Human Errors by Nathan H Lents

Human Errors by Nathan H Lents

An illuminating, entertaining tour of the physical imperfections 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 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.

Nathan H. Lents is professor of biology and director of the Macaulay Honors College at John Jay College, part of the City University of New York. He is the author of Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes (2018). Lents also maintains the Human Evolution Blog and writes for Psychology Today under the tagline Beastly Behavior: How Evolution Shaped Our Minds and Bodies.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9781328974693
ISBN 10	1328974693
Titel	Human Errors
Autor	Nathan H Lents
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Mariner Books
Erscheinungsjahr	2018-05-01
Seitenanzahl	256
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar