ABSTRACT
Spatial orientation is a fundamental ability. We move in 3-D space and must be able to orient ourselves and navigate in space. Spatial information is processed continuously and the spatial relations between objects in the environment and our own position in space are updated continuously. But how does the brain solve this problem? The problem of space has interested researchers for centuries. In the eighteenth century the philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed that space and time do not really exist in the world outside but that they are the necessary conditions of perception, imposed by our own minds. No perception is possible outside the boundaries of time and space. Kant believed that the axioms of geometry are known a priori and do not depend on experience. This view has been debated fiercely in analytical philosophy with little or no impact on disciplines other than philosophy. Almost two centuries later, however, the ethologist and later Nobel prize winner (1973) Konrad Lorenz wrote a famous article on Kant’s notion of a priori (Lorenz, 1941, 1982). Lorenz argued that Kant’s notion of a priori is true from an ontological perspective. However, like human organs, the a priori is also the result of biological evolution and therefore can be considered as the result of an adaptive mechanism. Lorenz reinterpreted Kant’s a priori as a posteriori in terms of human phylogeny.
