Metazoa Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind

Peter Godfrey-Smith, Mitch Riley

eAudio - 2020

This program is read by Peter Godfrey-Smith with Mitch Riley.The scuba-diving philosopher who wrote Other Minds explores the origins of animal consciousness.Dip below the ocean's surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom—the Metazoa—they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.In his acclaimed 2016 book, Other Minds, the philosopher and scuba diver ...Peter Godfrey-Smith explored the mind of the octopus—the closest thing to an intelligent alien on Earth. In Metazoa, Godfrey-Smith expands his inquiry to animals at large, investigating the... more