Carl Zimmer writes
beautifully. He has a science
brain and a poet’s vocabulary, which makes for lovely, lucid prose. His book At The Water’s Edge: Fish
With Fingers, Whales With Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to
Sea, in addition to having a very long title, traces the very long story of
the evolution of evolutionary thinking, among other things. Yes, it is about whales and fish and
hippos and sea monsters, but it is also about Darwin, and Owen, and their many
descendents in the history of ideas.
Complex ideas abound in this
book; there is plenty to learn here.
At the same time, it is a pleasure to read because even the most
complicated problems are elucidated with intelligence and humor.
I read the book as a fitness book
not because of Darwin and his fitness survival program (which would mean
something entirely different to him than to those of us in what we call the
Fitness Industry), but because it lays out embryonic development. Embryonic development has a lot to say
about how our bodies come to be and why they move as they do. Some theories of body rely heavily on
the organization of embryos and development to elaborate how we learn to sense
ourselves, relate to our environment, and, finally, move around. The book didn’t turn out to have a lot
to say that was directly relevant to my kind of fitness concerns, but I learned
a lot and that is good and useful.
Short version: if you like fossils, marine mammals,
and smart writing, this is a great book for you.
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