"What makes [Metazoa] shimmer and shine is Godfrey-Smith's exploration of marine life (drawing on his vast and extensive diving knowledge and field experience) to illuminate the ways in which the animal mind works . . . He does this in vivid and scenic prose . . . Filled with riveting anecdotes and research, interspersed with charming and informative illustrations of various time periods such as the Ordovician." --Aimee Nezhukumatathil, The New York Times Book Review
"Never have I encountered anything like
Metazoa. In it, Peter Godfrey-Smith . . . focuses on the evolutionary developments that shaped our brains, and no matter how much you think you know about these developments, his book will deepen your understanding . . . [Godfrey-Smith] favors clarity, presenting our world to scientists and nonscientists alike, salting his book with firsthand observations and experiences."
--Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The American Scholar "Marvelous . . . Godfrey-Smith's book has a fascinating discussion of how it must feel to have [a] sort of split [Octopus] consciousness, nine selves all inhabiting the same body."
--Alison Gopnik, The Wall Street Journal "Philosophers have long debated the nature of consciousness. This probing study takes an evolutionary approach, examining "experience in general" not only in humans but in much of the animal kingdom . . . The author is crisp on a subject notorious for abstraction, dissecting fuzzy philosophical metaphors and weaving in lively descriptions of the octopuses, whale sharks, and banded shrimp he observes on scuba dives off the coasts of Australia."
--The New Yorker "For Peter Godfrey-Smith the spectacle [of sea life] is a curtain-raiser to a profound scientific drama, in which the lives of quite un-human creatures illuminate deep mysteries about the nature of sentience, and what it means to possess a mind . . . In
Metazoa, the scuba-diving historian and philosopher of science tackles these questions with eloquent boldness, reminding us that 'life and mind began in water' . . . Electric."
--Barbara Kiser, The Wall Street Journal "[Peter Godfrey-Smith's] is a special and rare kind of attention: informed by scientific research, yet sensitive to what he is seeing, the particularity of the creature in front of him, and what it might imply, always to the fore . . . Absorbing . . . A delight to read."
--Nigel Warburton, Standpoint "[
Metazoa] shares the virtues of its predecessor [
Other Minds] . . . Godfrey-Smith mixes his theoretical themes with first-hand accounts of often surprising animal behaviour . . . His exploratory style is well-suited, not just to the general reader, but to the problem of consciousness itself."
--David Papineau, Times Literary Supplement "Combining science, philosophy, and his own 'watery hours' spent scuba diving, Godfrey-Smith examines the origins of animal consciousness . . . This is no dry academic treatise . . . [
Metazoa] is enlivened by the wit and affection with which the author often regards his subjects of study."
--Library Journal (starred review) "Godfrey-Smith . . . delivers a rich look at the existence of consciousness in the animal kingdom . . . His evolutionary approach is rich in biological detail, such as when he compares human brains with octopuses' distributed neural network in their brain and arms, and nicely complemented by vivid details of the animals he encounters while scuba diving . . . [His] passion both for the philosophical subject he tackles and the organisms he visits and discusses comes through clearly in his fascinating work."
--Publishers Weekly "Peter Godfrey-Smith writes and thinks like no one else that I know of. He's well immersed in the science of life, a deep-diver into the philosophical implications of the factual world--
and a writer so skillful he can give a reader chills.
Metazoa is his deepest dive to date on what life is, what life means; how we understand what we understand; and how we might continue peeling and peering into the many layers of remaining mystery, to further appreciate the astonishments of existence."
--Carl Safina, author of Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
