Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life
Price: £5.99
(as of Jul 29, 2024 17:46:34 UTC – Details)



BBC R4 Book of the Week‘Brilliant’ Guardian‘Fascinating and often delightful’ The Times

What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself – a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared.

Tracking the mind’s fitful development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to the first evolved nervous systems in ancient relatives of jellyfish, he explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous molluscs who would later abandon their shells to rise above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so – a journey completely independent from the route that mammals and birds would later take.

But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually ‘think for themselves’? By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind – and on our own.


From the Publisher

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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01LXKA6FO
Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Collins (9 Mar. 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 6193 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 282 pages

Customers say

Customers find the book plainly written for ease of understanding and practical. They also appreciate the author’s clear biological knowledge and well-tested formula. Readers describe the octopus as fascinating and tasty. Opinions differ on the writing style, with some finding it intelligent and not boring, while others find it boring.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

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