Living on Earth

While humans have occupied the Earth for only a small part of its history, life itself has been here for much longer—more than a quarter of the universe’s time span. Life is a long-term tenant on Earth, and one that has profoundly transformed our world. What have these organisms—bacteria, animals, plants, and the rest—done in all this time?

In *Living on Earth*, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a new way of understanding how the actions of living beings have shaped our planet, turning to what happens when we come to see organisms as active shapers of their environments, not merely as results of the evolutionary process. To that end, Godfrey-Smith takes us on a grand tour of the history of life on Earth, both on land and in the sea. He visits Rwandan gorillas and Australian bowerbirds, returns to coral reefs and octopus dens, and looks at the lives of forests.

He considers the impacts of language, culture, and writing, and weighs the responsibilities our unique powers bring with them as they relate to factory farming, habitat preservation, climate change, and animal experimentation. Ranging from animate matter’s first appearance to its future extinction, Godfrey-Smith offers a novel picture of the course of life on Earth and how we might meet the challenges of our time, the Anthropocene.