Metazoa

By Peter Godfrey-Smith,

Book cover of Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousness

Book description

The follow-up to the BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week Other Minds A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year A Waterstones Best Book of 2020

The scuba-diving philosopher explores the origins of animal consciousness.

Dip below the ocean's surface and you are soon confronted by forms of…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Metazoa as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

If you’re interested in the workings of the human imagination you have to start in our deep evolutionary past, and Metazoa does just this.

Godfrey Smith is an eminent philosopher of science, and brings his considerable experience under the ocean to understanding how the minds of shrimps, octopi, and fish probably conceive of the world.

With stunning evocations of the undersea world and his intimate encounters with these fascinating creatures, the author of Other Minds brings a battery of modern zoological and biological expertise to bear on revealing just how cognitively complex these supposedly simple creatures are. You’ll never look…

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Diary of a Citizen Scientist By Sharman Apt Russell,

Citizen Scientist begins with this extraordinary statement by the Keeper of Entomology at the London Museum of Natural History, “Study any obscure insect for a week and you will then know more than anyone else on the planet.”

As the author chases the obscure Western red-bellied tiger beetle across New…

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