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Introduction: The Relevance of Uexküll’s Umwelt Theory Today

2014; Springer Nature (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-94-017-9688-0_1

1875-466X

Morten Tønnessen,

Plant and Biological Electrophysiology Studies

This introductory chapter has three main purposes. The first is to present the book The Discovery of the Umwelt, emphasizing its specificity in the context of the international publications dedicated to Uexküll. The second aim is to describe the reception of Uexküll in Norwegian ecophilosophy, and particularly by Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) and Arne Næss (1913–2009). The third aim is to outline a possible strategy for updating Uexküll's Umwelt conception in a zoosemiotic and ecosemiotic direction. The strategy is based on the idea of comparative mapping of the subjective environments, in order to have a deeper insight of the coding und decoding processes by which different animal species constitute their Umwelt.