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

Latest comment: 13 years ago by Utopiah in topic Notability

Notability edit

Why is this article notable? Because this book is extremely valuable but nearly forgotten. The article should help saving this knowledge and certain ideas of a great scientist and philosopher, Konrad Lorenz. The English title is absolutely wrong. Why? The book explains that the backside of the mirror is created by evolution as a physical item to reflect reality. Behind the mirror is just air, the English title was created by someone who did not read or understand the book. No problem, it's a bit complicated because of too much philosophy for the biologists, and the same way because of a too much science for the philosophers. The author talks about Science as an evolutionary process. If you see Wikipedia at this moment at this second as the best possible snapshot of human knowledge (however wrong, right, incomplete it may be), in this second we have got nothing better at one place in a consistent format and with every second this knowledge grows (with drawbacks, errors, inventions, mistakes, successes) like in biological evolution: the articles that fit best will survive. Why is this article a stub, please help..... Ruedi33a (talk) 10:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC)Reply
I have received another warning that this article will be deleted. Let's try to prevent this: First, this book is rare and nearly forgotten. It is extremely important as it describes the evolution of human knowledge at a time without Internet and Wikipedia. The processes it describes explain the evolutional growth of Wikipedia and the improvement of Wikipedia in terms of correctly mirroring the status of human knowledge.
Second, this books connects philosophy and science in a very special way, following the path of Karl Popper.
Third, I am still a newby, and I do not know better to find reliable sources for a book. So I have cited everything I found in Internet as I cannot attach the book itself. But every day 8 humans read this article and nobody has complained yet about its content.
Summary: Please help me in finding a way to make this article better as I am at the very end of a dead end street. The hint "find more reliable sources" does not help as long as I do not know what exactly a more reliable source is. Ruedi33a (talk) 06:40, 27 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

I also think the book is clearly important being the work of a prominent XXth century scientist which took the time to summarize the implications of his technical work in physiology and behavior for life at large. Is it unfortunately extreme rare in print but also on the Internet, very few reviews exist yet one should not think popularity is equivalent to notability. The German article is much more consequent even if it has less links, could be interesting to try to improve each toher. Also I did not find a Dame philosophical reviews article, could be interesting to find articles in now old peer reviewed journals. Utopiah (talk) 10:59, 17 April 2011 (UTC)Reply