate that this section of the book is beyond Shubin’s expertise as a paleontologist, but why not choose an earlier stopping point in the Pleistocene?The flaws in this book are probably due more to the publisher than the author and, as a whole, it is well-written and clear. Its first few chapters are incredibly interesting and worthwhile. It just promised so much more.

⭐Slightly disappointing offering from the author of the excellent

⭐Your Inner Fish

⭐that shows how various cosmological and geological events have shaped and driven the evolution of life on Earth and the fingerprints that these events have left behind.It’s an interesting concept and there are some genuinely fascinating scientific and personal stories told. Overall though, probably because the author is trying to bring together so many tales from many different disciplines, the book feels as if it lacks any real focus. Also, because so much is being squeezed into relatively few pages each subject area is dealt with at only really the very highest level.For readers interested in following it up, a more detailed analysis of many of the subjects covered in this book can be found in

⭐Revolutions that Made the Earth

⭐.Overall, whilst slightly disappointing from my personal perspective, it’s not a bad book by any stretch and very definitely worth a look but it maybe just tries to take on a little too much.

⭐In the book he starts very well introducing us to the parts of our make-up left over from past times the reason for them and the reasons for their eclipse . This was great .Brilliant work and deductionsTowards the end he seemed to run out of “steam “. His ideas were less. Now in the writing of this I realize that is necessarily the case because we are still evolving and our dna is extant and useful to modern living . Our dna is a product of our universe Now and so the is nothing to tell .I still think the advertizing is a little too much puff

⭐I was very excited to discover what I think is the first book of its kind, exploring the ways in which the human body is a microcosm of Earth’s geological past, the solar system and ultimately the whole Universe. This is fascinating stuff. Shubin is a friendly writer – enthusiastic, jargon-free and never dull. Photos help, though the chapter-heading diagrams are just odd. However, I’d have liked more discussion of the implications for the way we see ourselves and less of the lives of the scientists who made discoveries that led to other discoveries that led to what we actually want to read about.

⭐Neil writes with clarity and enthusiasm and makes novel links between the evolution of the universe and homo sapiens – us! There is much of interest in this book and it is a fairly light and certainly an enjoyable read. ‘Your Inner Fish ‘ had more punch because we go with him looking for and finding key fossils which scientifically prove evolution happened. We also learn about the evolution of every one of our senses. Truly mind-blowing!!

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