Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy

What Animals on Earth Reveal about Aliens - and about Ourselves

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Arik Kershenbaum: Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy (2020, Penguin Books, Limited)

368 pages

English language

Published Sept. 8, 2020 by Penguin Books, Limited.

ISBN:
978-0-241-40679-3
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3 stars (3 reviews)

3 editions

Long-winded, but provides an interesting perspective

3 stars

In the absence of any examples of alien life, there is little we can definitively say about it, but Arik Kershenbaum in this book makes a respectable stab at deducing some constraints on the physical forms, consciousness, sociability and languages of alien species by working from the physics of the likely environments for life to occur, and on the processes of evolution.

Much of the argument is, to me at least, clear and sensible. There are areas that the author suggests are harder to constrain - biochemistry, genetics, reproduction. A particularly interesting passage discusses the genetics of bee reproduction and how that relates to the altruism of the worker bees.

Whilst I found much of the argument persuasive, the text can be somewhat repetitive and long-winded. It could have been condensed to half the size. The section on artificial intelligence came across as somewhat muddled. The author implying, without clearly …

Review of "Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy" on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

In the absence of any examples of alien life, there is little we can definitively say about it, but Arik Kershenbaum in this book makes a respectable stab at deducing some constraints on the physical forms, consciousness, sociability and languages of alien species by working from the physics of the likely environments for life to occur, and on the processes of evolution.

Much of the argument is, to me at least, clear and sensible. There are areas that the author suggests are harder to constrain - biochemistry, genetics, reproduction. A particularly interesting passage discusses the genetics of bee reproduction and how that relates to the altruism of the worker bees.

Whilst I found much of the argument persuasive, the text can be somewhat repetitive and long-winded. It could have been condensed to half the size. The section on artificial intelligence came across as somewhat muddled. The author implying, without clearly …

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2 stars