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Neil Shubin

Neil Shubin Books

Paleontologist

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“By the mid-1980s, [Stephen Jay Gould] had emerged as a major public figure, using his background as a paleontologist to dive into controversies with radical stances on the ways new species emerge and how evolutionary change comes about. His [popular history of life] college class was composed of around six hundred students who, taking it as a distributional requirement, were unlikely to become science majors. This audience proved an ideal focal group for Gould to try out his new theories and presentations. Every Tuesday and Thursday in the fall he held forth, lecturing with dramatic flourish to undergraduates who either sat rapt in the front rows or sprawled sleeping in the rear ones.”

EvolutionPopular ScienceMotivated ReasoningStephen Jay Gould
Book:Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
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“Take the entire 4.5-billion-year history of the earth and scale it down to a single year, with January 1 being the origin of the earth and midnight on December 31 being the present. Until June, the only organisms were single-celled microbes, such as algae, bacteria, and amoebae. The first animal with a head did not appear until October. The first human appears on December 31. We, like all the animals and plants that have ever lived, are recent crashers at the party of life on earth.”

YearsFirstsHumansEarthAnimalPartyPlantBillionsScalesOrganismsMidnightJuneOctoberDecemberJanuaryBacteriaMicrobesAlgaeJanuary 1
Author:Neil Shubin
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“When the finely tuned balance among the different parts of bodies breaks down, the individual creature can die. A cancerous tumor, for example, is born when one batch of cells no longer cooperates with others. By dividing endlessly, or by failing to die properly, these cells can destroy the necessary balance that makes a living individual person. Cancers break the rules that allow cells to cooperate with one another. Like bullies who break cooperative societies, cancers behave in their own best interest until they kill their larger community, the human body.”

HumansPersonsDifferentBodyDiesIndividualInterestBornCommunityBreakFailingExampleBalanceCreaturesCancerCellsBehaveBullyBreaking DownHuman BodyDividingCooperativesTumorsParts Of The Body
Author:Neil Shubin
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“Each galaxy, star, or person is the temporary owner of particles that have passed through the births and deaths of entities across vast reaches of time and space. The particles that make us have traveled billions of years across the universe; long after we and our planet are gone, they will be a part of other worlds.”

WorldYearsPersonsLongUniverseStarsSpaceGonePlanetsBirthBillionsOwnersTemporaryEntityTraveledGalaxyTime And SpaceOur PlanetParticlesOther WorldsBirth And DeathAcross The Universe
Book:The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body
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