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.
Other Minds : The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life - Peter Godfrey-Smith
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£9.99