Relating to Environments
A New Look at Umwelt
1st Edition
Published on 1. August 2009
237 pages
978-1-60752-258-4 (ISBN)
Description
Jakob von Uexkull founded Umwelt research with a clear idea - that humans are not qualitatively different than other species. Umwelt, literally "outer-world", is the study of the organism in relation to the world around it, as well as the meaning that the world holds for that organism. Thus the world is a truly subjective place.
While von Uexkull's theory has entered into the social sciences via semiotics, and biology via ethology, the authors of these chapters go between and beyond these disciplines to examine everything from cells to spiders to humans and culture. The authors adopt the framework of Umwelt theory to examine unique aspects of the natural world by relating the inner world of the subject and the objects to which that organism attends.
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Content
- Cover
- Relating to Environments: A New Look at Umwelt
- Relating to Environments: A New Look at Umwelt
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Introduction
- UEXKÜLL AND BIOLOGY
- Organisms Are Engaged in Contrapuntal Relations
- The Outer World Is Really the Inner World of Organisms
- THE CONCEPT OF UMWELT
- REFERENCES
- Series Editor's Preface: The Culture of Relating
- REFERENCES
- I. PRE-CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS: ENVIRONMENT AS LINKED TO THE BEHAVING ORGANISM
- EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION TO PART I
- 1. From Cellular to Human Worlds
- THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE AND REALITY
- Holism
- Development
- Hierarchical Order
- BODY (KÖRPER): CHARACTERISTICS OF LIFE
- SOUL (SEELE): THE EMERGENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- MIND (GEIST): A DISTINCTLY HUMAN PROPERTY
- CONCLUSION: EVOLUTION AT THREE UMWELT LEVELS
- REFERENCES
- 2. Complexities, Confusion, Choices: Reencountering Uexküll
- DIFFERENCES IN OVERALL AIMS OF THE INTERPRETER: SCIENTIFIC OR AESTHETIC
- Same Person Experiences Tensions both as Researcher and as Clinician
- Tensions Experienced by Gynecologists When they Make an Error
- RECURRING EPISTEMOLOGICAL ISSUES
- Internal/External/Interactionist Positions
- Interactionism and Gestalt Psychology
- Uexküll as Interactionist
- UMWELT OF FROGS AND CATS
- Concepts that Articulated the Interactionist Epistemological Position
- What is a Fly to a Frog?
- TENSIONS BETWEEN AND WITHIN DISCIPLINES
- Tensions between Disciplines
- Disciplinary Differences in Controlling the "Bias" of the Professional
- The Tradeoff between Preferences for Abstract Concepts and Concrete Particulars
- CURRENT DOUBTS AND QUESTIONS
- MUSIC AND THE AESTHETICS OF CLOSURE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- REFERENCES
- 3. The Wisdom of the Web: Learning from Spiders
- LOOKING AT OTHERS: A COMPLEX ACT
- What is an Environment-Whose, and for Whom?
- THE UMWELTEN OF SPIDERS: UNITY OF GENES AND ENVIRONMENT IN CONSTRUCTION
- Spider and their Worlds: Living for Web Construction
- LEARNING FROM SPIDERS: ECOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY
- HOW EVOLUTION WORKS: FROM "NATURAL" SELECTION TO SELECTION THROUGH EMERGENCE
- Organic Selection Theory
- GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
- Implications for Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology
- NOTES
- REFERENCES
- II. TURNING TO HUMANS: CULTURE ENTERS THE STORY
- EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION TO PART II
- REFERENCES
- 4. The Umwelt and Emotional Experience
- THE UMWELT AND EMOTION
- SOME SUPERFLUOUS TERMINOLOGICAL DISTINCTIONS
- IDENTIFYING THE BASIC HUMAN EMOTIONS
- THE PRIMACY OF AFFECT
- ADAPTIVE ADVANTAGES OF THE CAPACITY FOR AFFECT
- PSYCHOLOGY'S NEGLECT OF EMOTION
- EMOTIONAL EVENTS AND THE BRAIN
- THE NEED FOR A LIST OF BASIC HUMAN EMOTIONS
- ACKNOWLEDGMENT
- NOTE
- REFERENCES
- 5. From Mother's Mouth to Baby's World and Back Again: Shaping One's Attachments Through Vocalization
- HUMAN ATTACHMENT RELATIONS
- ATTACHMENT VOCALIZATIONS
- THE PLACE OF ATTACHMENT VOCALIZATIONS IN UMWELTEN
- ISOLATING RECEPTORS IN ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIPS
- CONCLUSIONS AND REVISIONS FOR MODERN LIFE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- REFERENCES
- 6. The Mating Game: The Extension of Umwelt in the 21st Century
- UMWELT
- EVOLUTION AND MATING
- COMPETITION AND THE 21ST CENTURY
- NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF MEDIA
- CONCLUSION
- NOTES
- REFERENCES
- III. THE MEANING-MAKING MINDS ON SOCIAL BORDERS
- EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION TO PART III
- 7. The Living, the Un-Living, and the Hard-to-Kill: Acting and Feeling on the Boundary
- BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH: MAPPING THE PHENOMENA
- CONTINUITY IN MEANINGS
- SHARING THE ENVIRONMENT
- The Construction of Umwelt
- KILLING AND ITS CULTURAL FRAME
- CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY OF MEANINGFUL KILLING
- Everyday Ambivalence of Killing-Whom, When, and for What Purpose?
- PERSONAL RELATING TO THE EVENTS OF KILLING ANIMALS: SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
- BASIC RESULTS
- The Profile of Encountering Dead Animals in Everyday Context
- The Profile of Social Need for Killing Animals
- GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
- NOTES
- REFERENCES
- APPENDIX A
- 8. Signifying Girlhood: Cultural Images of Girlhood and Semiotic Meaning-making by Girls in the 21st Century United States
- UMWELT: INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE AND THE CREATION OF SUBJECTIVITY
- UMWELT: INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR INTERCONNECTEDNESS WITH THE ENVIRONMENT
- UMWELT: MAGICAL THINKING, MEDIA, AND GIRLS' RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE ENVIRONMENT
- NOTES
- REFERENCES
- 9. Heimweh or Homesickness: A Nostalgic Look at the Umwelt That No Longer Is
- A BRIEF LOOK INTO THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF HEIMWEH AND NOSTALGIA
- A NEW LOOK AT HEIMWEH
- FEELINGS
- GANZHEITSPSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF FEELINGS
- THE TRANSFORMATION OF STRUCTURES AND OF PERSONAL RELATIONS
- THE STRUCTURE AND PROCESS OF HEIMWEH
- HEIMWEH-A LOOK INTO ITS FUTURE
- HEIMWEH: SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- REFERENCES
- 10. A Unified Topological Approach to Umwelts and Life Spaces
- 1. UMWELTS AND FINITE TOPOLOGICAL SPACES
- 2. FOUR RANGES IN AN ORGANISM'S ENVIRONMENT
- 2.1. Accessibility and Availability
- 2.2. Awareness and Attention
- 2.3. Homing in on the Ranges
- 3. TIME
- 3.1. Awareness Time
- 3.2. Awareness Space
- 3.3. Attention Time
- 3.4. The Funktionskreis
- 4. A TOPOLOGICAL MODEL OF UMWELT
- 4.1. The Syntax of the Model
- 4.2. The Semantics of the Model
- 4.3. The Pragmatics of the Model
- 4.4. Extreme Cases
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- APPENDIX A. MATHEMATICAL TOOLS
- A.1. Sets
- Finite Sets
- A.2. Sets and Logic
- Boolean Algebra
- A.3. Power Sets
- Cartesian Products of Sets
- Relations
- A.4. Finite Topological Spaces
- A5. Simple-Homotopy Theory and Finite (T0)-spaces
- NOTES
- REFERENCES
- Conclusion
- SPECIES EXIST IN SUBJECTIVE SPACE
- ORGANISMS ARE INVOLVED IN MUTUALLY DEPENDENT RELATIONS
- THE FUNCTIONAL CYCLE ENTERS INTO MODERN INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
- REFERENCES
- Contributor Biographies and Contact Information
