"While humans have occupied the Earth for only a small part of its history, life itself has been here for much longer--most of the planet's lifetime, and 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. His ... books Other Minds and Metazoa explored the riddle of how conscious minds came to exist on Earth. Now, in Living on Earth, he turns to what happens when we look at the mind from another side--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"--Dust jacket flap.
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