Well during the final stages of getting the book ready for publication, I found quite a few issues with the formatting and layout of the book. I have been working on fixing these issues and improving the overall quality of the book. The book goes on sale on the 24th of April. Hopefully now I can say book one is done and move on to book two, which is currently untitled. I have been working on the outline for book two and I am really excited about it. I have a lot of ideas for the story and I am looking forward to writing it.
Putting so much effort into this project has been both challenging and rewarding, but it has meant that other projects have taken a backseat. For instance my FossilGeo app has been on hold while I focus on the book. There is one outstanding issue I need to address before I can fully pass it to be reviewed and hopefully released on the Google Play Store. Other issues presented themselves such as the Mac OS updates which failed on my development machine. Meaning I have to get an additional SSD to increase storage capacity.
Doing the research for the next book has been fascinating, uncovering new insights and connections that will enrich the story. I am going to give a little taster here regarding an article I found regarding one of my pet subjects - no pun intended
Octopuses are fascinating creatures that have been the subject of much research and speculation. They are known for their intelligence, problem-solving abilities, and unique physiology. One of the most interesting aspects of octopuses is their ability to change color and texture to blend in with their surroundings. This is achieved through specialized cells called chromatophores, which contain pigments that can be expanded or contracted to create different colors and patterns.
Octopuses also have a unique nervous system, with two-thirds of their neurons located in their arms rather than their brain. This allows them to control each arm independently and perform complex tasks such as opening jars or solving puzzles. Some researchers have even suggested that octopuses may have a form of consciousness, as they exhibit behaviors that suggest self-awareness and problem-solving abilities.
What If You’re Not Just You? Consciousness, Octopuses, and the Hidden Mind Within
What if everything you think of as you — your thoughts, your feelings, your sense of being alive in this moment — isn’t generated by your brain alone? What if consciousness isn’t a private flame burning inside your skull, but something far stranger, far more distributed, and far more ancient than we’ve ever imagined?
It sounds like science fiction. But some of the most interesting thinking in modern science suggests it might just be the truth.
You Are Not One Thing
Here’s a fact that tends to stop people mid-thought: the human body contains roughly as many microbial cells as it does human cells. Bacteria, viruses, fungi — an entire ecosystem living inside you, on you, and alongside you. Scientists call this the holobiont — the whole organism, not just the human part, but the entire community of life that makes you you.
For a long time, we thought of these microbes as passengers. Hitchhikers. Background noise. But research has completely overturned that idea. Your gut microbiome influences your mood. It affects your decisions. It communicates with your brain through a dedicated chemical highway. The microbes in your body are not separate from you — they are, in a very real sense, part of you.
Which raises a wild question: if your thoughts and feelings are shaped by organisms that don’t even share your DNA, where exactly does your consciousness end and theirs begin?
What If Mind Goes All the Way Down?
This is where philosophy catches up with biology. Panpsychism — one of the oldest and most quietly persistent ideas in philosophy — suggests that consciousness isn’t something that magically appears once a brain gets complicated enough. Instead, it proposes that some form of experience, however primitive, is a fundamental feature of reality itself. Not just in humans. Not just in animals. But woven into the fabric of existence at every level.
If that’s true, then every cell in your body carries some faint spark of experience. Every bacterium in your gut. Every virus threading itself through your biology. And your conscious mind — the thing reading these words right now — might be the emergent result of billions of these tiny experiential fields all humming together. Not one mind, but a vast, collaborative chorus.
You wouldn’t be a self so much as a symphony.
Enter the Octopus
If you want a living argument that consciousness is stranger and more varied than we assume, look no further than the octopus.
Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons aren’t in its brain — they’re distributed across its eight arms. Each arm can think, taste, and solve problems semi-independently, even when severed from the central brain. The octopus doesn’t have one mind running the show. It has something closer to nine minds working in loose coordination.
And yet — octopuses are remarkable. They use tools. They plan for the future. They recognise individual humans and develop what can only be described as preferences and grudges. They play. They escape. One famous octopus in New Zealand — Inky — dismantled his tank, crossed the floor of an aquarium, and squeezed through a drainpipe back to the ocean. That takes more than instinct. That takes something.
In 2012, a group of leading neuroscientists signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, formally acknowledging that octopuses — the only invertebrates on the list — possess genuine conscious awareness. Their brains look nothing like ours. They evolved independently, along a completely separate path, 750 million years in the making. And yet here they are: curious, emotional, self-aware, and utterly alien.
A Different Map of Mind
Put these ideas together and something genuinely exciting emerges. If consciousness can arise in a distributed nervous system spread across eight arms — if it can evolve independently, twice, along completely different biological pathways — then maybe it isn’t the rare, fragile, human-shaped thing we’ve always assumed it to be.
Maybe mind is everywhere, taking different forms. Maybe your consciousness is already a collaboration — a temporary agreement between billions of living things, human and non-human alike, all contributing to the experience of being you.
The octopus, peering at you from across the tank with those strange, rectangular pupils, might not be so alien after all. It might be a mirror — showing us a different shape of the same ancient thing.
We’re only just learning how to look.
Well I think we leave the octopus to its thoughts. As for Obsidian lets leave that till next time! 👍
