Peter Godfrey-Smith
A subject that has not ceased to fascinate me is Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. I read the book less due to the octopus and more for the evolution of intelligent life.
I found the first few pages of the book very encouraging. The author notes how the cephalopods (which include the octopus) were an independent experiment by nature in the evolution of large brains, nervous systems and complex behaviour, and thus it is possible that this is the closest we will come to meeting an alien. Also, as we move further in the study of the mind’s evolution, it begins to touch upon philosophy, and I enjoy reading a “science book” which understands this mix. Later in the book, the discussion around subjective experience, sentience and consciousness was exactly this, and I relished the few pages that were devoted to this.
In the book’s second half, a section I enjoyed was around the entropy of living beings – a tree vs a cephalopod vs a human. How do they have fundamentally different lifespans? The explanation around mutations and how nature’s machinations result in different ways of living, reproducing, and dying were excellent perspectives that aided my understanding of evolution.
What didn’t work for me though was (what I thought) a lack of coherent structure. That resulted in multiple detours from the subjects at hand, some of which, especially if you’re not fascinated by octopus and cuttlefish, would make you wonder when we’d get back on track.
