Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith is a non-fiction book. It voices theories on the evolution of the nervous system of cephalopods. The book is based on research and hypotheses and, well, underwater expeditions and reminded me of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, another hugely popular non-fiction. I decided to analyze the workings of this book to understand what makes non-fiction books on science popular.
It’s a lightly written book on a subject that is interesting — minds other than ours. Although, based on research and what clearly comes across as years of work by the author the book summarizes concepts into anecdotes, which offer the reader much insight into fascinating lives we know little about, would like to know more about, but don’t want to be bogged down by scientific terms about. The book seems to target readers of fiction. It isn’t written as a thesis, and is more readable.
In the book, Peter Godfrey-Smith talks about various aspects of cephalopod evolution and behavior. He draws multiple conclusions based on his research and supports inferences with references from scientific papers published by various scientists.
I’ll mention here the sections the book is split into. Then I’ll talk about the anecdotes, which is the main feature of the book.
Structure:
The researcher has structured the book basis the various capabilities of the cephalopods: their mischiefs and crafts, consciousness and the nervous system, and their ability to make color. The book begins with the history of animals and ends with Octopolis, a site fifty feet below the surface off the east coast of Australia, where Peter Godfrey-Smith dives in to watch octopuses.
Anecdotes:
The book is a theory of evolution presented with anecdotes to make the reading experience light and enjoyable. Here is one on how octopuses navigate.
Octopuses are also good at navigation. Whenever I see an octopus wander from its den, I follow it if I can, and I’ve been taken on a lot of tours. If I don’t get too close as they roam and explore, the octopuses often pay me no attention at all. The octopuses are usually foraging for food, and this takes them on long rambling paths that eventually return to their dens.[1]
After stating his own experience with navigating with octopuses, Peter Godfrey-Smith goes on to reference Jennifer Mather’s study to validate his conclusion of octopuses being good navigators.
In another example, Peter Godfrey-Smith lists the path of evolution till the cephalopod.
I described how the early history of animals, insofar as we know it, led to a fork with one path running forward to chordates, like us, and the other leading to cephalopods, including the octopus. Let’s take stock and compare what arose down the two evolutionary lines.[2]
In the section, Peter narrows down at the eyes of the octopus and throws in the following nugget of information to intersperse the historical detail above with an interesting bit of similarity with the human eye.
Octopuses, like us, seem to have a distinction between short-term and long-term memory. They engage in play with novel objects that aren’t food and have no apparent use. They seem to have something like sleep. Cuttlefish appear to have a form of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, like the sleep in which we dream. (It’s still unclear whether there’s REM-like sleep in octopuses.)[3]
In the Making Colors section, Peter details the working of the cephalopod dermis. This section includes various scientific details on how cephalopods render color on their skin. This section is supported by pictures from the sea and diagrams explaining the various layers of cephalopod skin.
Towards the end, the book talks about the lifespan of octopuses and cuttlefish. Peter says expressing shock:
Giant cuttlefish, these large and complicated animals, have very short lives: just one or two years. The same is true of octopuses; one or two years is a common lifespan. The largest, the giant Pacific octopus, can make it to about four years at the outside.[4]
Peter explains various theories and delves into multiple hypotheses to analyze these short lifespans of the cephalopods. He talks about the natural process of wearing out, the evolutionary theory of ageing, and the evolution of the cephalopod, which caused it to lose some of its natural defenses leaving it exposed to sharp-toothed predators in its environment.
Ending:
Peter Godfrey-Smith ends the book with a chapter on Octopolis, the site in Australia where he began the book with researcher Matthew Lawrence. Of Octopolis, Peter says:
Octopolis is a place where several elements that are usually missing from octopus life, and that are relevant to the evolution of brains and minds, are present. There’s a lot of interaction and social navigation, and a lot of feedback between what is done and what is perceived. The octopuses face an unusually complicated environment, because an important part of that environment is other octopuses. There is constrant manipulation and reshaping of the shell bed. They throw debris around, and the shells and other materials that are thrown often hit other octopuses. This might be a mere den-cleaning behavior, but it’s a behavior that has new consequences in the crowded setting, as these projectiles do seem to affect the behavior of the octopuses who are hit. [5]
Peter Godfrey-Smith ends this interesting book hoping that we will appreciate and care for the oceans — our origins. It was a fun book to read and posed as an example for the use of anecdotes, an alternate style to present scientific subjects to an audience of fiction. I can understand the popularity the book has enjoyed.
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