Finding Your Inner Fish Chapter 1

This is a paper about the book Finding Fish: A Memoir, which was written by Antwone Fisher. By necessity given the nature of the book, the main character will be examined at length. Through careful examination of the main character a deeper understanding of the book can be reached. After the examination, a number of theoretical perspectives will be applied to the main character, as well as an explanation of how these perspectives can be used to evaluate Antwone in order to understand him better. The perspectives that will be used will be the strengths, systems, conflict, humanistic, and psychodynamic perspectives. Following the connection of the perspectives to Antwone, an explanation of why social workers use theories and

Your Inner Fish is a book that explains evolutionary concepts from multiple different scientific viewpoints. It explains how fossils help us to understand where we started from, and how we evolved. It also explains how DNA can help us track where we came from and trace our ancestry.

When an individual is struggling in life nothing positive comes to mind. Asking for help is something not everyone is comfortable with so they only rely on themselves. Any stranger can approach a person that may seem like they are struggling and help without them expecting it. Some may expect family or friends to help when in need, yet they are the ones that don’t help. A significant theme in Finding Fish is the people who we least expect to help are the ones that actually help the most.

Evolution is one of the most important factors when looking at history. A crucial moment in evolutionary process is speciation. Fortunately, we have the fossil record of a transitional species called tiktaalik. Tiktaalik was the transitional species of sea creature that would evolve into a land creature. It was found on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian arctic and is believed to be around 383 million years old (Class Lecture).

Recently, a lot of debate has gone around about whether or not obesity is considered a disease or not. It is very difficult to pinpoint one sole reason obesity is occurring in people, there are many different justifications for what causes a person to become obese. Obesity is a disease that is currently sweeping the entire world. Percentages of not just adults, but children are skyrocketing like never before. People have never been so overweight until now. I am going to examine why obesity is considered a disease through a scientific, economic, historical, and futuristic lenses.

The author and his colleagues specifically chose to focus on 375 million year old rocks in their search for fossils because this was the time frame that provided fish that would be useful to study from. The 385 million year old rocks provided fish that look too similar to the ones we have now and the 365 million year old rocks have fossils that don’t resemble fish. The 375 million year old rocks, however, provide fossils that show the transition between fish and land living animals.

Healthy eating habits can have remarkable effects on your health. Obesity, according to Medical News Today, obesity is ‘‘...a condition where a person has accumulated so much body fat that it might have a negative effect on their health.’’ This is caused by a person consuming food with empty calories, too much sodium, fats, sugars, etc. However, obesity is not the only

As seen during the eighteenth century, the presence of excess body fat was envied and very rare; seen only in kings, the rich, and the wealthy as a sign of power and prosperity. Once food shortage was no longer relevant, the 20th century re-assessed this “sign of power” as a sign of ill health, and was then documented in medical practices as the chronic disease known as obesity. As we look at the roots of obesity today, causes of the disease cannot be attributed to a single origin. However, there are many daily influences that justify our nations expanding waistlines; the most obvious being an unhealthy diet. The role of food in our society has altered the way Americans perceive nutrition. Meal times are advertised as social events; an instance of mindless eating, with little awareness on stopping when you’re full, and overeating as a result. Portion sizes are much larger than nutritionally necessary, and lack in substantial protein, causing you to

The book Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is an interesting novel that shows the evolution of some of our major structures through time. We all know about evolution and the monkeys but we never really looked in on evolution through “our inner fish”. The book was appealing because it helps to understand how we have come to be with some of the parts of our bodies we take for granted, like how we got our developed smell or our advanced color vision. Your Inner Fish is a good way to jump into the evolution of our ancestors and become more knowledgeable about where we came from.

The author and his colleagues chose to focus on 375 million year old rocks in their search for fossils because amphibians that look dissimilar to fish were discovered in 365 million year old rocks, while fish without amphibian characteristics were discovered in 385 million year old rocks. Thus, it is possible that the evolutionary intermediary, or the “missing link” between fish and amphibians, would be discovered in 375 million year old rocks, between the two time periods. The rocks examined were sedimentary in composition, as the gradual and relatively gentle formation of sedimentary rock under conditions of mild pressure and low heat are conducive to the fossilization of animal remains. Sedimentary rock is also often formed in rivers and seas, where animals are likely to live. This site provides a resource that describes means by which fossils are formed and how the fossil record may be interpreted, and shows some examples of fossils demonstrating evolution through geological periods: http://www.fossilmuseum.net/fossilrecord.htm. In 2004, Shubin and his colleagues were looking for fossils on Ellesmere Island, in northern Canada. This location was chosen because of its lack of human development, as well as of obstructing natural formations and life forms such as trees, which

In the science of paleontology, the history of life is studied. Paleontologists study fossils to learn the past ecologies, evolution, and the origins of humans. In order to understand the processes that have led to both the origination and destruction of organisms since life began, paleontologists incorporate both scientific knowledge and studies. Fossil findings are critically important for confirming predictions of evolution theory. Of the many discoveries that are made yearly to add depth to the understanding of evolution, an example is a recent discovery of a creature they named Tiktaalik. The Tiktaalik was uncovered to be a transitional animal between shallow-water fishes and limbed animals. The creature supports the idea that it emerged from both mammals and reptiles, suggesting that the two are related. These findings support prediction of evolution, contradicting the belief that God

Obesity refers to the condition of having an extra amount of body fat. Obesity is caused by eating too much and moving too little. When an individual’s amount of body fat becomes too high, they are at a greater risk of being affected with life changing diseases such as heart failure, hypertension, type II diabetes, cancer, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, and others. This shows that people should become more physically active and attempt to make healthier choices because their life depends on the decisions, they make.

My outside source for questions 3 and 4 is a journal by Pat Shipman titled Fossils. This journal was published in The New Scientist Vol. 215, Issue 2876, p. 8-16.

There are many serious health issues today in society. A few of them are anorexia nervosa, bulimia, diabetes, and obesity. Today, obesity is one of the most popular diseases around the world. Obesity typically means having a body mass index of thirty kilograms or more. If taken in more calories than burned, it leads to being overweight, and eventually obesity. Since the 1960s, people in the United States and other industrialized countries have become heavier on average. Excess weight is the cause of more illness than virtually any other medical condition. Most people still do not practice healthy behaviors that can prevent obesity. Obesity is mostly caused by poor eating habits. People do not eat healthy foods, have larger portions than

In reality very few living things become fossils. Not only does a minute fraction of living things become preserved as fossils, but only an exceedingly small proportion of the fossils that are preserved end being discovered, collected and studied. Not surprisingly, then that the fossil record is not entirely representative of the composition of past biological communities ( Behrensmeyer and Hill 1980). Instead, fossil record preserves some organisms more than others. Taphonomy which is the study of what happens to organism from the time they die to their discovery is used. This approach may include both the biological and geological processes.