Books like Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

01

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

Peter Godfrey-Smith · Science

Peter Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher of science and a scuba diver who began spending time with octopuses off the coast of Sydney, and Other Minds is the result of that dual perspective.

02

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

Sy Montgomery · Science

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist and author who began spending time at the New England Aquarium to get to know a giant Pacific octopus named Athena.

03

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky · Science

Behave is Robert Sapolsky's attempt to explain why humans do what they do — the violence, the altruism, the tribalism, the heroism — by working through every layer of biology that contributes to a single act.

04

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins · Science

The Selfish Gene reframes evolution from the organism's point of view to the gene's.

05

The Blind Watchmaker

Richard Dawkins · Science

The Blind Watchmaker is Richard Dawkins's argument that natural selection — cumulative, non-random selection acting on random variation — is sufficient to explain the apparent design in biological organisms.

06

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking · Science

A Brief History of Time is Stephen Hawking's attempt to explain the biggest questions in physics — where the universe came from, how it behaves, and where it might be going — to readers with no scientific training.