Coyne Why Evolution Is True

Being in this course has changed my view of the biological world greatly. Throughout the four books and various papers that we have read I have learned to think more critically, learned more about learned more about what scientists go through, and even noticed more similarities between humans and fish. The papers helped me understand hard topics, but the discussions with my classmates has helped me better understand how people can build upton others’ ideas or have differing views on a subject, but still have a discussion about it. The first book Guns, Germs, and Steel explained human’s early history and progression to where we are now in a very eye-opening way. Going along in my daily life, I never fully understood how proximity to resources,

As a student majoring in science, I knew that evolution was an important, but seemingly complicated process to understand. I liked that Coyne was able to break down evolution into manageable parts that could be more easily understood. I also loved learning the answers to some questions I had such as why all different vertebrates all begin development looking like a fish embryo. Learning that each vertebrate undergoes development in a series of stages, and the sequence of the stages follows the evolutionary sequences of its ancestors was a great thing to learn. The thing I most took away from this book though, was how Coyne tackles the subject of people thinking evolution is “just a theory”. Coyne tries to prove that evolution is solidly established as any scientific fact and scientists need no more convincing about it. He also explains why creationists are wrong, and what seems to be totally delusional. He says by looking at the facts, people shouldn’t be discouraged or think life has no meaning, but they should know that evolution is true and creationism is not. His obvious opinion about creationists taught me that everyone, even scientists have some opinion and bias on a subject. Reading books and papers like this has taught me to be better at thinking critically, and not focus so not much on someone's opinion, but the evidence that they actually

As a student going into the medical field, obviously the body interests me. The book gave me a whole new set of insights to why the human body is set up the way it is. It’s amazing just how many modern body systems are really just modifications of old ones. From our ear bones, to our skeleton, to our genes, we can look to the species that came before us. To look as the history of history of limb patterns, we look at fish and their skeletons, and to look at how the proportions of our bodies are established we look at that versions of the Hox genes appear in every animal with a body. These lessons in the book really lead me to look at the animals around us differently than I did before. In everyday life I can look around and see the similarities that Shubin talked about. I think this knowledge about body systems will definitely help me in my future to understand why we are set up this way and why our bodies have these sets of limitations or unexpected