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Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence
by James Bridle
Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle's Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence - plant, animal, human, artificial - and how they transform our understanding of humans' place in the cosmos.
What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared with other beings―beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in "artificial" intelligence. But as it approaches, it also gets weirder: rather than a friend or helpmate, AI increasingly appears as something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us.
At the same time, we're only just becoming aware of the other intelligences which have been with us all along, even if we've failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others―the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we've built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction, and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics, to live better and more equitably with one another and the non-human world?
Artist and maverick thinker James Bridle drawn on biology and physics, computation, literature, art, and philosophy, to answer these unsettling questions. Startling and bold, Ways of Being explores the fascinating, strange and multitudinous forms of knowing, doing, and being which are becoming evident in the present, and which are essential for our survival.
"In his survey of the intelligence of plants, animals, and artificial intelligence, [Bridle] synthesizes an impressive range of contemporary scientific research while also drawing on Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing that have long recognized the significance of nonhuman modes of thinking...A provocative, profoundly insightful consideration of forms of reason and their relevance to our shared future." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A human-centric notion of intelligence takes the backseat in this fascinating survey from artist Bridle...well reasoned and convincing. This enlightening account will give readers a new perspective on their place in the world." - Publishers Weekly
"There's a new breed of thinkers―people who've grown up through the collapse of an old order and are looking at the first shoots of a very different future. James Bridle is right at the front of this thinking. His writing weaves cultural threads that aren't usually seen together, and the resulting tapestry is iridescently original, deeply disorientating and yet somehow radically hopeful. The only futures that are viable will probably feel like that. This is a pretty amazing book, worth reading and rereading." - Brian Eno
"James Bridle encourages you to widen the boundaries of your understanding, to contemplate the innate intelligence that animates the life force of octopuses and honeybees as well as apes and elephants. We humans are not alone in having a sense of community, a sense of fun, a sense of wonder and awe at the beauty of nature. Be prepared to re-evaluate your relationship with the amazing life forms with whom we share the planet. Fascinating, innovative and thought-provoking, I thoroughly recommend Ways of Being." - Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace
"James Bridle's wonderful book will make you feel and think the power of knowing how like all other lifeforms we are. There is nothing more important." - Timothy Morton, author of Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World
This information about Ways of Being was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
James Bridle is a writer and artist. His writing on art, politics, culture and technology has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the Guardian and the Observer, Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, Frieze, Domus, and ICON. New Dark Age, his book about technology, knowledge, and the end of the future, was published by Verso in 2018, and is being translated into a dozen languages. In 2019, he wrote and presented New Ways of Seeing, a four-part series for BBC Radio 4. His artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions, including the V&A, Whitechapel, Barbican, Hayward, and Serpentine, and exhibited worldwide and on the internet.
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