Jakob Von Research Articles

A melody that sings itself

In his lectures on the philosophy of nature, Maurice Merleau-Ponty interprets Jakob von Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt as akin to a melody. This essay outlines von Uexküll’s perspective on the feasibility of translating non-acoustic elements (optical: colours, shapes, and figures; haptic: tactile textures, flavours, tastes, and scents) into sounds or musical notes to compose a melody. It poses several inquiries: Does the link between melody and nature render natural entities as musical notes? Do the components of an entity constitute anatomical notes in the melody that defines the entity itself? Is it conceivable to distil every moment in life into a “note” symbol on a musical scale, characterised by specific duration, pitch, and volume? Melody, rhythm, and harmony are considered sophisticated “structures” that articulate and convey the essence of nature’s existence. Moreover, every human, every living creature, be it animal or plant, possesses a subjective “biological” interiority. The inner realm of each living subject, along with the objects in the external world, are enveloped within an atmosphere—a musical Umwelt. Humans exist within this musical milieu or atmosphere.

Rendering the umwelt: Foley, animal life and ethics

This article considers the ethical implications of the use of Foley sound in wildlife documentaries. Almost all of the sounds that animals seem to make in these films and television programmes are added by Foley artists; animals in the wild are often filmed using telephoto lenses, beyond the reach of microphones. Crew or vehicle noise will also often muddy sounds recorded on location and so a clean soundtrack must be created in post-production. This article is based on first-hand interviews conducted with practising Foley artists. It details some of the techniques that Foley artists use to simulate the sounds of animals walking, chewing, scratching or otherwise engaging with their environments. It then draws on the work of Emmanuel Levinas to frame ethical activity as the act of encountering the other in terms which recognize and accept their otherness as such. I suggest first that Foley might impede such an ethical encounter with animal life because it seems, at first, to anthropomorphize the animal and to reduce them to a subset of the human. I go on to suggest, however, that Foley is also invested in representing what the biologist Jakob von Uexküll has labelled the umwelt of the animal – the animal’s unique ‘lifeworld’. According to this reading, Foley does ethical work in the wildlife documentary; it brings us to an encounter with the animal’s otherness and intimates that humanity’s own umwelt is but one amongst many. In this way, Foley reveals that the human perception of the world is neither objective nor universal nor absolute. It decentres the human in the way we conceive the world and ethically frames the animal Other as coequal with the human.

The Surface of the World: W. H. Auden and the Umwelt

Abstract Before alighting on his vocation, the poet W. H. Auden grew up among doctors and went to Oxford University to study not literature but the natural sciences. This article pursues the ramifications of that background through the development of Auden’s career, focusing on his biographical and intellectual adjacency to the biologist Jakob von Uexküll. Several close readings illustrate the resonance between Uexküll’s theory of the Umwelt and an epistemological shift at the heart of Auden’s poetry, wherein the idea of the self is reconfigured in terms of the embodied experience of inhabiting a place. In this way, a new perspective takes form on the transdisciplinary scope of literary history, its broader cultural relevance, and the mutuality between the poetic and the scientific imaginations of our own day.

Metaphysics of the Organic Whole: Ehrenfels, Uexküll, and Merleau-Ponty

The aim of this paper is to compare the theory of Gestalt qualities, introduced by the Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932), with the concept of Umwelt, proposed by Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944). The primary basis for the comparison will be the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), who extensively discusses the two concepts in his work. In the Uexküll–Ehrenfelsian context, we focus on analysing the similarities and differences of their argumentation and model approaches to understanding the living and non-living natural entities, their mutual communication, development, and ontological grounding. We also consider the role of individual experience with the environment: in that context, the metaphysical frameworks within which the two thinkers operate in their efforts to explain natural phenomena are central to our comparative reflections.

The institutional fate of Uexküll’s umwelt theory at the University of Hamburg

Due to Jakob von Uexküll’s umwelt theory, the Institute for Umwelt Research at the University of Hamburg, that was founded in 1928, was a unique institution worldwide for holistic research into animal behaviour and perception. However, Uexküll’s vitalistic-teleological approach and his uncompromising anti- Darwinian stance increasingly isolated him. When the closure of his institute was imminent as part of his statutory retirement in 1935, Uexküll ingratiated himself with the National Socialists in a letter to the Reich Minister for Science, Education, and Culture, which serves as a starting point for the article’s detailed discussion of his relationship to National Socialism.
 Since umwelt theory could be used for the training of guide dogs and other animals useful for military purposes, the institute survived. Still, finding a suitable successor to Uexküll proved difficult because hardly anyone among the German zoologists believed Friedrich Brock, Uexküll’s preferred candidate, would live up to Uexküll’s originality. The most important opponent to Brock’s appointment was Berthold Klatt, professor of zoology at the University of Hamburg, who did not expect any significant progress in zoology from Uexküll’s umwelt theory. After Brock’s death in 1958, the sworn circle of supporters of Uexküll’s umwelt theory tried in vain to push through a successor from their ranks. At the instigation of Curt Kosswig, Klatt’s successor in the Chair of Zoology, Franz Sauer succeeded Brock in 1959. However, a polemical article written by Gösta von Uexküll provoked a scandal, in the wake of which Sauer resigned. In 1960 the Institute for Umwelt Research became a department of the Zoological Institute, existing in the lecture timetables until 1966.
 Thus, the fate of Uexküll’s research institution depended mainly on external and personal factors or, to speak in Uexküllian terms, on the umwelten of the protagonists and antagonists.

Umwelt as the foundation of an ethics of smart environments

Due to the increasing embeddedness of pervasive and immersive technologies in the built environment, a new type of spaces known as smart environments emerges. With them arise many ethical issues related to freedom, agency, consciousness, and the governance of human-machine interactions. In this paper, I use Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory to devise principles for an applied ethics of umwelt, as part of a broader ethics of smart environments. Umwelt ethics is one of human beings’ surrounding world in the context of environmental capitalism. As umwelt becomes a resource to be exploited by economic agents with de facto or de jure rights to control space, defining ethical principles pertaining to the digitalization of space in the built environment is more important than ever.

Umwelt Collapse: The Loss of Umwelt-Ecosystem Integration

Jakob von Uexküll’s umwelt theory opens new perspectives for understanding animal extinction. The umwelt is interpreted here as a sum of structural correspondences between an animal’s subjective experience, ecosystem, physiology, and behaviour. The global environmental crisis disturbs these meaning-connections. From the umwelt perspective, we may describe extinction as umwelt collapse: The disintegration of an animal’s umwelt resulting from the cumulative errors in semiotic processes that mediate an organism and ecosystem. The loss of umwelt-ecosystem integration disturbs “ecological memory,” which provides the ecosystem with adaptive modelling and self-design capacities. Making a distinction between core and mediated umwelts, and describing different types of umwelt collapse, are suitable methods for more detailed analysis. The concept of umwelt collapse enables the reinterpretation of extinction, from an internal perspective, as a semiotic breakdown. Such an approach may help us map scenarios of animal extinction, and may lead to successful compensation strategies in adapting to environmental change.

VOM TAGEBUCH-ROMAN ZUM LIBRETTO. ZU JAKOB VON GUNTEN VON BENJAMIN SCHWEIZER

The following article looks at the genre transformation from Robert Walser’s diary novel Jakob von Gunten to Benjamin Schweizer’s libretto of the same name. Even if the sole aim is to explore the textual processing of the pre-text for the purposes of another (literary) genre, which the plurimedial character of the final text – the libretto – allows us to distinguish between dramatic, musical and performance texts as being isolable components of the opera as spectaculum (cf. Gier 34). In accordance with this interpretation, an intermedial approach seems warranted here.

Arguing With Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelten

The past two decades have witnessed the remarkable rediscovery of the Baltic-German bio-philosopher Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) and his conception of the animal as a creator of meaning, master of its Umwelt (environment). This paper highlights several blind spots in Uexküll’s contemporary revival. Whilst it has not gone unnoticed that his political agitations clash with the spirit of contemporary research agendas, his Staatsbiologie (state biology) and other essays from the 1920s are commonly dismissed as mere mishaps. But as I show in this paper, Uexküll’s political ideas pervade his ostensibly biological works. Indeed, what has been lost in the scramble to reclaim Uexküll is precisely the crucial role which human animals and their music play in his bio-philosophy. His attempts to unite his understanding of the swarm and the bubble through his esoteric and anti-democratic Kompositionslehre (theory of composition) should be borne in mind for any further attempts to fashion him into a thinker of the “more-than-human.”

Funktionskreis, Gestaltkreis, and Situationskreis in the context of integrated medicine

Abstract This paper explains Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis model as a reinterpretation of Jakob von Uexküll’s Funktionskreis. Also derived from the Funktionskreis is Thure von Uexküll’s Situationskreis model. Both Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis and Thure von Uexküll’s Situationskreis have evolved in the context of integrated medicine in Germany throughout the twentieth century. Focusing on the role of language in health and medicine, this paper addresses important concepts associated with the project of integrated medicine in Germany, especially the biographical approach practiced by Viktor von Weizsäcker and developed by Thure von Uexküll through the concept of the biographical organ. While their efforts to reform the practice of medicine and the training of physicians were unsuccessful, recent research in the psychology of language and health and recommendations for more patient-centered communication resonate with the principles underlying Viktor von Weizsäcker’s and Thure von Uexküll’s integrated medicine.

Colossal Scrawls and Divine Naughts: Images of Formlessness in Gottfried Keller’s Der grüne Heinrich and Robert Walser’s Jakob von Gunten

Abstract In Robert Walser’s novel Jakob von Gunten (1909), a specific metanarrative revolves around the long-standing opposition between form and formlessness. This metanarrative redefines the ill-reputed non-form, establishing it as the core of aesthetic and linguistic productivity. At the same time, it provides insights into the literary precursors and theoretical contexts that reverberate throughout the novel. Literary resonances include Gottfried Keller’s canonical work Der grüne Heinrich, whose images of formlessness are adapted and transformed in Jakob von Gunten. On a theoretical level, it is a contemporary strand of Formal Aesthetics that elucidates the form-conceptual innovations in Jakob von Gunten. Reconstructing the references that structure the novel and its underlying poetology of form, this article reviews a literary manifestation of the theory of form that shapes the aesthetic discourse in the 1900 s.

Biosemiotics and Peirce

Abstract Peirce’s final statements on the sign were consigned in various ways over a hundred years ago as a form of logic, a branch of the science of enquiry based upon observation. This means inevitably that some parts of the theory will have been contested or considered superseded by more recent pronouncements on cognitive activity in general, both within and without the field of semiotics. Two such areas that have been host to innovative developments concern central preoccupations of the entire Peircean edifice: the basic unit of semiotics and its function, and ways of looking. First, following Thomas Sebeok’s pioneering integration of semiotics and the biological theories of Jakob von Uexküll, biosemiotics, it is claimed, has espoused a Peircean approach to the definitions of sign and semiosis. Second, observation involves the relation between the observer and the object observed, and, as a theoretical consequence, the relation between an organism and its environment, von Uexküll’s Umwelt. In view of the importance accorded Peircean semiotic theory in this more recent science, the paper compares and contrasts aspects of the later theory with the earlier, and concludes that there are significant theoretical differences between the two conceptions of the sign and its theoretical implications.

Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition

Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition

The Artistry of The Non-Humans

In contemporary art, a growing number of artists experiment with non-humans in their actual artworks. This paper examines the issues related to such practices with reference to Jakob von Uexküll’s analyses of the configuration of meaningful worlds by non-human animals, as well as Merleau-Ponty’s and Deleuze-Guattari’s interpretations of Uexküll’s ideas. Uexküll maintained that every living being lives in a world with meaning; Merleau-Ponty understood this claim as situating the beginning of culture in the creativity of non-humans; Deleuze and Guattari emphasized the melodic and rhythmic dimension of this creativity, mainly interpreted as territorialization processes. These elements are paramount to understanding what is at stake with artworks featuring non-humans: considering projects proposals from Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Tomas Saraceno, Ana Maria Lopez Gomez and other contemporary artists, the conclusion is that an artwork featuring an encounter between two territorializing movements has the potential to transform the human range of perception.

The circulation of meaning: A biosemiotic perspective on the functional circle

The research field of contemporary biosemiotics is heir to the thought of Jakob von Uexküll, who focused on investigating the subjective world of animals. The Estonian biologist’s theory showed how sense-motor organisms' perceptual and operational worlds are expressed in coordination based on signification. The umwelt comprises the interwoven relationship between organisms' operational and perceptual marks. In this sense, the ‘functional circle’ notion has particularly interested investigations in biosemiotics. According to Uexküll, the functional circle is a general pattern that underlines the relationship between any animal and the world. Thus, the relationship between the subject and the world can only occur through recursiveness that constructs a semiotic signifying circle. The circulation of meaning has ripple effects concerning recursiveness: memory, anticipation, perception, and learning. The semiotic circle is thus the condition of possibility for experience, perception, and movement in the world. This article aims to analyze the idea of circularity within the research field of biosemiotics, with particular attention to Uexküll’s legacy, which is also carried on by cybernetics. Also, we will try to show how biosemiotics investigates the emergence of meaning in this signifying circle. The main aim is to show that recursiveness and circulation of meaning originate from a cognitive semiosis of a corporeal type.

High-Quality Outdoor Learning: Evidence-Based Education Outside the Classroom for Children, Teachers and Society ed. by Rolf Jucker and Jakob von Au (review)

High-Quality Outdoor Learning: Evidence-Based Education Outside the Classroom for Children, Teachers and Society ed. by Rolf Jucker and Jakob von Au (review)

On the composition of the type series of the Kashgar Racerunner, Eremias buechneri Bedriaga, 1907 (Sauria, Lacertidae)

The Kashgar Racerunner Eremias buechneri Bedriaga, 1907 is a member of the taxonomically most complicated group, i.e. E. multiocellata – E. przewalskii complex, together with about a dozen of other species inhabiting predominantly arid landscapes of Central Asia. Eremias buechneri is one of the poorly studied representatives of this diverse group of species. This species was described in 1907 by Jakob von Bedriaga based on the study of specimens collected in Central Asia by N.M. Przewalsky and M.W. Pewzow. This species is practically not present in the collections of museums around the world and is known from a limited number of specimens. We clarify the composition of the type series used in in the original description of this species in accordance with article 72.4.1 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and we propose to consider as a type series the specimens mentioned by the author in his description of 1907, with catalogue numbers in the collection of the Zoological Museum (since 1931, the Zoological Institute) clarified from the results of the N.M. Przewalsky expedition reported by Bedriaga (1912) and thus to expand the type series to 59 specimens (1 lectotype and 58 paralectotypes). Of these, four paralectotypes are lost (ZISP 7264.9, 7279.6, 7089.4 and 7264.4) and four specimens are in very poor condition, almost destroyed (ZISP 8286.1–4). Thus, the actual number of specimens currently stored at the Zoological Institute is 55. The paratype E. buechneri ZISP 9131 has been genotyped. Molecular genetic identification of specimens in the type series from different parts of the range appears promising as a future avenue of research.

Umwelt, enchantment, and McDonaldization

Abstract The enchantment and re-enchantment of formal rationalized systems has been an important study in sociology and the social sciences since its first discussion by Max Weber. However, it has received relatively little attention in animal studies, ecology, or environmental studies. This article attempts to fill this gap in the research by focusing on a multiscale perspective that considers the relationship between nonhuman animal umwelt and human perception within the confines of enchantment, re-enchantment, and McDonaldized systems. This is done through a theoretical synthesis of George Ritzer’s work on rationalization, spectacles, extravaganzas, and simulations with Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of umwelt, and zoosemiotic and ecosemiotic perspectives on multispecies environments. It is concluded that enchantment and re-enchantment make use of nonhuman animals and environments to enchant formal rationalized systems, which consequently presents and uses nonhuman animals in situations injurious to their umwelt, while also making use of affect, intersubjectivity, and simulations to influence human perspectives.

Correction to: Organisms as subjects: Jakob von Uexküll and Adolf Portmann on the autonomy of living beings and anthropological difference

Correction to: Organisms as subjects: Jakob von Uexküll and Adolf Portmann on the autonomy of living beings and anthropological difference

Counterpointing Care

An intricate lace-like net of chitin, acids and enzymes dwell in the interstices of life and nonlife, between plants, animals, biomass and the atmosphere, working in and through others; always dismantling, repairing and remaking matter. These are the ecologies of mycelial networks and fungal bodies that have given rise to biospherical life as we know it. Now, on the eve of planetary environmental collapse, calls to care for these vital fungal relationships are growing louder. What does it mean to care for something so obfuscated yet ubiquitous, something often regarded as abject yet gastronomic in some cultures, something that moulds human life but is yet abstract and unsympathetic to it? We argue that care in all its complexity and generality is in crisis because it is based on certain anthropocentric assumptions that do not account for the difference and indifference of fungi. Drawing on three discrete performative acts, we explore the possibilities of an abstract care when fungi is engaged as an ‘actor’ or agent, in which normative performances of ecological care are troubled. Through Wendy Wheeler’s biosemiotics, Jakob von Uexkull’s Umwelt and Merlin Sheldrake’s vital mycology, we ruminate on how these nets, cast wide into human and nonhuman guts, genes, brains and affects, themselves perform abstractions that are not mechanical but rather driven by semaphore and semiosis. We focus on the biosemiotics of eating (with) fungi as a performative act for care for more-than-human and human entanglements. As Jane Bennett suggests, a partial material overlap occurs through eating that is ontologically constitutive, moulding a kind of radical care through the communicative exchange of bodies and matter. Taking seriously these interdependent abstractions by mycelium’s sympoetic and holobiontic entanglements defines intuition as non-cognitive but sympathetic (after Bergson), enacting unequal and perhaps ‘care-less’ collaborations.