My bookshelf·Index No. 0354

Living on Earth

On My Shelf, Not Yet Read

Third in the run that started with Other Minds, and this one widens out from mind to the whole planet. His subject is action — how living things don’t just experience the world but reshape it, from bacteria oxygenating the atmosphere to beavers to termites to us. He’s a philosopher who dives, so the argument keeps surfacing in real encounters with animals. Then he turns to the hard part: If organisms have always remade the earth, what makes our version different, and what obligations follow. Careful, unhurried, and free of the usual doom cadence.

Living on Earth
By Peter Godfrey-Smith. Picador, 2025. 336 pages.