| Kull, K. (2001). Jakob von Uexküll: An introduction. Semiotica, 134(1/4), 1–59. |
 
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| Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 02/12/2019, 16:07 |
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| "organisms are communicative structures. What organisms can distinguish is dependent on the design of their structure and on the work of their functional cycles. The latter, which consist of perception and operation, are responsible for creating the Umwelt. Umwelt is an entailment of the perceptual and operational world (Merkwelt and Wirkwelt)." |
| 'Umwelt' stands for the subjective or 'meaningful' world of the organism. |
| von Uexküll, J. (1992). A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. Semiotica, 89(4), 319–391. |
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| Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 31/10/2023, 18:13 |
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| "all that a subject perceives becomes his perceptual world and all that he does, his effector world. Perceptual and effector worlds together form a closed unit, the Umwelt." |
| "The individual cells of the perceptor organ, whatever their activity, remain as spatially separate units. The units of information which they separately convey would also remain isolated, if it were not possible for them to be fused into new units which are independent of the spatial characters of the receptor organ. This possibility does, in fact, exist. The receptor signs of a group of receptor cells are combined outside the receptor organ, indeed outside the animal, into units that become the properties of external objects. This projection of sensory impressions is a self-evident fact. All our human sensations, which represent our specific receptor signs, unite into perceptual cues (Merkmal) which constitute the attributes of external objects and serve as the real basis of our actions. The sensation 'blue' becomes the 'blueness' of the sky; the sensation 'green,' the 'greenness' of the lawn. These are the cues by which we recognize the objects: blue, the sky; green, the lawn." |
"the moment is identical for all sense modalities, since all sensations are accomplished by the same moment sign.
The human ear does not discriminate eighteen air vibrations in one second, but hears them as one sound.
It has been found that eighteen taps applied to the skin within one second are felt as even pressure." |
| "The blind man's world is a very limited one: it extends only as far as he can feel his way with his feet and cane." |
| "Behind all the worlds created by Him, there lies concealed, eternally beyond the reach of knowledge, the subject — Nature." |
| "I had taken a young, very intelligent and agile Negro with me from the heart of Africa to Dar-es-Salaam. The only thing which he lacked was a knowledge of European tools. When I bid him climb a short ladder, he asked me: 'How am I to do that, I see nothing but rods and holes?' As soon as another Negro had shown him how to climb the ladder, he could do it easily. From then on, the perceptually given 'rods and holes' held a climbing tone for him, and he recognized them everywhere as a ladder. The receptor image of rods and holes had been supplemented by the effector image of his own action; through this it had acquired a new meaning. The new meaning manifested itself as a new attribute, as a functional or effector tone." |
| "Our time is made up of a series of moments, or briefest time units, within which the world shows no change. For the duration of a moment, the world stands still. Man's moment lasts 1/18 of a second. We shall see later that the length of a moment varies in different animals." |
| "A vineyard snail is placed on a rubber ball which, carried by water, slides under it without friction. The snail's shell is held in place by a bracket. Thus the snail, unhampered in its crawling movements, remains in the same place. If a small stick is then moved up to its foot, the snail will climb up on it. If the snail is given one to three taps with the stick each second, it will turn away, but if four or more taps are administered per second, it will begin to climb onto the stick. In the snail's world a rod that oscillates four times per second has become stationary. We may infer from this that the snail's receptor time moves at a tempo of three to four moments per second. As a result, all motor processes in the snail's world occur much faster than in ours."
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| "According to information I have received concerning the sound perception of night moths, it makes no difference whether the sound to which the animals are adjusted be the sound manifestation of a bat or one produced by rubbing a glass stopper — the effect is always the same. Night moths which, owing to their light coloring, are easily visible, fly away upon perceiving a high tone, while species which have protective coloration alight in response to the same tone. The same sensory cue has the opposite effect in their case. It is striking how the two opposite kinds of action are governed by a plan. There can be no question of discrimination or purposiveness, since no moth or butterfly has ever seen the color of its own skin. The plan revealed in this instance appears even more admirable when we learn that the artful microscopic structure of the night moth's hearing organ exists solely for this one high tone of the bat. To all else, these moths are totally deaf." |
