A lucid journey through the animal world.
A philosophical investigation of how animals, from the bottom up, experience the world.
In this follow-up to his previous book, the highly acclaimed Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (2016), Godfrey-Smith, professor of history and the philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, rewinds the clock to recount the evolution of consciousness from the time life first appeared 4 billion years ago. Long before nervous systems or even nerves evolved, there was sentience. No living cell is oblivious to what is going on around it, but animals take it to a new level. “Single-celled organisms can track touches, chemicals, light, and even Earth’s magnetic field,” writes the author. “But in animals, sensing saw a transition—it saw several, in fact.” Godfrey-Smith finds the octopus irresistible, leading him to “reflect on different ways of being an animal, and the different kinds of experiences…associated with different animal bodies.” Although widely considered “smart,” the author prefers to describe them as behaviorally complex creatures who love to explore and try things but are not ruminative or “clever.” Fish chose a different path, evolving a missile shape, a nerve cord down the back serving muscles organized for mobility, and a camera eye. Eventually, fish developed recognition, memory, and strategic skills, which they passed on to their descendants who left the ocean. No one knows what fish and land animals think, but when scientists measure their brains waves, they detect “similar rhythmic patterns going on inside them.” Insects, the most numerous animals on land, follow another playbook. Although impressive in actions such as flying and vision, their felt experiences remain largely conjecture. Wound tending has never been witnessed in an insect; after an injury, they just continue with whatever they have to do. We are unsure about whether they feel pain. Godfrey-Smith mixes speculation into the science, but the narrative is consistently insightful.
A lucid journey through the animal world.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-20794-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.
The accomplished British nature writer turns to issues of environmental ethics in his latest exploration of the world.
In 1971, a law instructor asked a musing-out-loud question: Do trees have legal standing? His answer was widely mocked at the time, but it has gained in force: As Macfarlane chronicles here, Indigenous groups around the world are pressing “an idea that changes the world—the idea that a river is alive.” In the first major section of the book, Macfarlane travels to the Ecuadorian rainforest, where a river flows straight through a belt of gold and other mineral deposits that are, of course, much desired; his company on a long slog through the woods is a brilliant mycologist whose research projects have led not just to the discovery of a mushroom species that “would have first flourished on the supercontinent [of Gondwana] that formed over half a billion years ago,” but also to her proposing that fungi be considered a kingdom on a footing with flora and fauna. Other formidable activists figure in his next travels, to the great rivers of northern India, where, against the odds, some courts have lately been given to “shift Indian law away from anthropocentrism and towards something like ecological jurisprudence, underpinned by social justice.” The best part of the book, for those who enjoy outdoor thrills and spills, is Macfarlane’s third campaign, this one following a river in eastern Canada that, as has already happened to so many waterways there, is threatened to be impounded for hydroelectric power and other extractive uses. In delightfully eccentric company, and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman who advises him to ask the river just one question, Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that “even the trout have portage trails,” returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river’s permanence and power to shape our lives for the better.
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780393242133
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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