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by David Livingston Smith (St Martin’s Press, New York, 2004). $24.95.
It is not a new observation that human beings lie habitually. Chapter 1 of this excellent book is entitled ‘Natural-Born Liars’ and has an epigraph by Mark Twain: ‘Lying is universal – we all do it; we all must do it’ (p. 1). The author reminds us that stories of deceit are as old as the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent, and extend throughout culture from King Lear to Little Red Riding Hood. While psychological research may be unnecessary to confirm that people lie to each other, ‘To grapple with dishonesty, we have to open our eyes to some unpleasant truths’ (p. 12). While many of these ‘unpleasant truths’ will already be familiar to the readers of this journal, the careful construction of an argument from evolutionary first principles draws on research and clinical observation that will not be familiar and makes for a fascinating journey.
David Smith is a professor of philosophy and co-founder and director of the Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of New England. His academic title suggests a breadth of knowledge and interests that soon becomes evident in his writing as he draws on a wide range of research in animal and human behaviour. He begins the book with a deception of his own. Describing a disturbing incident of deception and brutality in Ethiopia, he reveals that the protagonists are baboons. Lying and deception, Smith argues, are universal features of the interactions between all living things. The deception of the Venus fly-trap and the angler fish will be familiar to anyone who watches wildlife documentaries on television. At a molecular level, the HIV virus deceives the T-lymphocyte in the human immune system by using the cell’s own system of DNA transcription to reproduce itself. While few would argue that animals, plants and viruses are not fundamentally deceptive