It’s a seductive hypothesis that falsehood is “the lubricant that makes society run, while truth can be harsh, dangerous, and destructive” as Jeremy Campbell says it is in The Liar’s Tale (W. W. Norton, £11.95). His intriguing and readable account of falsehood, its causes and its consequences, takes the reader from philosophy to animal behaviour. Platonic notions of falsehood as richer than truth and the huge advantages of looking poisonous if you’re a harmless moth are framed by his analysis of the language in which we describe our world and ourselves.
The clash between originality and common sense, the…
