Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1995, Watson’s most philosophically ambitious book. Where Supernature explored phenomena beyond the edges of science and Gifts of Unknown Things described events beyond explanation, Dark Nature confronts the most intractable problem in natural theology: the existence of evil — cruelty, suffering, destruction — in a natural world that is supposedly the product of intelligent design or the expression of natural selection.
Watson’s method is comparative: he surveys the natural world for behaviors that, in humans, we would call evil — murder (infanticide in primates, siblicide in birds), deception (mimicry, camouflage, false signals), parasitism (organisms that consume their hosts from within), torture (the wasp that paralyzes its prey to keep it fresh for its larvae) — and asks whether these behaviors illuminate human evil or whether human evil is categorically different.
His conclusion is nuanced: evil (defined as causing unnecessary suffering) exists in nature as a byproduct of strategies that serve survival, but in humans it has been amplified by consciousness — by the ability to choose cruelty when alternatives exist, to enjoy suffering, and to construct ideologies that justify destruction. Nature is not evil but contains the seeds of what becomes evil when processed through human consciousness.
The book is Watson’s darkest and most mature work — a long way from the optimistic Supernature — and represents his engagement with evolutionary psychology and sociobiology in their 1990s ascendancy.
Collecting Dark Nature
First edition (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1995): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $10–$25
- US first (HarperCollins, 1996): $8–$20