Recommend

The book details fascinating aspects of the evolution of brains, comparing very disparate species, and, if you couldn’t tell from the cover, focusing mostly on octopi and humans. And while social media loves to rehash the apparent cleverness of octopi and their cousins, it never really explains what that means, if it means anything at all. A philosopher and lover of octopi, cuttlefish, and squids, Peter Godfrey-Smith wants to discuss that issue with the reader. The author begins his his discussion with early evolution and the branches of animal life. He discusses studies and observations of our many-legged friends, comparing them to us. However, despite the clearly fascinating subject, I finished the book with a love-hate relationship. And to be clear, both “love” and “hate” are an overstatement. More of a like-dislike relationship with the book, though it doesn’t sound as good. The problems were two-fold. First of all, as a philosopher, Peter Godfrey-Smith seems to have a philosophy of asking questions, rather than attempting to find truths. This would be fine, except for that I did not feel his questions were well-defined or developed. Second, I thought that the actual science, the experiments and subsequent understanding of the octopus brain was lacking. I do not know how much he could have elaborated, but as he isn’t an expert, he likely didn’t know what questions he should be asking. After all, you don’t know what you don’t know. And without a strong background in neuroscience myself, all I knew was that I knew far too little to really examine any the question of what other minds might be like. It is a fine line, writing a book for mass readership, and writing a book with developed scientific discourse, but I did feel that this book fell short of expectation. It is well-written and interesting, but I would have liked another hundred pages of development before I felt like I even had a tiny grasp on the subject.