Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes

by Nathan H. Lents

"An illuminating, entertaining tour of the physical imperfections--from faulty knees to junk DNA--that make us human. 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? 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, perhaps evolution's greatest creation, is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our 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"

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biology, Audiobook, Medicine, Medical, Evolution

255 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2018

About the author

Nathan H. Lents is professor of biology and director of the Honors College at John Jay College of the City University of New York.

His research has been published in a dozen leading science journals, including the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Molecular Cell, the Journal of Forensic Sciences, and the American Journal of Physiology, as well as science education journals such as the Journal of College Science Teaching and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

He also maintains The Human Evolution Blog and blogs for Psychology Today under the tagline, "Beastly Behavior: How Evolution Shaped our Minds and Bodies." His articles occasionally appear in magazines such as Skeptic.

Reviews

[Arina]

Immer wieder wird darauf hingewiesen, dass der menschliche Körper das Wunderwerk der Evolution ist. Dass dieser Körper auch so ziemlich viele Konstruktionsfehler aufweist, darüber hört man eher weniger. Der Wissenschaftler Nathan H. Lents greift in seinem Buch viele wichtige Fragen auf:

Wieso sind fast ausschließlich Männer von einer Rot-grün-Sehschwäche betroffen?

Weshalb leiden die Menschen häufiger an grippalen Infekten?

Warum können die meisten Tiere im Gegensatz zu den Menschen ihre Vitamine selbst herstellen?

Weswegen gibt es so viele Fehlgeburten?

Ein leicht verständliches Sachbuch und derzeit nur in englischer Sprache erhältlich. Hochinteressant und sehr lesenswert!