Living on Earth

April 1, 2024

The best-selling author of Other Minds considers life on this planet, including human life and how biology, history, communication, consciousness, emotion, philosophy, and more come together to offer both a portrait of life and hope for the future. Prepub Alert.

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July 15, 2024
Godfrey-Smith (Metazoa), a philosophy of science professor at the University of Sydney, presents a cerebral meditation on “the history of how life has changed the Earth.” He explains how three billion years ago, microorganisms called cyanobacteria started photosynthesizing, pumping oxygen into the atmosphere and paving the way for complex organisms. Ancient algae “crept onto land sometime around 450 million years ago,” Godfrey-Smith writes, describing how the emergence of forests with large root systems some 40 million years later reshaped terrain by holding together riverbanks and redirecting currents. Arguing that animals are “causes rather than evolutionary products” of their environment, Godfrey-Smith describes how some octopuses dig tunnels 50 centimeters deep and how male bowerbirds build vertical nestlike structures to impress potential mates. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to follow the author’s train of thought in the latter half of the book, which is aimed at answering, “What are minds doing here?” To “guide action,” is the author’s answer, but the broadness of that response leads to meandering discussions on the materialist view of the mind, the origin of consciousness, the relationship between written language and time, and the ethics of farming livestock. There’s no question Godfrey-Smith is an erudite and profound thinker, but he’s not always successful in organizing his ideas in ways that readers will understand. This doesn’t quite fulfill its lofty ambitions. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency.

August 1, 2024
A scientist muses on how living creatures constructed today's Earth. Godfrey-Smith, professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney and author ofOther Minds andMetazoa, writes that this is the third book in a series. Not straightforward natural history, it's a thoughtful meditation on how the actions of organisms, even the most primitive (ticks, snails), have generated the world humans have inherited. At the same time, "the portion of Earth occupied by wild nature, its place in the whole, shrinks and recedes." Life, present for 3.7 of the 4.5 billion years of Earth's existence, has engineered our planet no less than volcanism and plate tectonics. In the first half of the book, Godfrey-Smith delivers a steady stream of examples of nonhuman life going about its business. Even bacteria learn, communicate, migrate, and build. As evolution proceeds, minds enter the picture. "What are mindsdoing here?" is a question that preoccupies the author throughout the book. "Minds--through perceptions, thoughts, plans, and intentions--guide action," he writes. "Actions serve the interests of organisms, and whether this is intended or not, actions can also transform the world." The second half of the book involves humans, with a heavy emphasis on that perennial favorite, consciousness, which, like so many human accomplishments--e.g., tools, language, engineering--turns out to be well distributed across the animal kingdom. The author ends with a plea to preserve the wild nature that we are now destroying--not from what seems an aesthetic admiration of its beauty, "but a sense of kinship and gratitude." This is not a history of life. For that, readers should consult David Quammen'sThe Tangled Tree, followed by Godfrey-Smith's previous two books (although he insists that's not necessary). Enlightening insights into the natural world and our often perilous relationship to it.

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September 1, 2024
In his history of how all kinds of creatures have transformed Earth's environments, Godfrey-Smith (Metazoa, 2020) finds a purpose for philosophy and ethics in the discussion of biology. While the constructive activity of organisms is center stage, the cycle of death and renewal is ever-present in this treatise. Godfrey-Smith considers the evolution of action--feeding, moving, interacting with others, engineering, and accumulating information. He weighs in on umwelt (an animal's sensory world and perspective), concepts of wild and natural, and the Gaia hypothesis (the notion of Earth as an organism). Featured life-forms include cyanobacteria, flowering plants, birds, mountain gorillas, corals, seahorses, octopuses, manta, trees, cicadas, and humans. Godfrey-Smith's utilization of metaphors can be attention-grabbing. For example, trees in a forest are portrayed as ""giant, ever-growing, solar-energy-collecting towers."" The final few chapters, forward-looking and virtuous, cover climate change, loss of natural habitats, and extinction. Particularly poignant are his musings on human relationships with animals, especially as subjects of biomedical research or as livestock. The living conditions and suffering of chickens, pigs, and cattle raised for food are represented as appalling.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.