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Off Jervis Bay on the coast of New South Wales lies a patch of seabed where gloomy octopuses live crowded together in dens among piles of scallop shells. Biologists call it Octopolis, and the Australian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith, born in Sydney in 1965, has spent years diving there with a camera. He trained in philosophy at Sydney and San Diego, taught at Stanford, Harvard and the City University of New York, and returned to the University of Sydney in 2017 as professor of history and philosophy of science. His first four books are academic studies of mind, evolution and science; his last three, beginning with Other Minds in 2016, take the same questions underwater, asking how minds and consciousness evolved in animals very unlike us. This guide covers his 7 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 1996–2024 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Peter Godfrey-Smith has written seven books. The best known is Other Minds (2016), about the octopus and the evolution of consciousness, followed by Metazoa (2020) and Living on Earth (2024); his academic books include Theory and Reality (2003) and Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (2009), which won the Lakatos Award. Start with Other Minds; the other two nature books build on it, but each stands alone.
Where to Start with Peter Godfrey-Smith
If you want his best-known book
→ Other Minds (2016) — octopuses, cuttlefish and how minds evolved twice.
If you want the bigger picture of animal minds
→ Metazoa (2020) — from sponges and corals to the origins of experience.
If you want an introduction to the philosophy of science
→ Theory and Reality (2003) — the standard textbook, revised in 2021.
If you want his newest book
→ Living on Earth (2024) — how living things have made the planet, and what we owe them.
7 Peter Godfrey-Smith Books, in Order
Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature
His first book, published by Cambridge University Press, asks why minds exist at all rather than what they are. He defends the “environmental complexity thesis”: cognition exists to help organisms deal with complex, variable environments. Herbert Spencer and John Dewey serve as his two historical guides, and the second half uses formal models to show when learning is worth its cost.
Theory and Reality
An introduction to the philosophy of science, published by the University of Chicago Press, that surveys more than a century of debate about how science works and whether it describes what the world is really like, from logical positivism, Popper and Kuhn to scientific realism. A second edition in 2021 added a new chapter on truth, simplicity and models.
Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection
A reworking of how natural selection should be described. Instead of a yes-or-no test for whether a population is “Darwinian”, he maps populations in a space of features such as the fidelity of inheritance and the abundance of variation, separating paradigm cases from marginal ones, and applies the framework to multicellular organisms, levels of selection and cultural evolution. It won the Lakatos Award for 2010, given by the London School of Economics for a book on the philosophy of science.
Philosophy of Biology
A short introduction for Princeton University Press’s Foundations of Contemporary Philosophy series, covering the central questions in the field, among them natural selection, the levels at which it acts, what a gene is, species and the tree of life, and the evolution of cooperation.
Other Minds
Octopuses and cuttlefish, filmed and photographed by Godfrey-Smith on dives off Australia, many at Octopolis. Their ancestors split from ours about 600 million years ago, so their large nervous systems, with almost twice as many nerve cells in the arms as in the brain, evolved independently of ours. The book asks what such a mind might be like, and why animals so clever live only a year or two. It won the American Philosophical Society’s Patrick Suppes Prize in 2019 and appeared in the UK in 2017 as Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life; his CV lists 22 languages.
Metazoa
A follow-up that widens the view from the octopus to the whole animal kingdom: glass sponges, soft corals, banded shrimp, hermit crabs that carry anemones on their shells, fish, insects and primates. He traces how the animal body, which appeared more than half a billion years ago, and later innovations such as eyes and active movement shaped subjective experience, and argues there is no understanding our minds without understanding nerves, muscles and active bodies.
Living on Earth
The third book in the series that began with Other Minds, published in September 2024. The first half shows how living things, from cyanobacteria and stromatolites to coral polyps and forests, have reshaped the planet’s atmosphere and landscapes; the second turns to human beings and to consciousness, which he takes to be widely spread among animals. He discusses the Gaia hypothesis as a metaphor rather than a literal claim, criticises factory farming, and ends with a case for protecting wild nature.
In What Order to Read Peter Godfrey-Smith
His books fall into two groups. The four academic books, from 1996 to 2014, are written for students and philosophers and assume some patience with technical argument. The three nature books, from 2016 to 2024, are written for general readers and form a loose series: each goes further out from the octopus, to animal life as a whole and then to life on the planet.
Most readers should start with Other Minds and continue in order with Metazoa and Living on Earth, although none of the three depends on the others. If you then want the ideas underneath them, Theory and Reality and Philosophy of Biology are the most approachable of the academic books.
A reading path
1. Other Minds (2016)
2. Metazoa (2020)
3. Living on Earth (2024)
4. Philosophy of Biology (2014)
5. Theory and Reality (2003)
Everything Else Peter Godfrey-Smith Published
Beyond the 7 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Edited volume
1
1 book · 2019
- 2019The Scientific Imaginationessays on thought experiments, models and fiction in science, co-edited with Arnon Levy (Oxford University Press)
The years · 1965–2024
Quick facts about Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Known for
- Peter Godfrey-Smith is known for bringing the philosophy of mind underwater, using his own dives among octopuses and cuttlefish to ask how consciousness evolved.
- 1965
- Born in Sydney
- 1991
- PhD in philosophy, UC San Diego
- 2016
- Other Minds
- 2024
- Living on Earth
- Born
- 1965, Sydney, Australia
- Education
- University of Sydney (BA, 1987); PhD in philosophy, University of California, San Diego (1991)
- Taught
- Stanford (1991–2003), Harvard (2006–2011), CUNY Graduate Center (2011–2017)
- Now
- Professor, School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, since 2017
- Prizes
- Lakatos Award (2010), Patrick Suppes Prize (2019), Jean Nicod Prize (2022)
- Fieldwork
- Co-author of scientific papers on the octopuses of Octopolis and Octlantis in Jervis Bay
The red mark is 2016: Other Minds, the book about octopuses that brought him a general readership.
How Peter Godfrey-Smith Writes: Philosophy in a Wetsuit
Much of his material comes from his own diving. He took all the underwater photographs in Other Minds, and the scenes in the nature books are mostly ones he watched himself, off Sydney and in Jervis Bay. The fieldwork is also science: he is a co-author of papers on the octopuses of Octopolis, from a 2012 study with Matthew Lawrence on the site itself to a 2022 paper in PLOS ONE on wild octopuses throwing debris.
Behind the diving is the philosopher of biology. The question of his first book in 1996, why minds evolved, is the question of the trilogy, and the method is the same: take evolution seriously and follow minds back to the bodies and environments they serve. He argues that experience did not switch on suddenly in one lineage but came in degrees, and that it is tied to animals with bodies that act on the world.
He keeps the two registers apart. The academic books build arguments with models and technical distinctions; the trade books move between a scene on the seabed and a short passage of philosophy, explain the biology as they go, and say plainly where the evidence runs out. In Living on Earth the argument becomes ethical, ending with what we owe to other animals and to wild nature.
Watch
Peter Godfrey-Smith on cuttlefish, octopuses and consciousness
Robinson Erhardt talks with Godfrey-Smith about Other Minds and Living on Earth: how nervous systems and consciousness evolved, whether fish and shrimp feel pain, and what we owe to animals.
Frequently asked questions about Peter Godfrey-Smith’s books
How many books has Peter Godfrey-Smith written?
Seven as sole author, all on this page, from Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (1996) to Living on Earth (2024). He also co-edited The Scientific Imagination (2019) with Arnon Levy.
What are Peter Godfrey-Smith’s books in order?
Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (1996), Theory and Reality (2003), Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (2009), Philosophy of Biology (2014), Other Minds (2016), Metazoa (2020) and Living on Earth (2024).
Where should I start with Peter Godfrey-Smith?
With Other Minds (2016). It is the most widely read of his books, it needs no background in philosophy, and it introduces the questions about animal minds that Metazoa and Living on Earth continue.
What is Peter Godfrey-Smith’s most famous book?
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (2016). It won the American Philosophical Society’s Patrick Suppes Prize in 2019, and his CV lists translations into 22 languages.
Do I need to read Other Minds before Metazoa and Living on Earth?
No. The three books form a loose series, each widening the view: from octopuses and cuttlefish, to the evolution of animal minds in general, to the way living things have shaped the planet. Each can be read on its own, but reading them in order shows how the argument grows.
What is Octopolis?
A site in Jervis Bay, New South Wales, found in 2009, where gloomy octopuses live at unusually high density in dens among piles of scallop shells. A second site nearby, Octlantis, was found in 2016. Godfrey-Smith has dived at Octopolis for years and co-written scientific papers on both sites; Octopolis appears throughout Other Minds.
Is Peter Godfrey-Smith a scientist or a philosopher?
A philosopher, specifically of biology and of mind. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego, and is a professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He also takes part in field research on octopus behaviour and co-authors scientific papers.
What prizes has Peter Godfrey-Smith won?
The Lakatos Award for 2010 for Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, the Patrick Suppes Prize in Philosophy of Science in 2019 for Other Minds, and the Jean Nicod Prize in 2022. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022.
What were Peter Godfrey-Smith’s views on Covid lockdowns?
He was an early public critic of Covid-19 lockdown measures, starting with posts on Twitter in January 2021, and set out his position in “Covid Heterodoxy in Three Layers” in the Monash Bioethics Review (2022). The biologist Erol Akçay published a critical open review of the paper, and Godfrey-Smith replied.
Is Peter Godfrey-Smith still alive?
Yes. He was born in Sydney in 1965 and teaches at the University of Sydney. His most recent book, Living on Earth, was published in 2024.
Footnotes
- Peter Godfrey-Smith — Wikipedia
- Peter Godfrey-Smith, curriculum vitae (2026)
- 2019 Patrick Suppes Prize — American Philosophical Society
- Other Minds — Wikipedia
- Octopolis and Octlantis — Wikipedia
- Book review: Living on Earth — Undark, 2024
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.”
— Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds (2016), on cephalopods
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