Jakob von Uexküll
The theory of meaning
The importance of meaning
The purpose of this work is to deal with biology defined as a theory of life. For this reason behaviors of every living creature have to be considered as meaningfully organized, because they consist of perceptions and operations, and they are not mere movements or tropisms.
So meaning is the central point of von Uexküll's work. Life can only be understood when one has acknowledged the importance of meaning. A chemist, for example, can certainly learn much by chemically analyzing of colors of some famous painting, but such an analysis is not relevant to the painting. In the same way every behavior is not mechanically regulated but driven by meaning.
Every animal is bound to a specific habitat, in which it can move and it can confront several objects. With these objects it can have a narrower or wider relationship, but they must always be considered as meaning-carriers. An animal can't enter into a relationship with a neutral object..
In order to understand this idea, von Uexküll gives us several examples. If, for instance, an angry dog barks at us in a country road, we can pick up a stone and frighten it off throwing it to the dog. There is no doubt about the fact that the stone, which first lay on the road and then is thrown at the dog, is the same object. None of its physical or chemical properties have altered, but a fundamental transformation has taken place: it has changed its meaning. As long as the stone was incorporated in the country road, it served as a support for the walker's feet. We can say that it had a "path -quality" because its meaning lay in its playing a part in the performance of the path. But when we picked up the stone to throw it at the dog, the stone became a missile. Then a new meaning became imprinted upon it: it had acquired a "throw-quality".
So the stone can't be considered as a neutral object, because it becomes a meaning-carrier as soon as it enters into a relationship with a subject and every animal in nature plays the role of a subject.
The Umwelt (subjective universe)
Von Uexküll presents us a quotation from Sombart's book About the Human:
"No forest exists as an objectively prescribed environment. There exists only a forester-, hunter-, botanist-, walker-, nature-enthusiast-, wood gatherer-, berry-picker and a fairytale forest in which Hansel and Gretel lose their way."
Of course the meaning of the forest is multiplied if its relationship is extended to animals.
An example is given us by the roles that are assigned to the stem of a blooming meadow-flower in four different Umwelts (subjective universes).
In the Umwelt of a girl picking flowers, which are used to adorn her body, it plays the role of an ornament. In the Umwelt of an ant, which uses the stem surface as a path in order to reach its food area in the flower petals, it plays the role of a path. In the Umwelt of a cicada-larva, which bores into the sap-paths of the stem and uses it to extract the sap in order to construct the liquid walls of its airy house, it plays the role of an extraction-point. In the Umwelt of a cow, which utilizes the stems and the flowers as fodder, it plays the role of a morsel of food.
The Umwelt is then the stage on which the animal plays its life-roles and is governed, in all its parts, by the meaning it has for the subject. It can embrace a wider or narrower space depending on the power of resolution of the animal's sense organs. The girl's field of vision, for example, is similar to ours, the cow's field of vision extends away over its grazing area, the diameter of the ant's field of vision does not exceed 50 centimeters and the cicada's one only a few centimeters. So the Umwelt's size and the number of its localities can be very different for different animals, even if they are all dealing with the same meadow-flower. In each Umwelt the localities are distributed in a different way: the fine pavement which is relevant for the ant while crawling up the flower stem does not exist for the girl's hand and certainly not for the cow's mouth. Also the properties of the object have different importance. The chemical properties of the flower stem do not play any part on the stages upon which the girl or the ant plays their life-roles. On the contrary the digestibility of the stem is essential to the cow. Everything in the Umwelt is altered and reshaped according to the meaning it has for the subject and what is not recognized as a useful meaning-carrier is totally neglected.
The structure of the meaning-carrier
Even if the meaning-carriers have different contents in the various Umwelts, they all have an identical structure. Part of their properties serve the subject at all times as perceptual cue-carriers, another part as effector cue-carriers. The color of the blossom, for example, serves as an optical perceptual cue in the girl's Umwelt. While the thinnest point of the stem, which is torn apart by the girl when she picks the flower, is the effector cue.
Anyway the biggest part of the body of a meaning-carrier frequently serves as an undifferentiated objective connecting structure that serves just to connect the perceptual cue-carrying parts with the effector cue-carrying parts.
Every behavior has the same structure. It begins by creating a perceptual cue and ends by printing an effector cue on the same meaning-carrier. So we can speak of a functional circle that connects the meaning-carrier with the subject. The nervous system is the segment of each functional circle that lies within the animal's body. In every functional circle a fraction of the outside world is picked up through the sense organs of animals and treated as stimuli. These stimuli are then transformed into nerve impulses and conducted to the central perceptual organs. Perceptual signs then arise in these perceptual organs and are projected as perceptual cues to become properties of the meaning-carriers. The perceptual signs in the perceptual organs induce corresponding impulses that are transmitted to the effector.
Plants and the dwelling-integument
Since plants have no nervous system, receptors, or effector, then no meaning-carriers, no functional circle, perceptual, or effector cues exist for them. So plants possess no special Umwelt organs, but are immersed directly in their habitat. The relationships of plants with their habitat are then different from those of animals with their Umwelts.
Anyway essential stimuli also exist for plants. They can be called meaning-factors and they are encountered by plants not with the help of receptor or effector organs, but because plants have a living cell-layer, the dwelling-integument, that enables them to make their choice of stimuli.
Then, in the case of plants, it is not possible to speak of functional circles, however, the meaning of the plant's organs lies in the utilization of the meaning-factors of its dwelling-integument. It masters this task building its shape according to a plan. The meaningful shape is constant and it is always the product of a subject not the product of random influences on an object. The rain, for example, is caught in the gutters of the tree leaves, and is guided to the root ends under the earth, and the sunlight is caught by the chlorophyll-containing cells of the plant to be used for carrying out an intricate chemical process. Nor the sun synthesizes the chlorophyll; neither the gutter is the product of the rain.
The form-shaping command
The form-shaping command conforms to the directive of a basic building plan, already recognizable in the gastrula stage, as two Spemann's experiments show us.
In the first one Spemann grafted a small piece of the body wall of an embryo in the first gastrula stage onto the body wall of another embryo. This graft developed not according to its site of origin but according to its surroundings in the new host. The transplanted cells, which were destined to become skin, became neural tissue when placed in the area destined to become brain.
In the second experiment Spemann inserted a graft of tadpole tissue into the mouth area of a triton larva.
While the triton larva has real teeth in its mouth that have the same structure of the teeth of all vertebrates, the tadpole's mouth consists of horny jaws and short horny spikes that are constructed in a completely different way from real teeth.
In one case a typical tadpole mouth with horny jaws surrounded by horny spikes had developed in the triton mouth because the implanted material covered the whole of the mouth area,
In another case half of the mouth, which remained free of the transplanted tissue, had developed into a triton mouth with real teeth.
From this last example we can see that the meaning command and the form-shaping command are not identical.
The transplanted graft always obeys the meaning command of the new host even if it has been taken from a different site on its donor's body that would have given it a different meaning command. Anyway it follows the donor's form-shaping rule: it becomes a mouth, but a tadpole's mouth instead of a triton's mouth. The final result is a malformation, because a carnivore with a vegetarian mouth is an absurdity that doesn’t follow any meaning.
The counterpoint as the motive for the shaping of form
The Eggers' studies have shown us that the night moths only have two stretched resonators in their ears, which respond to air waves of a frequency that is at the upper limits of the human ear's capacity to detect. This frequency is the same one of the bat's squeak. Bats are the principal enemies of the moth. So almost the entire world is silent for the moths, they can only perceive the sound emitted by their specific enemy. The squeak is used by bats as a recognition sign during the darkness. So the same sound sometimes will reach another bat's ear and sometimes a moth's ear. In both cases it has to be considered as a meaning-carrier. In the former it will introduce a friend, in the latter an enemy. Depending on the utilizer it will have different meanings.
Then the program for shaping the form of moths contains the instructions to develop a hearing organ that can reach the bat's squeak. In this case, we can say without doubt that the meaning program acts upon the form-shaping program so that the meaning utilizer faces the meaning carrier, and vice versa.
So we may say that the moth is "bat-like", which means that the body structure of the moth has taken on certain of the bat's characteristics, not from a specific bat but rather from the bat's archetype. The counterpoint represents the theme in this structure.
The theory of the composition of nature
A theory of the composition of nature should be a generalization of the rules that von Uexküll has shown us.
The theory of composition of music should be used as a model. It is possible to start from the observation that at least two tones are needed to make a harmony. When a duet is composed, the two parts that are to blend into harmony must be written note for note and point for point for each other. This is the principle on which the theory of counterpoint in music is based.
So, when two living organisms enter a harmonious meaning relationship with each other, we must first understand which one of the two is to be designated as the subject and meaning utilizer, and which, on the other hand, is to be considered as a meaning carrier. Then we will have to find their mutual properties that are related in the manner that point and counterpoint are. If, in a given case, we know enough about the functional circles that join a subject to its meaning-carrier, then we can look for the counterpoint on the perceptual side as well as on the side of the effector. Completing this search will be able to determine the special meaning rule that the composition has followed.
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Yuri M. Lotman
The semiosphere
The semiotic space
The classical model for communication situations consisting of addresser, addressee and the channel linking them together is not yet a working system. For it to work it has to be "immersed" in semiotic space. In fact all participants in the communicative act must have some experience of communication, they must have familiarity with semiosis. For that reason, Lotman says, paradoxically the semiotic experience precedes the semiotic act.
This semiotic space necessary for the existence and functioning of languages is called by Lotman semiosphere, by analogy with the Vernadsky's concept of the biosphere. The semiosphere has then a prior existence and is in constant interaction with languages. Neither communication nor language can exits outside the semiosphere. Every language has to be immersed in a semiotic space, and it can only function by interaction with that space. So the unit of semiosis, the smallest functioning mechanism, is the whole semiotic space of the culture in question, its semiosphere, and not the separate language. The semiosphere is the result and the condition for the development of culture.
Vernadsky, writing about the biosphere, said that a human being observed in nature and all living organisms and every living being is a function of the biosphere in its particular space-time, exactly as a language can be considered a function of the semiosphere.
The heterogeneity of the semiosphere
An important characteristic of the semiosphere is its heterogeneity. The semiotic space is filled up by various languages that relate to each other along a spectrum that runs from complete mutual translatability to just as complete mutual untranslatability. Heterogeneity is defined both by the diversity of elements and their different functions.
If we consider a cultural period, like the Romantic period in Europe for example, we must admit that the Romanticism occupies only a part of the semiosphere in which all sorts of other traditional structures continue to exist. Moreover, at all stages of development, there are contacts with texts coming in from cultures that formerly lay beyond the boundaries of the given semiosphere. These contacts can have various effects on the internal structure of the "world picture" of the culture we are talking about.
And we have also to take account of the fact that different languages circulate for different periods. Fashion in clothes, for example, changes at a speed incomparably faster than the rate of change of the literary language, and Romanticism in dance can be not synchronized with Romanticism in architecture. What then can happen is that, while some parts of the semiosphere are still enjoying the poetics of Romanticism, others may have moved far on into post-Romanticism. This is why we have to sacrifice chronology when we try to give a synthetic picture of Romanticism that include all form of art.
The centre of the semiosphere
The centre of the semiosphere is the space in which are formed the most developed and structurally organized languages, and in first place the natural language of the culture.
The highest form and final act of a semiotic system's structural organization is when it describes itself. At this stage grammars are written and laws are codified. When it happens, on the one hand the system gains the advantage of a greater structural organization, but, on the other hand it loses its inner reserves of indeterminacy that provide it with flexibility, vast capacity for information and the potential for dynamic development.
So one part of the semiosphere in the process of self-description creates its own grammar, and then it strives to extend these norms over the whole semiosphere. During the Renaissance, for example, the dialect of Florence became the literary language of Italy.
The asymmetry in the semiosphere
No language can function it is not immersed in the semiosphere, but at the same time no semiosphere can exist without a natural language as its organizing core. But in the semiosphere are also existing partial languages that can serve only certain cultural function, as well as half-formed languages that can be bearers of semiosis if they are included in the semiotic context.
Then asymmetry, another important characteristic of the semiosphere, finds expression in the currents of internal translations among these languages, with which the whole density of the semiosphere is permeated.
So asymmetry is apparent in the relationship between the centre of the semiosphere and its periphery. While in the centre the metastructural self-description is considered "our" language, on the periphery it could be treated as "someone else's" language, and it could be unable to adequately reflect the semiotic reality, like the grammar of a foreign language.
So on the periphery the relationship between semiotic practice and the norms imposed on it is strained. Texts generated in accordance with these norms are without any real semiotic context. While organic creations, born in the actual semiotic milieu, come into conflict with the imposed norms. This is the area of semiotic dynamism, the peripheral genres in art are more revolutionary than those in the centre of culture.
Anyway it can also take place a process whereby the periphery of culture moves into the centre, and the centre is pushed out to the periphery. The avant-garde, for example, started life as a "rebellious fringe" and then it became a phenomenon of the centre, able to impose its rules to the whole semiosphere. At this moment it became also the object of intense theorizing on the metastructural level. In this sense Peter the Great's transfer of the Russian capital to Petersburg was a typical move to the periphery. The transfer of the politico-administrative centre on to the geographical periphery can be seen at the same time as the transfer of the periphery to the ideological and political centre of the state.
The boundary of the semiosphere
The boundary is one of the primary mechanisms of semiotic individuation and it can be defined as the outer limit of a first-person form. This space is "ours", "my own", it's "cultured", "safe" and so on. By contrast "their space" is "other", "hostile", "dangerous". Every culture begins by dividing the world into "its own" internal space and "their" external space. This binary division could be interpreted in different ways depending on the typology of the culture, but the actual division is one of the human cultural universals. The boundary may separate the living from the dead, settled peoples from nomadic ones, the town from the plains. It may be a state frontier or a social, national, confessional, or any other kind of frontier.
What is within the boundary reproduces the cosmos, while what is on the other side represents chaos, the anti-world, an unstructured space inhabited by monsters. In the countryside the sorcerer, the miller and sometimes the smith had to live outside the village, ad did the executioner in a medieval town. The "normal" space has not only geographical but also temporal boundaries. Nocturnal time lies beyond the boundary. People visit the sorcerer if he demands it by night.
The boundary of the personality is also a semiotic boundary. For instance, a wife, children, slaves, vassals may in some systems be included in the personality of the husband, patriarch, master, patron, suzerain, and not possess any individual status of their own, whereas in other systems they are treated as separate individuals. When two methods of encoding are in conflict perturbations could arise. For instance when the socio-semiotic structure describes an individual as a part, but the person feels him or herself to be an autonomous unit, a semiotic subject not an object.
The boundary both separates and unites, for this reason we may say that the notion of boundary is an ambivalent one. It's always the boundary of something and so belongs to both frontier cultures, to both contiguous semiospheres. The boundary is the domain of bilingualism.
In reality no semiosphere is immersed in an amorphous and wild space, but is in contact with other semiospheres that have their own organization. So there is a constant exchange, a search for a common language. Even in order to wage war there has to be a common language.
Then the boundary is also a mechanism for translating texts of an alien semiotics into "our" language, it works like a filtering membrane that so transforms foreign texts that they become part of the semiosphere's internal semiotics while still retaining their own characteristics.
Anyway the notion of boundary that separate the internal space of the semiosphere from the external is just a primary distinction. In fact, the entire space of the semiosphere is transected by boundaries of different levels, boundaries of different languages and even texts. A multi-level system is then created by these sectional boundaries that run through the semiosphere.
Asymmetry and dialogue mechanisms
The dialogue mechanism presupposes asymmetry. There is asymmetry in the difference between the languages that the participants in the dialogue use, and there is asymmetry also in the alternating directions in the message flow. In fact the participants in a dialogue alternately change from a position of transmission to a position of reception. The dialogue process consists then of discrete sections with intervals between them.
This schema can also be used in order to understand some aspects of the history of culture. In fact if we isolate one series from the history of world culture, such as the history of English literature or the history the history of the Russian novel, we will get a continuous line stretched out chronologically in which periods of intensity alternate with relative calms. We can look at this immanent development as one partner in a dialogue. The periods of so-called decline can then be regarded as time of pause in a dialogue. In this periods information is intensively received, and they are followed by periods of transmission.
Italy, for example, from the fifth century onwards was shattered by the invasions of the Germans, then the Huns, the Goths and Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Longobards, Franks, Arabs, Normans and Magyars. It became just a geographical concept and apparently losts its cultural life. For a certain period Italy became a "text-receiver". It received the lyric poetry of the Provencal troubadours as well as other cultural currents: epic poetry from France and Hispano-Arab culture from Sicily. If, then, cultural production is the criterion, this period can well be considered a time of decline. But it was also a period of an exceptionally high degree of saturation. Italy, set at the crossroads of many ancient and modern cultures, absorbed all this flood of texts, and all these texts formed themselves into a whole within the Italian cultural space. The result was at the next stage an impressive burst of cultural activity. Over the next centuries, during Renaissance and Baroque, Italy became like a volcano sweeping out a great diversity of texts that flooded all the European culture.
This process of reception falls into the following stages.
In a first stage the texts coming the outside continue to be seen as stranger. They are read in the foreign language and they hold a high position in the scale of values.
In a second stage the imported texts and the home culture restructure each other. Translations, imitations and adaptations multiply. While in the first stage the dominant psychological is to break with the past, to idealize the new, in the second stage there is a predominant tendency to restore links with the past.
In a third stage a tendency develops to find within the imported world-view a higher content that can be separated from the actual national culture of the imported texts. Then the culture that first relayed these texts falls out of favor.
In a fourth stage the receiving culture changes to a state of activity and begins rapidly to produce new texts that are based on cultural codes which were stimulated by invasions from outside, but which now have been wholly transformed through the many asymmetrical transformations into a new and original structural model.
In a fifth and last stage the receiving culture, which now becomes the general centre of the semiosphere, changes into a transmitting culture and supplies the other, peripheral areas of the semiosphere with a flood of texts.
In the actual process of cultural contacts this schema may of course not be fully realized.
In fact reality is more complex and the circulation of texts moves in all directions. At the same time texts are relayed not by one but by many centres of the semiosphere and the actual semiosphere is mobile within its boundaries. One and the same center of the semiosphere can be at one and the same time both active and receiving, one and the same space of the semiosphere can be both in one sense a centre and in another sense a periphery. The semiosphere, the space of culture, is not something that acts according to mapped and pre-calculated plans.
An image of the semiosphere
In conclusion is possible to quote an image of the semiosphere that Lotman gave us in his book The universe of mind. A semiotic theory of culture. He suggests us to imagine a museum hall in which are exposed exhibits from different periods. Inscriptions in known and unknown languages are also present in this hall with the instruction for decoding them. And there are also explanations composed by the museum staff, plans for tour and rules for the behavior of the visitors. And this hall is also crowed with visitors and tour-leaders. If we imagine all this as a single mechanism then we have an image of the semiosphere, a single world in which all elements are in dynamic correlations whose terms change constantly.
Sources
Jakob von Uexküll:
- The theory of meaning, 1982, in Semiotica 42-1, pages 25-82;
- Theoretical Biology, Biocybernetics and Biosemiotics
Resource from the web site of the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Hamburg.
Jury M. Lotman:
- Universe of mind. A semiotic theory of culture, 1990, part two: The Semiosphere, pages 123-204;
Resource from Logos Group web site.