Summa Technologiae

The very history of our civilization, with what Lem terms “its anthropoid prologue and its possible extensions,” is thus seen as a cybernetic process of expanding the range of homeostasis—which is another way of defining humanity’s transformation of its environment—over several thousand years.

Lem also draws an important distinction between biological evolution and the evolution of reason, rejecting the assumption that an increase in the latter automatically means improved design capacity.