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A review by fraeyalise
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
I liked learning more about cephalopod life, but this book is incredibly repetitive and rambling. It is continuously referencing other chapters, complete with recaps of those chapters. At the end there's a "save the oceans" message tacked on that seems a bit disingenuous. Don't get me wrong, I'm all here for saving the oceans. But it seemed a little... weird that we are going through all this philosophy just so he can say "by the way, save the oceans".
It feels like the author was enraptured by cephalopods (and really, who wouldn't be?), but his day job is philosophy, so this is a way to explore his work and his hobby at the same time. I think this would be much better as a lecture given at a school instead of a book. I learned a little about evolution, about nature, and about cephalopods. My favorite part by far was when he discusses studies of octopuses and the octopus mischief they enact on their researchers.
Note for the e-book version: this book has no footnotes and at the end, the publishers just tell you to search individual phrases in the book to figure out what the footnote is talking about. That's absolutely ridiculous! That's not how footnotes work.
It feels like the author was enraptured by cephalopods (and really, who wouldn't be?), but his day job is philosophy, so this is a way to explore his work and his hobby at the same time. I think this would be much better as a lecture given at a school instead of a book. I learned a little about evolution, about nature, and about cephalopods. My favorite part by far was when he discusses studies of octopuses and the octopus mischief they enact on their researchers.
Note for the e-book version: this book has no footnotes and at the end, the publishers just tell you to search individual phrases in the book to figure out what the footnote is talking about. That's absolutely ridiculous! That's not how footnotes work.
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal cruelty and Animal death
You can't talk about researching animals without talking about the history of the horrible treatment of animals by researchers.