Personally, this book really didn't do what i needed it to do. I really enjoyed the first few chapters, as they were what i was hoping the book was going to be like the whole way through. i really enjoyed reading about various animals and their community structures. nothing i read was particularly new to me, but it was interesting nonetheless. however, i thought the bulk of this book was pretty boring. i was wandering pretty bad and it took me longer than usual to get though a book of this size.

Godfrey-Smith--a philosopher of science, not a scientist--describes Living on Earth as "a history of organisms as causes, rather than evolutionary products," and adds that "One result is a dynamic picture of the Earth, a picture of an Earth continually changing because of what living things do."

This results in some interesting tidbits, such as how the oxygen exhaled by early cyanobacteria interacted with the iron in nearby sedimentary rocks to turn them rust-red. But I turn over and over in my mind a statement such as "This idea of a history that puts minds, especially human minds, into a lineage of transforming agents, and treats those agents as part of the history of the Earth, was the seed of the book," and I'm at something of a loss to understand what's novel in it, what's going to change my perspective on evolution or on "the history of the Earth." That human minds are (a) part of Earth's history, and (b) transformative -- we are in the Anthropocene, no? -- isn't exactly news.

There were phrases and insights that kept me reading. Living things as "pockets of organization." Life as replication, vs life as the presence of metabolism, and what we make of viruses, which replicate themselves but pirate other metabolisms to do so. Where the border of an organism is, when the organism has effects outside itself. That a living planet holds much more energy than a dead one, because a living planet (ours) is storing the sun's energy. That the Gaia hypothesis may tempt us to think that the Earth is capable of rescuing itself from our deleterious effects on it. "With the evolution of flowers, plants could now interact at a distance. ... Insects became, in a sense, instruments used by plants to span space." I appreciated, too, Godfrey-Smith's discussion of consciousness, which he sees as prevalent in some form even among creatures, such as insects, that we don't usually think of as aware in any way. The same goes for his ethical argument about how we treat the animals we use for food and in experimentation. (This argument has much in common with the discussion in Todd May's excellent Should We Go Extinct?.)

The trouble is that, as engaging as I found many of the pieces of Godfrey-Smith's argument, I remained at a loss to understand where that argument led -- what was original about it, I mean. And G-S really seems to like the sound of his own voice, because gosh was there a lot of repetition.

Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch and Carl Zimmer's Parasite Rex transformed my understanding of evolution and (believe it or not) power. That's what I want, ideally, from a book about science; I was hoping to find it here, and I didn't.

Thanks to FSG and NetGalley for the ARC.

This work was certainly interesting, but it was not accessible to me as a reader. I thought it would be more like other works of nonfiction on nature and the meaning of it. However, I found a book that used far more philosophy than the average reader in the genre would understand. I think someone could only fully appreciate this book if they had a background in philosophy. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people, even if I thought eh work introduced some interesting ideas.

I have the utmost respect for Peter Godfrey-Smith, who is a great thinker and has a very distinctive perspective on evolutionary biology. However, I always find it a bit difficult to get engaged in his narrative – for some reason his style is not to my liking. This book was no different. It's very informative, even eye-opening at times – but presented in a way that I found somewhat uncompelling. . I have to admit that I much preferred another recent book on a similar subject, "Becoming Earth" by Ferris Jabr. But if you're a fan and have devoured previous Godfrey-Smith books, you won't be disappointed.

Thanks to the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

This fascinating book examines how living organisms have shaped the world, from cyanobacteria oxygenating the atmosphere to human activity increasing the levels of carbon dioxide. Informative and easy to read, the book also confronts the ethical implications of human actions, exploring issues like factory farming, habitat destruction, and animal experimentation.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Great book by Godfrey-Smith, but not quite as good as Other Minds. The man knows how to make nature very interesting, but maybe got a bit too bogged down with this one.

This is an interesting mix of science and philosophy about life on Earth and how scientists theorize life began and on the nature of life itself.

<b>Living on Earth by Peter Godfrey-Smith</b>
Expected publication: September 3, 2024
Rating: 2.5 stars
Date Read: 3 June 2023

<u>DISCLAIMER:</u> This is an unbiased review provided in exchange for the ARC of this book from Netgalley (though the publisher probably regrets it now. Sorry! but the book just didn't work for me.)

<i>"Human action should not be contrasted with "nature", should not be set against it. The evolution of human action is part of the evolution of the transformation of environments by living activity. This starts out as a near-inevitable consequence of life, takes new forms in animals, then reaches the extravagances made possible by human minds, societies, and cultures."</i>
This is a quote from the beginning of chapter 8 of Living on Earth by Peter Godfrey-Smith. It is also the whole point of the book, followed by an appeal to think differently about our role in this world and our responsibility towards it. Especially in light of the enormous scope of human influence over other organisms and their environment.

At the end of this book, I've come to the conclusion that the book was not meant for me. With phrases such as "dinosaur times", explanations for simple things such as rust and "crossing the Rubicon", and the repetitive explanations for photosynthesis and mitochondria, not to mention the plethora of examples of all the "cool" things nature does (all the examples that I have spent a life-time seeing on Attenborough's nature and other documentaries, and also reading in numerous books), as well as harping on the evils of modern civilization (which we are constantly and repeatedly inundated with already), this book seems to be written with those brand new to the marvels of the world, how it functions and what effects humans have on it. Not someone like me looking for new marvels, or a new perspective on old marvels, or feasible solutions.

This book does not provide anything new or original. Not even the author's perspective - the "story of living action, and its impact" - is original. The author's version (I cannot call it a thesis since it is not developed properly) of nature (animals, plants, bacteria, humans etc) "making the world in which we live" seems to be an afterthought in each chapter, until you get to the "humans are bad" chapters. The last two opinionated chapters on ethics and the evils of modern high density civilization (and humans as a species) are preaching to the choir, not particularly well researched, and extremely superficial. These are complicated topics that are more nuanced than belied by the author's brief talking points.

The writing style starts of nebulous, with musings and anecdotes*, several paragraph that doesn't serve a purpose, and is not particularly well structured i.e. the different examples tend to bounce from one to the other and don't feed into each other organically. The writing style gets more solid as the book progresses, but there are still issues with transitions between examples/sections/chapters. I felt the book lacked proper cohesion and focus; it felt too disjointed - there was no proper spine to hang the contents on, just a whole lot of hyoid, malleu, incus, and stapes bones. I also got the distinct impression that the author apparently likes the sound of his own voice, or perhaps the appearance of his words on the page, since he just drones on instead of getting to the point, using more concise language/explanations, or he would include information/anecdotes that simply weren't relevant. On the other hand, the chapter on Godfrey-Smith's pet subject, consciousness, and language development was downright exciting compared to the preceding and following chapters.

The author is a philosopher, rather than a biologist, but he insists on combining the two, so I do expect something more substantial than oft-repeated biological/environmental factoids slathered in philosophical musings and personal anecdotes.

*This author should stick to writing about his beloved octopodes. A semi-memoir type book about his experiences diving to his octopus "cities" and the interesting things octopodes do would fit better with this author's writing style - and would be a hell of a lot more interesting to read than a rehash of "old stuff".

<u>Note:</u> There are three plurals for octopus. <i>Octopi</i> is the oldest plural of octopus, coming from the belief that words of Latin origin should have Latin endings. <i>Octopuses</i> was the next plural, giving the word an English ending to match its adoption as an English word. Lastly, <i>octopodes</i> stemmed from the belief that because octopus is originally Greek, it should have a Greek ending. - From the <i>Merriam Webster Dictionary.</i>
I'm using <i>octopodes</i> because I like it the sound of it.

What I loved most about this book was the writing style. It read like it was written by the fun college professor or a passionate friend. I think Godfrey-Smith will become one of the few non-fiction authors I follow.

There were times that made me question the age of the audience of the book because it would define what rust is or explain what photosynthesis and the mitochondria is multiple times. It works in talking about the horror/beauty in oxygen, but can be repetative. It did pay off, for example we all know about left-side right-side thinking, but using a picture to describe it made so much more sense.


Its the third installment, however it can be read out of order. Thank you #Netgalley in exchange for an honest review of #LivingOnEarth. 3.5/5 stars. Its approximately 200 pages for a quick read with lots of interesting facts/theories.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC!
Peter Godfrey-Smith has been one of my favorite writers all time. From his books such as Metazoa, but also his scientific publications (which I have notifications for on Google Scholar), PGS has an amazing away of telling an incredibly complex story in terms that are understandable for many people. As the third book of the series, I think this did an amazing job on re-framing ancient history to center around organisms that are often overlooked. The discussion of consciousness as a functional output of biological needs was poetic, and the conclusion surrounding what this history means for our treatment of animals and ecosystems was an amazing conclusion.
I'm always excited to see a PGS book being released, so thank you to the publishers for the opportunity to read this ARC!

A good read, although at times my attention wandered a bit as some sections were more interesting than others.

I have read other books by the author and liked them enough so I have decided to read this book also. This book is like a collection of interconected essays about aspects of life in the world to specific questionings about humans, going from how life came to be on Earth, the feeling of self in animals (not just humans), language and more recent discussions, like the welfare of cattle animals, the changing of nature by humans and so on. It's really diversified, but for me some chapters were more interesting and easy to understand than others, but I admit the the majority of the topics discussed here were things that I have already read about before in some way (some more than others). In the end I consider it a cool book and was interesting to see the discussions brought by the author.

Thank you Netgalley and Farrar, Strous and Giroux for the eARC of this book. All the opinions here are my own and given freely.