Umwelt

Last updated

"Early Scheme for a circular Feedback Circle" from Theoretische Biologie 1920 Uexkulls schema original.jpg
"Early Scheme for a circular Feedback Circle" from Theoretische Biologie 1920
Small circular Feedback Pictograms between the Text Uexkulls schemas small.jpg
Small circular Feedback Pictograms between the Text
Schematic view of a cycle as an early biocyberneticist Uexkull wirkkreis.jpg
Schematic view of a cycle as an early biocyberneticist

An umwelt (plural: umwelten; from the German Umwelt meaning "environment" or "surroundings") is the specific way organisms of a particular species experience the world, which is dependant on what their sensory organs and perceptual systems can detect and interpret. [1]

Contents

In the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas Sebeok, it is considered to be the "biological foundations that lie at the very center of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal". [2] [ failed verification ] The term is usually translated as "self-centered world". [3] Uexküll theorised that organisms can have different umwelten, even though they share the same environment. The term umwelt, together with companion terms Umgebung (an Umwelt as seen by another observer) and Innenwelt (the mapping of the self to the world of objects), [4] have special relevance for cognitive philosophers, roboticists and cyberneticians because they offer a potential solution to the conundrum of the infinite regress of the Cartesian Theater.[ not verified in body ]

Discussion

Each functional component of an umwelt has a meaning that represents the organism's model of the world. These functional components correspond approximately to perceptual features, [5] as described by Anne Treisman. It is also the semiotic world of the organism, including all the meaningful aspects of the world for any particular organism. It can be water, food, shelter, potential threats or points of reference for navigation. An organism creates and reshapes its own umwelt when it interacts with the world. This is termed a 'functional circle'. The umwelt theory states that the mind and the world are inseparable because it is the mind that interprets the world for the organism. Because of the individuality and uniqueness of the history of every single organism, the umwelten of different organisms differ. When two umwelten interact, this creates a semiosphere. [6] [7]

As a term, umwelt also unites all the semiotic processes of an organism into a whole. Internally, an organism is the sum of its parts operating in functional circles and, to survive, all the parts must work cooperatively. This is termed the "collective umwelt" which models the organism as a centralised system from the cellular level upward. This requires the semiosis of any one part to be continuously connected to any other semiosis operating within the same organism. If anything disrupts this process, the organism will not operate efficiently.

Uexküll's writings show a specific interest in the various worlds that he believed to exist ('conceptually') from the point of view of the umwelt of different creatures such as ticks, sea urchins, amoebae, jellyfish, and sea worms.

The biosemiotic turn in Jakob von Uexküll's analysis occurs in his discussion of the animal's relationship with its environment. The umwelt is for him an environment-world which is, according to Agamben, "constituted by a more or less broad series of elements [called] 'carriers of significance' or 'marks' which are the only things that interest the animal". Agamben goes on to paraphrase Uexküll's example of the tick, saying:

"...this eyeless animal finds the way to her watchpoint [at the top of a tall blade of grass] with the help of only its skin’s general sensitivity to light. The approach of her prey becomes apparent to this blind and deaf bandit only through her sense of smell. The odor of butyric acid, which emanates from the sebaceous follicles of all mammals, works on the tick as a signal that causes her to abandon her post (on top of the blade of grass/bush) and fall blindly downward toward her prey. If she is fortunate enough to fall on something warm (which she perceives by means of an organ sensible to a precise temperature) then she has attained her prey, the warm-blooded animal, and thereafter needs only the help of her sense of touch to find the least hairy spot possible and embed herself up to her head in the cutaneous tissue of her prey. She can now slowly suck up a stream of warm blood." [8]

Thus, for the tick, the umwelt is reduced to only three (biosemiotic) carriers of significance: (1) the odor of butyric acid, which emanates from the sebaceous follicles of all mammals; (2) the temperature of 37°C (corresponding to the blood of all mammals); and (3) the hairy topography of mammals.

Critics

Uexküll's application of the notion of "umwelt" to the human person has been contested. In "Welt und Umwelt" [9] and "Die Wahrheit der Dinge", the philosopher and sociologist Josef Pieper argued that reason allows the human person to live in "Welt" (world) while plants and animals do indeed live in an Umwelt—a notion he traces back far beyond Uexküll to Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas.

See also

Related Research Articles

Semiotics is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter.

Semiosis, or sign process, is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. A sign is anything that communicates a meaning, that is not the sign itself, to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste.

Biosemiotics is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, production of signs and codes and communication processes in the biological realm.

Zoosemiotics is the semiotic study of the use of signs among animals, more precisely the study of semiosis among animals, i.e. the study of how something comes to function as a sign to some animal. It is the study of animal forms of knowing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jakob Johann von Uexküll</span> Baltic German biologist, zoologist, and philosopher (1864–1944)

Jakob Johann Freiherr von Uexküll was a Baltic German biologist who worked in the fields of muscular physiology and animal behaviour studies and was an influence on the cybernetics of life. However, his most notable contribution is the notion of Umwelt, used by semiotician Thomas Sebeok and philosopher Martin Heidegger. His works established biosemiotics as a field of research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Sebeok</span> Hungarian-American polymath (1920–2001)

Thomas Albert Sebeok was a Hungarian-born American polymath, semiotician, and linguist. As one of the founders of the biosemiotics field, he studied non-human and cross-species signaling and communication. He is also known for his work in the development of long-term nuclear waste warning messages, in which he worked with the Human Interference Task Force to create methods for keeping the inhabitants of Earth away from buried nuclear waste that will still be hazardous 10,000 or more years in the future.

The semiosphere is a concept in biosemiotic theory, according to which - contrary to ideas of nature determining sense and experience - the phenomenal world is a creative and logical structure of processes of semiosis where signs operate together to produce sense and experience.

Adolf Portmann was a Swiss zoologist who focused the study of life on its appearances, ranging from morphological to semiotic aspects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kalevi Kull</span> Estonian biologist and semiotician

Kalevi Kull is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thure von Uexküll</span> German scholar of psychosomatic medicine and biosemiotics

Karl Kuno Thure Freiherr von Uexküll was a German scholar of psychosomatic medicine and biosemiotics. He developed the approach of his father, Jakob von Uexküll, in the study of living systems and applied it in medicine.

Martin Krampen was a leading German semiotician, semiotics Professor in Göttingen.

Phytosemiotics is a branch of biosemiotics that studies the sign processes in plants, or more broadly, the vegetative semiosis. Vegetative semiosis is a type of sign processing that occurs at the cellular and tissue level, whose functions include cellular recognition, plant perception, intercellular communication, and plant signal transduction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesper Hoffmeyer</span> Danish biologist

Jesper Hoffmeyer was a professor at the University of Copenhagen Institute of Biology, and a leading figure in the emerging field of biosemiotics. He was the president of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS) from 2005 to 2015, co-editor of the journal Biosemiotics and the Springer Book series in Biosemiotics. He authored the books Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs and Signs of Meaning in the Universe and edited A Legacy for Living Systems: Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jakob von Uexküll Centre</span> Scientific organization in Estonia

Jakob von Uexküll Centre is an Estonia-based organisation for the work with the legacy of biologist, philosopher and semiotician Jakob von Uexküll. The Centre owns the major archive of his works in the world.

Ecosemiotics is a branch of semiotics in its intersection with human ecology, ecological anthropology and ecocriticism. It studies sign processes in culture, which relate to other living beings, communities, and landscapes. Ecosemiotics also deals with sign-mediated aspects of ecosystems.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to semiotics:

Copenhagen–Tartu school of biosemiotics is a loose network of scholars working within the discipline of biosemiotics at the University of Tartu and the University of Copenhagen.

Polar semiotics is a concept in the field of semiotics, which is the science of signs.

Paul Cobley is an eminent British semiotician and narratologist.

Neurosemiotics is an area of science which studies the neural aspects of meaning making. It interconnects neurobiology, biosemiotics and cognitive semiotics. Neurolinguistics, neuropsychology and neurosemantics can be seen as parts of neurosemiotics.

References

  1. ↑ Ha, James C.; Campion, Tracy L. (2019). "Chapter 2 - Why tails wag: Umwelts, innenwelts, and canine "guilt"". Dog Behavior. Academic Press. pp. 33–61. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-816498-3.00002-x. ISBN   978-0-12-816498-3 . Retrieved 2024-10-06.
  2. ↑ Sebeok, Thomas A. (1976). "Foreword". Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs. Lisse, Netherlands: Peter de Ridder Press. p. x. ISBN   0-87750-194-7.
  3. ↑ Kull, Kalevi (2010). "Umwelt". In Cobley, Paul (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Semiotics. London: Routledge. pp. 348–349. ISBN   978-0-415-44072-1.
  4. ↑ Cobley, Paul (2010). The Routledge Companion to Semiotics. London and New York: Routledge. p. 348.
  5. ↑ Treisman, Anne M.; Gelade, Garry (1980). "A feature-integration theory of attention". Cognitive Psychology. 12 (1): 97–136. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(80)90005-5. PMID   7351125. S2CID   353246.
  6. ↑ Uexküll, Thure von (1987). "The sign theory of Jakob von Uexküll". In Krampen; et al. (eds.). Classics of Semiotics. New York: Plenum. pp. 147–179. ISBN   0-306-42321-9.
  7. ↑ Uexküll, Jakob von (1957). "A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds". In Schiller, Claire H. (ed.). Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept . New York: International Universities Press. pp.  5–.
  8. ↑ Agamben, Giorgio, The Open: Man and Animal (PDF), p. 46, S2CID   141790408, archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-10-25
  9. ↑ Joseph Piepers, “Welt und Umwelt,” in Schriften zur Philosophischen Anthropologie und Ethik: Grundstrukturen menschlicher Existenz, 180–206.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.