Metazoa, Godfrey-smith, Peter

Автор: Godfrey-Smith Peter
Название: Other Minds
ISBN: 0008226296 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780008226299
Издательство: HarperCollins UK
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Цена: 9670.00 T
Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: BBC R4 Book of the Week `Brilliant` Guardian `Fascinating and often delightful` The Times What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

Автор: Godfrey-smith, Peter
Название: Metazoa
ISBN: 0008321191 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780008321192
Издательство: HarperCollins UK
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Цена: 17600.00 T
Наличие на складе: Поставка под заказ.
Описание: From the human being to the octopus, the shark to the humble sea squirt, all animals are physical beings made up entirely of cells. And yet they can think, to varying degrees. How did this come to be? How did a mind first grow from the matter that is the body? And at what stage did that clump of cells become a `self`?

Автор: Smith Godfrey
Название: The Assassination of Maurice Bishop
ISBN: 9768286237 ISBN-13(EAN): 9789768286239
Издательство: Mare Nostrum (Eurospan)
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Цена: 24030.00 T
Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: The trial of the ‘Grenada 17’ for the assassination of Maurice Bishop, the popular leader of the Grenada Revolution, though resulting in a guilty verdict for all of them, left many unanswered questions. Among those questions were: who ordered the killing and where was the body taken? Now, after close to four decades comes an authoritative work that, while not claiming to provide all the answers, sheds new and credible light on the tragedy which unfolded on that fateful day in October 1983 and the chilling sequence of events that precipitated them.

At the heart of Godfrey Smith’s revealing book, The Assassination of Maurice Bishop, is the role of Bernard Coard who, over the brief life of the revolution, was transformed from Bishop’s friend and comrade into a jealous, power-hungry conspirator who manipulated a cadre of young, impressionable acolytes in the revolutionary army, to orchestrate an impractical proposal for a Bishop-Coard joint leadership which leads to a deadly schism in the party after Bishop ultimately rejects the idea, and a rapid descent into chaos ending in Bishop’s assassination. Smith skilfully contrasts the charisma and populist appeal of the flamboyant Maurice Bishop with the dour, methodical and ideologically rigid Bernard Coard, the two main protagonists in this intense, gripping and high-paced narrative. Other leading actors are vividly portrayed either in their roles as loyalists to Maurice Bishop or as pawns in a Coardite power grab, as he traces the events, personalities and issues in dramatic detail from the first challenge to Bishop’s leadership in the Central Committee to the harrowing denouement at Fort Rupert. The author leaves the best for last in the Afterword.

For two and a half months, Smith immersed himself in Grenadian life, taking up residence in the country, beavering his way into the closed ranks of the ‘Grenada 17’, including all three members of the firing squad as well as its Commander, and winning the confidence of some of them. His travels also took him to Barbados, Cuba – a pivotal player in revolutionary Grenada – and to Jamaica in search of Bernard and Phyllis Coard for their version of the events. Throughout, Smith’s approach is non-intrusive, allowing the characters to speak for themselves and leaving readers to make their own assessments and reach their own conclusions. In this book, he has taken Grenadians a decisive step closer towards closure and final reconciliation.

Автор: Peter Godfrey-Smith
Название: Other Minds
ISBN: 0374537194 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780374537197
Издательство: Macmillan USA/Holtzbrink(MPS)
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Цена: 12260.00 T
Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание:

Named a Top Ten Science Book of Fall 2016 by Publishers Weekly

Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being--how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind's fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys.

But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually "think for themselves"? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?

By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind--and on our own.

Автор: Godfrey-Smith Peter
Название: Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind
ISBN: 0374207941 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780374207946
Издательство: Macmillan USA/Holtzbrink(MPS)
Цена: 17170.00 T
Наличие на складе: Невозможна поставка.
Описание:

The scuba-diving philosopher who wrote Other Minds explores the origins of animal consciousness

In his acclaimed 2016 book Other Minds, the philosopher and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith explored the mind of the octopus--the closest thing to an intelligent alien on earth, as he put it. In Metazoa, Godfrey-Smith expands his inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of subjective awareness with the assistance of the far flung species he has met undersea.

Combining vivid animal encounters with philosophical reflections and the latest news from biology, Metazoa reveals that even in our hi-tech, AI-driven times, there is no understanding minds without understanding nerves, muscles, and our active bodies. The result is a story as rich and vibrant as life itself, one that explains the mystery of animal consciousness in accessible and riveting prose.