First published in the United States of America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2016 as Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

An excerpt from Other Minds originally appeared, in slightly different form, in Scientific American.

Cover art: Kunstformen der Natur (1904), plate 54: Gamochonia, Octopus vulgaris by Ernst Haeckel

All photographs were taken by the author, unless otherwise stated

Drawn figures are by the author, unless otherwise stated

Peter Godfrey-Smith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008226299

Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780008226282

Version: 2018-01-11

DEDICATION

For all those who work to protect the oceans

EPIGRAPH

The demand for continuity has, over large tracts of science, proved itself to possess true prophetic power. We ought therefore ourselves sincerely to try every possible mode of conceiving the dawn of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature, non-existent until then.

– William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890

The drama of creation, according to the Hawaiian account, is divided into a series of stages … At first the lowly zoophytes and corals come into being, and these are followed by worms and shellfish, each type being declared to conquer and destroy its predecessor, a struggle for existence in which the strongest survive. Parallel with this evolution of animal forms, plant life begins on land and in the sea – at first with the algae, followed by seaweeds and rushes. As type follows type, the accumulating slime of their decay raises the land above the waters, in which, as spectator of all, swims the octopus, the lone survivor from an earlier world.

– Roland Dixon, Oceanic Mythology, 1916

1. Meetings Across the Tree of Life

2. A History of Animals

3. Mischief and Craft

4. From White Noise to Consciousness

5. Making Colors

6. Our Minds and Others