Philospher Peter Godfrey-Smith: ‘To some extent, our planet would be better off without humanity’

With the bestselling Other Minds, the philosopher dramatically changed our view of octopuses. Now, concluding his trilogy about the evolution of intelligence, he shows how animal life has shaped the planet itself

Peter Godfrey-Smith is the scuba-diving philosopher who took octopus off the menu for many readers of his bestselling book, Other Minds. It looked at the distinctive intelligence of cephalopods, rescuing this myth-laden eight-limbed creature from its most frequent setting of a seafood salad and recasting it as subaquatic hero of perception and understanding.

Following up that literary success with 2020’s Metazoa (the word means multicellular animals), Godfrey-Smith is about to publish the final part of his trilogy on the roots of intelligence, Living on Earth: Life, Consciousness and the Making of the Natural World.