Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge

Blurb

Behind the mirror, a search for a natural history of human knowledge is a 1973 book by Konrad Lorenz. The direct translation of the German title is "The back side of the mirror". Lorenz summarizes his life's work into his own philosophy: Evolution is the process of growing perception of the outer world by living nature itself. Stepping from simple to higher organized organisms, Lorenz shows how they gain and benefit from information. The methods mirrored by organs have been created in the course of evolution as the natural history of this organism.
In the book, Lorenz uses the mirror as a simple model of the human brain that reflects the part of the stream of information from the outside world it is able to "see". The backside of the mirror was created by evolution to gather as much information as needed to better survive. The picture in the mirror is what we see within our mind. Within our cultural evolution we have extended this picture in the mirror by inventing instruments that transform the most needed of the invisible to something visible. The back side of the mirror is acting for itself as it processes the incoming information to improve speed and effectiveness.