The Evolutionary Strategy of Deception

• 来源期刊: 动物学报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2014,（1）
• 页码范围: 1-5
• 页数: 5页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

And thus I clothe my naked villainy With odd old ends,stol'n out of holy writ; And seem a saint,when most I play the devil. —— William Shakespeare,Richard Ⅲ 1 A Brief History of Deception The conceptual roots of deception began to sprout at the dawn of zoology,when Aristotle (350 CE) discussed his observations of the ‘deceitful' reproductive tactics of cuckoos and partridges in his classic work The History of Animals.However,the scientific origins of deception were cemented in Descartes' (1641) Meditations on First Philosophy,in which he reasoned:"All that I have,up to this moment,accepted as possessed of the highest truth and certainty,I received either from or through the senses.I observed,however,that these sometimes misled us;and it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived".Through this work,Descartes firmly established philosophical skepticism,in the process contributing a foundational work to Western philosophy and scientific reasoning.