This was an entertaining and informative read. I found myself sharing what I learned from this book with those around me. I recommend it to fans of good and highly readable non-fiction.

Honestly, I just couldn’t get past the tone of this book. I did not finish reading this book. A miss for me.

This book was not for me.

The author writes in a snarky, somewhat condescending manner for a lot of the book and their supposed shared experience and views with the reader were almost universally not shared by myself.

The author seemed to state a lot of things as fact or common sense when in reality they were just his own personal convictions.

I also found some of the science and scientific analogies were used in the wrong way or in a very misleading or dubious fashion.

It's a shame because I have a strong interest in non-human intelligence and cognition and many of the author's underlying ideas and arguments I found interesting but the overall tone of the book really hindered any potential enjoyment.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ways of Being started off strong, and I enjoyed reading about "artificial intelligence" and examples of intelligence across plants and animals. Some of these were mind-blowing and fascinating, and some were worded so eloquently that I wanted to (and did) reread them. However, once the book began discussing cellular biology ("The Thicket of Life" chapter), I grew frustrated with the inaccuracies and misleading statements and found myself unable to take the book seriously from that point onwards. I do understand that in the grand scheme of the book and its arguments about universal intelligence, these points are not essential, but for readers with some knowledge of biology -- and especially for readers with knowledge of microbiology -- they are frustrating and distracting.

In the chance that these may be helpful/informative, listed below are some points:

— Page 103: “the ribosomes are 3D printers for living bodies” —> this is a tenuous analogy (ribosomes are restricted to making linear chains of proteins only)

— Page 106: the paragraph containing “…exchange genetic material directly. These threads are called pili…” --> This paragraph seems to imply that horizontal gene transfer via pili is not common in bacteria, when in reality, HGT is actually more common in bacteria than the archaea that the author focuses on.

—Page 107: The paragraph that begins with “The name given to this new view of life, which extends far beyond the operation of HGT, is symbiosis” —> This sentence is misleading in that it seems to imply that the concept of symbiosis originated with the 2012 essay mentioned in the previous paragraph, when in reality, it has been around for much longer.

— Page 108: “Studies have shown that elderly people living in care homes have less… and are as a result more prone to frailty and chronic illness” —> This is a misleading/incorrect sentence. There is only a *correlation* between less diverse microbiomes and frailty/chronic illness. There is no evidence of a causative relationship. (This is a big pet peeve amongst microbiome-studying microbiologists: correlation does not equal causation). The title of the cited paper itself is “Gut microbiota composition correlates with diet and health in the elderly.”

—Page 108: “…we are eukaryotes, possessors of complex cells containing nuclei and mitochondria (as distinct from the prokaryotes, the bacteria and Archaea, whose simpler cells contain only single strands of DNA).” —> The issue is with this phrase: “whose simpler cells contain only single strands of DNA.” Prokaryotic cells contain much more than single strands of DNA, including organelles!

— Page 108: “Endosymbiosis” might be made more accurate/appropriate here. The endosymbionts that the author is referring to (progenitors of mitochondria/chloroplasts) live within *the cells* of other organisms.

— Page 109: “one independent, free-living bacterium engulfed another” —> Rather, the commonly held theory is that an archaeon engulfed a bacterium.

— Page 236: “It can be caused by mistakes in transcription” —> the term “transcription” in biology refers to the making of RNA from a DNA template, so it would be best not to use it here (since here, what the author is referring to is DNA replication/DNA synthesis).

— Page 257: “...of horizontal gene transfer: by viral transfer and by direct transfer of DNA” —> another major mechanism of horizontal gene transfer is indirect transfer of DNA ("transformation").

I chose this book because I thought it had an important message. Unfortunately, the author's voice is snarky, pessimistic, and his logic is very circuitous (long winded and round-about). Reading the Introduction was painful slogging. Now that he had told us what he was going to say, I hoped he would do so with more focus.

Although the author was in Greece, I found the comparison of Parnassus' drunken dancing to being close to nature and comparing it to self-driving the AI car up to the mountain peak, sadly typical of this book. Off topic, fanciful, and chapter filler. It's a practice I've heard called "going off into the weeds." When we finally got back to the logic of a neural network, I was not enchanted.

A judicious amount of editing might take several months, but this book could be so much more concise and instructive. Sadly it needs a story editor in the very best sense, because the entire thing is told as a story. A very long-winded story with a few repetitive themes and phrases that I think we all caught by the second or third time.

For example, his evaluation of our "computer mind" uses are deemed "stupid" although they are valuable in gathering data and completing tasks--both part of an AI's function. He scoffs at chess programs because they "destroy human opposition." Yet chess programs played (and continue to play) an important role in developing AI. [Newswise: AI Chess Engine Sacrifices Mastery to Mimic Human Play, 1/25/21, Cornell Univ.]

Even his views of how "we" view AI and natural intelligence differ widely from my experience as an intelligent, aware citizen of the world. Maybe I only choose to read things that tend to agree with my point of view, but the author is condescending and dictatorial; stating what everyone thinks and how very wrong they are.

The early part of the book is not a balanced view about science or even philosophy, and the rest is not a large improvement. Although science is talked about, mostly in lyrical form. At times, it is a very long essay on subjects the author finds interesting, and wishes to correct us all about. Interspersed with novel-worthy descriptions to set the scene for one event or another--such as the day he first showed the self-driving car how he drives (his method vs coding). Or tidbits (including crude things) a speaker or scientist said about about a tangential subject.

But the author's focus is not on how quickly we have come so far in just 100 years. He spends an excess of time criticizing avenues of thought and experiments because--of course--they make little sense to him.

There are many fascinating facts and subjects, like plants that have demonstrated a memory of predatory sounds, and the nursery behavior of giant redwood trees toward seedlings and cooperative trees, and communication recognized between animal species, and much more.

I agree on many points that are made in this book; the incredible value and "different intelligence" of living things, the unhappy misunderstandings that have occurred.

But the experiences and thoughts of the author are not reality by association (because he says or thinks so). His negativity and gutter humor (happily not often), is not universal.

If you can read this just for the science, and hike past the stumbling blocks, then I recommend this book. Some of it is very interesting; enlightening even. But in my opinion, proverbial hiking boots, a stout walking stick, and a cabin to relax in between chapters, is required for the health of the reader.

I'm disappointed that this was written in such a pretentious way, and I cannot recommend this book to the general public without substantial editing.

2/5 Stars Great science, when you get to some.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publishing and NetGalley for the preview of this pdf; the review is voluntary.

#FarrarStrausandGirouxPublishing #NetGalley
#WaysofBeing #EthologyAnimal Behavior
#AIandSemantics
#AnimalBehaviorandCommunication
#Science #LifeScience #ArtificialIntelligence
#MoreThanHumanWorld

I must have misread the blurb for this book, as it wasn't what I expected - I'd assumed it was an exploration of nonhuman sentience, specifically organic nonhuman sentience. Much of the book does indeed explore this, but the purpose is actually to consider the integration of technology into a more ecologically aware world and society.

We begin with the author trying to customise his car to make it partially self-driving - and then move onto recognising nonhuman animal sentience and intelligences. This sets the tone for the rest of the narrative, with the author interlacing the inorganic and the organic. Some truly fascinating cases are covered, and there's a sense of the unexpected throughout the book - you really have no idea what the author is going to throw at you next, from proto-Roomba "tortoise" robots to machines that model market economics using the flow of water.

I've given 4 rather than 5 stars because the long chunks of analysis in between case studies and anecdotes did sometimes become quite difficult to stay focused on, and I'm thankful that I studied more-than-human geography during my Masters, otherwise I think I would have struggled with some concepts and terms. This book has more academic than pop science DNA in it. That said, I enjoyed the book, and it's left me with plenty of profound insights to chew over.

(With thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)