Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution [Hardcover]

Mark S. Blumberg (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195322827 | ISBN-13: 978-0195322828 | Publication Date: November 13, 2008 | Edition: 1

In most respects, Abigail and Brittany Hensel are normal American twins. Born and raised in a small town, they enjoy a close relationship, though each has her own tastes and personality. But the Hensels also share a body. Their two heads sit side-by-side on a single torso, with two arms and two legs. They have not only survived, but have developed into athletic, graceful young women. And that, writes Mark S. Blumberg, opens an extraordinary window onto human development and evolution.

In Freaks of Nature, Blumberg turns a scientist's eye on the oddities of nature, showing how a subject once relegated to the sideshow can help explain some of the deepest complexities of biology. Why, for example, does a two-headed human so resemble a two-headed minnow? What we need to understand, Blumberg argues, is that anomalies are the natural products of development, and it is through developmental mechanisms that evolution works. Freaks of Nature induces a kind of intellectual vertigo as it upends our intuitive understanding of biology. What really is an anomaly? Why is a limbless human a "freak," but a limbless reptile-a snake-a successful variation?

What we see as deformities, Blumberg writes, are merely alternative paths for development, which challenge both the creature itself and our ability to fit it into our familiar categories. Rather than mere dead-ends, many anomalies prove surprisingly survivable--as in the case of the goat without forelimbs that learned to walk upright. Blumberg explains how such variations occur, and points to the success of the Hensel sisters and the goat as examples of the extraordinary flexibility inherent in individual development. In taking seriously a subject that has often been shunned as discomfiting and embarrassing, Mark Blumberg sheds new light on how individuals--and entire species--develop, survive, and evolve.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Mark Blumberg's beautifully written book introduces some major problems in both developmental and evolutionary biology. Individuals can sometimes develop in astonishingly aberrant ways. These freaks of nature challenge the way we think about development and, over the years, have caused some biologists to wonder whether the formation of new species is always as continuous as orthodox theories of evolution purpose."--Sir Patrick Bateson, Professor Emeritus of Ethology, University of Cambridge

"Mark Blumberg is a freak of literature--one of the very few scientist-writers (think Stephen Jay Gould or Oliver Sacks) who can sweep us along as they try to figure out how the exceptions in the species can prove the rule of who we all are. In Freaks of Nature, the specimens are certainly riveting, but it's also Blumberg's lucid, lyrical, profound insights into what it means to be human that will stay with the reader."--Richard Panek, author of Seeing and Believing: How the Telescope Opened Our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens and The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud, and the Search for Hidden Universes

"Freaks of Nature examines various kinds of disfigurement that occur in both human beings and animals, includes diagrams and photographs, and questions our assumptions about the abnormally developed...Blumberg urges us to consider how our ideas of what is natural can and should expand to include the anomalies among us."--The Chronicle Review

"When people come to the Mutter Museum 'to see the freaks,' I cringe inwardly, smile outwardly and generally say nothing at all. I have found over the years that the inhabitants of this remarkable place say far more than I ever could. Whatever the reason for visiting the museum--fascination, repulsion, even derision--people tend to leave more informed and perhaps even more aware than when they arrive. And that is exactly how I felt after reading this book."--Anna N. Dhody, Curator of the Mutter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, in The Scientist

"Timely and wide-ranging, Freaks of Nature shows that although we've passed some exciting landmarks on our journey, we're still some distance from that circled destination and the route is still unclear."--New Scientist

"If you're interested in the science behind the macabre, this book will thrill you. It's also a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about a cutting-edge area of evolutionary theory."--io9.com

"One of the Best Books of 2008"--Neurotopia

"With well-picked examples, Blumberg constructs his at first peculiar, but ultimately profound, argument...Startlingly convincing." --Elizabeth Quill, Science News

"Blumberg is a developmental psychobiologist, and thus advocates for a more supple understanding of the interplay between development, behavior, and evolution than has usually been accepted. He eloquently defends the view that 'development is the story of adaptation within one lifetime,' and that thinking seriously about anomalies helps us see 'how much adaptability there is in the developing organism.' --Jason B. Jones, Boldtype

"By presenting a parade of animal freaks, mutants, developmental anomalies, and weird species, Blumberg imparts lessons that, although familiar to biologists, will be valuable to non-specialists. He emphasizes that the complex process of development can be unraveled by understanding how such anomalies are produced...Blumberg illustrates his points with clear and intriguing examples...Blumberg's ambitions transcend storytelling: he aims to show that developmental biology has made real contributions to evolutionary theory." --Jerry A. Coyne, Nature

"Blumberg takes us on a tour of real-life teratology, and how understanding abnormalities is casting new light on the relationship between the genetic and non-genetic forces that shape us all." --Stephen Cass, Discover

"A stimulating read." --Financial Times

"Blumberg's explanations of the factors that go into [these] deformations are gripping." --Robert Colvile, Telegraph.co.uk

"Engrossing and interesting." --John Wilkins, Evolving Thoughts

About the Author

Mark Blumberg is Professor and Starch Faculty Fellow at the University of Iowa. The author of two books and more than eighty journal articles and chapters on a wide variety of subjects, he currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavioral Neuroscience and as President of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 344 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (November 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195322827
• ISBN-13: 978-0195322828
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #796,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Blumberg is a behavioral neuroscientist and the F. Wendell Miller Professor at the University of Iowa. He received his bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in 1983, majoring in Physics and Philosophy. That year, he began graduate school at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in Biopsychology in 1988. After leaving Chicago, he began four years as a postdoctoral associate at Indiana University in Bloomington. In 1992, he moved to Iowa City to take a position at the University of Iowa.

Blumberg has published over 80 scientific articles and chapters on a wide variety of topics, including sleep, animal behavior, animal mind, temperature regulation, and communication. He has received nearly two million dollars in federal grant support, including a Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. In 1997, he received an Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association (APA) and, in 2009, he received a Regents Award for Faculty Excellence from the University of Iowa. Currently, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavioral Neuroscience.

In addition, to Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us about Development and Evolution, Blumberg has published two other books of general science: Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior, and Body Heat: Temperature and LIfe on Earth. He also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscience.

Blumberg was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We are all freaks of nature., January 14, 2009

By 

C. Harshaw (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution (Hardcover)

As in his previous book, Basic Instinct (also highly recommended), Blumberg does a remarkable job of translating a number of complex ideas into readily understandable prose. The relationship between development and evolution was a subject largely neglected in mainstream biology for much of the 20th century. The tide has begun to turn significantly only over the course of the last two decades--not enough time for the burgeoning science of epigenetics (molecular and molar) to have filtered into the general scientific and popular consciousness. Books like Blumberg's are thus badly needed.

In Freaks of Nature Blumberg presents a novel way of understanding the development and significance of "freaks"--those organisms who differ from the species-typical (or order-, family-, or genus-typical) norm in significant if not radical ways. Whether the freak be a cyclopean human fetus, a bipedal goat or rodent, an experimentally produced "unicorn," or a female hyena with freakishly enlarged sexual anatomy, Blumberg shows that there is a developmental logic to such anomalies. As numerous findings from modern epigenetics and developmental biology show, subtle differences in the timing of events during development (e.g., the separation of the tissues that eventually become the two fully formed eyes) can result in a cascade of downstream effects, producing sometimes radically novel forms.

Many such novelties are simply not viable and thus never make it to the stage (birth) where scientists can study and others wonder at them. Others, like Johnny Eck, a man who was born with no legs and yet managed to locomote with a high degree of fluidity and even gracefulness--using his hands--are not only viable but capable of thriving due to the high degree of plasticity inherent in the brain and nervous system. We are neither born with a knowledge of what our bodies will be like (for one, our bodies change throughout the lifespan, so we would have to be born with knowledge of infinitely many bodies) nor a knowledge of how to effectively and efficiently control them. This is the beauty of development and is why developmental processes have enormous implications for understanding not only ourselves as humans (we are, in important ways, freaks among the primates), but ourselves as individuals and moreover evolution as a whole.

Blumberg concludes his excellent book by introducing the possibility of two new fields of scientific investigation: terethology, or the study of the behavior of developmental anomalies (or "monsters"), and developmental neuroethology, a field that would seek to study comprehensively the behavior and neural development of "brains packaged in novel forms." In many ways such a field already exists or at least has seeds in modern developmental neurobiology and developmental neuroscience. It also resembles the vision for the behavioral sciences advocated by the psychologist and embryologist Zing-Yang Kuo: an integrative, interdisciplinary science that takes the experimental production and study of novel phenotypes (or neophenotypes) as central to an understanding of both developmental and evolutionary processes.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uncharted Territory, November 24, 2008

By 

Allison Martin (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution (Hardcover)

What a delight! Finally, a beautifully written science book exploring a subject area often ignored or deliberately shunned. Mark Blumberg sensitively explores the world of exceptions, those individuals among us who are limbless, ambiguously gendered, conjoined--those creatures that we see as abnormal. He helps us understand
the wondrous diversity of our world, and calls us to embrace the exceptions, for we are all "monsters."

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Freaky" Good, January 14, 2009

By 

W. D. Todd (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution (Hardcover)

A two-legged goat. A man who walked on his hands. A kitten with two faces. A naked mole rat. A star-nosed mole. A fun read.

Freaks is a provocative look at anomalies in nature and the developmental processes that produce them. Blumberg details the self-organizing mechanisms that create an integrated phenotype in all creatures, not just the archetypes, and persuasively argues how these systems should influence the way we think and talk about evolution.

Poignantly blending fields such as embryology, ethology, psychology and neuroscience, along with a bit of history and anecdote, Blumberg delivers a treat for readers of all interests that should change how we look at what it means to be "normal".