A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, with A Theory of Meaning

Part of the University of Minnesota Press's Posthumanities series, this new translation of biophilosopher Jakob von Uexküll's influential 1934 book is timely considering the lively ongoing debates about posthumanism and the rapid growth of animal studies. Uexküll (1864–1944), a forerunner of biosemiotics and ethology, has influenced Heidegger, Deleuze and Guattari, Agamben, Merleau-Ponty, and the development of posthumanism. A Foray begins, however, not with abstract philosophy, but with the story of a tick, an animal for which many people share a distaste. The choice of the tick indicates how radical Uexküll's ideas about animal worlds are. He elevates the tick, and all animals, into subjects central to their own worlds. Waiting in the woods until it smells butyric acid, the tick drops or climbs onto a passing mammal. The tick's perception of the smell, the smell itself, and the tick's interpretations and reactions are all part of the tick's Umwelt. The Umwelt, Uexküll's most important contribution to biophilosophy, is the perceptual world of an individual creature and the effects that individual has on its world. The creature's environment is a bubble limited by its perception, and all worlds are subjective. This challenge to scientific objectivity, and human certainty in general, is still relevant. Uexküll also argues for what we would today call intelligent design, providing an alternative to Darwinian evolutionary theory. In Uexküll's view, the perfect fit of animal to Umwelt indicates that nature has a design and a creator. The belief in a god-created world may not be shared by all audiences, but it does provide a rationale for locating value in animals and their environments, and therefore an impetus to protect them.