PositiveThe New York Time Book ReviewBridle offers a heady and often astonishing survey of recent discoveries from the \'more-than-human\' world, where science is only beginning to glimpse the myriad forms that nonhuman intelligence can take ... Spanning millenniums, continents and academic disciplines, the scope of Bridle’s curiosity and comprehension is immense, and the possibilities of how other intelligences might augment or complement our own are exhilarating to consider ... Just as, 50 years ago, Berger challenged consensus societal values by questioning the assumptions viewers bring to bear when they look at a piece of artwork, so does Bridle now hold forth recent scientific discoveries as ways of upending our limited, self-serving and toxic understanding of what intelligence can be ... And yet, the Western, anthropocentric outlook that Bridle presents here, the one they seek to disrupt, seems in places both overly monolithic and outmoded ... Still, when seen through the clouded, ominous light of \'paranoia and social disintegration\' Bridle conjures so vividly in New Dark Age, there is something hopeful and even heartening in their faith that our current disastrous course might be shifted not only by new policies and technologies but also — and more fundamentally — by the power of new ideas. Even if Bridle’s language occasionally overreaches or overgeneralizes, the urgency of the moment perhaps necessitates the hyperbole. After all, to ignore Bridle’s premonitions and revelations might be like ignoring those spooked goats on Mount Etna, frantic with the imminence of eruption under their hooves. Catastrophe is coming, and we might only save ourselves if we can find new ways to look and to listen.
