uexküll theory of signs

Jakob von UexkuÈ ll's theory of signand meaning from a philosophical,

semiotic, and linguistic point of view

TUOMO JAÈ MSAÈ

The following article deals with Jakob von UexkuÈ ll's semiotic theory ofaction. For decades, UexkuÈ ll examined the di�erent animal roles in their`Umwelten' Ð as he labelled them Ð and characterized animal behaviorin a functional cycle. The use of the term `cycle' implies that UexkuÈ ll wasone of the ®rst to see life as a continuous process. The ®rst of the ®guresby UexkuÈ ll to illustrate a functional cycle dates from the time beforeWorldWar I, the last of them from the middle ofWorldWar II. The initialpart of the article reviews UexkuÈ ll's semiotic theory of action, calledhere `an ethological theory of meaning', but also pays attention to thedevelopment of his views.The next parts take a closer look at the theoretical background and

links of UexkuÈ ll's Umwelt theory. Philosophically, UexkuÈ ll based hisview especially on Kantian epistemology. Because of the centrality of thesemiotic and linguistic stance in the examination of UexkuÈ ll's contribu-tion, a large part of the article is devoted to the most prominent of thosewho combined semiotics and linguistics Ð Peirce, de Saussure, BuÈ hler,etc. Ð and to the possible connections between them and UexkuÈ ll.UexkuÈ ll's doctrine of sign and action will be reviewed also from thestandpoint of perhaps the most important functional theory in linguisticsand philosophy of recent times Ð speech act theory.Finally, the idea of UexkuÈ ll's functional cycle will be tentatively applied

to the mental, especially linguistic functions, and to the chemical andphysical functions in nature.

An ethological theory of meaning

Few scientists from the times between the late-nineteenth century andWorld War II are well-remembered. Jakob von UexkuÈ ll (1864±1944),whose scienti®c career extended from an article published in 1891 tothe last days of his life, is one of the few who has not been forgotten. True,

Semiotica 134±1/4 (2001), 481±551 0037±1998/01/0134±0481# Walter de Gruyter

the vast majority of the scientists of today don't count him as one of thechosen few. This lack of appreciation might be concluded on the basisof the Who's Who books of the history of the sciences. As an illustrationof this, the Random House Webster's Dictionary of Sciences of 1997 doesnot refer to him in its 1,800 biographies of the greatest scientists or amongits hundreds of biographies of the greatest biologists.

But there are people, now more than ever, who consider UexkuÈ ll to beone of the greatest in certain ®elds of inquiry. That's why he can be indis-putably held as one of the chosen few. UexkuÈ ll is mostly appreciatedtoday for his semiotic theory of Umwelt, which he developed throughouthis career, starting with a book Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (in freetranslation: The Outer and Inner Umwelten of Animals) in 1909 and endingwith the posthumous dialogue Das allmaÈchtige Leben (The Almighty Life)in 1950. His theory of Umwelt was characterized above as `semiotic'.This is because he understood that the environment where an organismlives consists only secondarily of outer objects and primarily of their innercounterparts, i.e., of signs and meanings attached to the outer objects.

Above all, credit has to be given to Thomas A. Sebeok for the revivalof UexkuÈ ll's work as a semiotician. In August 1977, he gave a paperat the congress of the IASS in Vienna entitled `Jakob von UexkuÈ ll,a neglected personality in semiotic inquiry' (T. von UexkuÈ ll 1980: 291).More important for UexkuÈ ll's present fame as a great pioneer of bio-logical semiotics was Sebeok's book in 1979, The Sign and Its Masters.Chapter 10 (`Neglected ®gures in the history of semiotic inquiry') wasdevoted to the biologist Jakob von UexkuÈ ll and the linguist GyulaLaziczius, with the former receiving most attention (Sebeok 1979:187±207). Sebeok had studied animal communication since the early1960s and paid attention to UexkuÈ ll as well. In 1972, Sebeok publishedPerspectives in Zoosemiotics, a signi®cant work that pioneered a newbranch of semiotics.

Sebeok has written about the semiosis of plants, as well. The semioticstudy of plants was labelled `phytosemiotics' (cf. Krampen 1986; Deely1986). The whole of phyto- and zoosemiotics was named `biosemiotics'.The term is, of course, an abbreviation of the term `biological semiotics'.At present, biosemiotics even extends to physical and chemical approachesto signs. Apparently a new Ð more exhaustive Ð term is needed, such asthe `semiotics of nature'.

UexkuÈ ll gained wide recognition in the U.S. in the mid-1920s. AnEnglish translation of his Theoretische Biologie came out. The translationwas based on the ®rst version of the book published in 1920. A new,revised, and complete German edition was published by UexkuÈ ll in 1928.In North America, UexkuÈ ll was long renowned as a theoretical biologist,

482 T. JaÈmsaÈ

especially as an investigator of animal behavior. The foundation forhis reputation as an animal psychologist in the New World was laid in1957 when his and the artist Georg Kriszat's joint picture book of 1934,StreifzuÈge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen, was translatedinto English in an anthology of articles about instinctive behavior.In 1940, four years before his death, UexkuÈ ll published his etho-

logical theory of meaning in a 62-page booklet, entitled Bedeutungslehre(Theory of Meaning). An English translation of this was published inSemiotica more than four decades later, in 1982. The semiotic Umwelttheory in Bedeutungslehre is largely based on UexkuÈ ll's view in the secondedition of Theoretische Biologie of 1928.In his Handbook of Semiotics, NoÈ th (1990: 36±37, 157±158, 167)

introduces UexkuÈ ll as a pioneer of `zoosemiotics'. The passage headlined,ÙexkuÈ ll's functional circle' (NoÈ th 1990: 157±158), shows a diagram ofthe model of UexkuÈ ll's theory (Figure 1) and is, as a matter of fact, moresophisticated than that portrayed by UexkuÈ ll himself in Bedeutungslehre(Figure 2). The diagram in NoÈ th came from Sebeok (1979: 10, who hadadapted it from Eibl-Eibesfeldt [1970: 6]). The introduction of thefunctional cycle (Funktionskreis) by UexkuÈ ll himself is very simple andtallies as such with the simplicity peculiar to his presentation throughout.UexkuÈ ll's theory of meaning is meant to apply to the interaction

of an organism with its environment (Umwelt). The expression Umweltis today a common ethological term. UexkuÈ ll coined it in 1909 asan expression for an interplay between an organism and its environmentin a broad sense. UexkuÈ ll is mentioned in two authoritative sources asthe father of the term and its content, in the dictionaryDuden (1989: 1594)and in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The latter, the largest encyclopediain the world, recognizes him only as a pioneer of animal psychology buthas no reference to his biological theory of meaning or his contributionto semiotics. While mentioning UexkuÈ ll as the ®rst to de®ne the currentmeaning of Ùmwelt', Duden states that the German word is derived fromthe Danish word, omverden (cf. also Ho�meyer 1996 [1993]: 54).Because UexkuÈ lls theory of meaning is not very well-known, the

introduction (and the interpretation) of it here will possibly be morecomprehensive than might be expected. UexkuÈ ll uses the old philoso-phical juxtaposition of subject and object as the point of departure forhis theory of meaning. His notion of Umwelt is equivalent to the contentof the term òbject' in a philosophical sense. The term Ùmwelt' does notappear in the ®gures of this paper but the notion of òbject' does. Functionsare role players between subject and object. As a matter of fact, everythingcan occur as an object, even the subject itself. Functionally, the objector the Umwelt is always an object or an Umwelt of a certain subject.

Jakob von UexkuÈll's theory of sign and meaning 483

The functional relationship between subject and object holds logically,too. The relation can be expressed in a formula x(R(y))where x representsthe subject, y the object or the Umwelt, and R the relator, i.e., an action(or a function) between the subject and the object or the Umwelt. Thus, thesubject is the basic thing in all action and, at the metalevel, in the logicaldescription of the relation. `Subject' is the highest notion and entailseverything, even itself (cf. the re¯exive elements of language). Logically, itis possible to extend its scope ad in®nitum. This is due to UexkuÈ ll'sepistemological conviction that there is certainty only of the existence ofthe subjects and not of the objects.

The meaning of an object perfectly depends on the nature of subject.For example, there seems to be an object of `forest' only on the conditionthat there are subjects perceiving it and having their peculiar roles in it.UexkuÈ ll summarizes a chapter of the sociologist Werner Sombart's (1938)

Figure 1. An adaptation of UexkuÈll's functional cycle by Thomas A. Sebeok and IrenaÈeus

Eibl-Eibesfeldt

484 T. JaÈmsaÈ

book and shows how the signi®cance of a forest fully depends on itssigni®cance for the di�erent kinds of subjects (UexkuÈ ll 1940: 6). A forestoccurs in many functions. The Master of Forestry, the hunter, thebotanist, the stroller, the admirer of nature, the timber marker, the pickerof berries and, ®nally, the reader of fairy tales with HaÈ nsel and Gretel ina dark and ominous forest Ð all of these characters have a di�erent viewof the Umwelt they are involved in. Today, we have to add to Sombart'slist the conservationist, for example.Sombart's examples of di�erent (`contextual') meanings of a forest

were once in widespread use. Thus, Unto Kupiainen (1964 [1949]: 12±13),a Finnish scholar, refers to di�erent approaches to a tree in his textbookfor high school students. The aesthetic attitude and imagery is Ð asKupiainen points out in Sombart's spirit Ð only one mental functionamong many others.The plurality of the functional meanings in Sombart's thinking is for

UexkuÈ ll merely a starting point. Firstly, the role playing deals in Sombartwith humans alone, and secondly Ð but of pivotal importance Ð it haslittle to do with the study of meaning processes.One of UexkuÈ ll's most original ideas concerns the character of an

interaction between the participants of the play in the Umwelten and thegeneral feature of the meaning processes, that of the reciprocity.To illustrate his doctrine, UexkuÈ ll quotes a poem by Goethe (UexkuÈ ll1940: 47; 1950: 123±124), `WaÈ r' nicht die Blume bienenhaft/Und waÈ renicht die Biene blumenhaft,/Der Einklang koÈ nnte nie gelingen' (in freeprose translation, `Were the ¯ower not bee-like and the bee not ¯ower-like, there would never be harmony'). In addition to this, he quotesa further couplet of the same poem, `WaÈ r' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft,/Die Sonne koÈ nnt' es nie erblicken' (`Were our eyes not like the sun, theycould never see it'). And the quote continues, `WaÈ r' nicht die Sonneaugenhaft,/An keinem Himmel koÈ nnte sie erstrahlen' (`Were the sun notlike our eye, it could not shine in any sky'). The quote refers to the verypoint in UexkuÈ ll's theory of meaning. The topic will be discussed insome more detail below. Here it is su�cient to emphasize that, accordingto UexkuÈ ll, di�erent objects always represent di�erent meaning worldsof di�erent species. Every species has an Umwelt of its own.UexkuÈ ll exempli®es his view by looking at a ¯ower stalk in a meadow

from the perspectives of di�erent species. A girl who wishes to pick ¯owersthinks of them as decorations. Stalks are merely necessary complementsof the colorful ¯orets, perhaps signi®cant only from the viewpoint ofthe easiness of the act of picking. An ant sees the surface of the stalk asan ideal way to get up to the leaves of the ¯oret to the area of its nutri-ment. The larva of the spittlebug bores its way into the stalk to obtain


the material for building its `frothy home'. Finally, a cow evaluates thetaste and digestibility of blades before chewing them up.

The following will demonstrate how acts are to be placed and inter-preted in the ®gures introducing the structure ofUexkuÈ ll's way of thinking.In UexkuÈ ll's model, the semiosis (or the `signi®cation') takes place incycles (Figures 1±3).1 The cyclic character of the semiosis distinguishesUexkuÈ ll's semiotic model Ð as Thure von UexkuÈ ll (1987: 173) under-lines Ð from the other most signi®cant semiotic theories: from Peirce'striadic and de Saussure's dyadic views of sign. As a matter of fact,Peirce and de Saussure have mainly characterized the sign and the signi®-cation from a structural standpoint while UexkuÈ ll has largely neglectedthe structural perspective and approached the semiosis from a functional

Figure 2. The functional cycle described by Jakob von UexkuÈll himself in hisBedeutungslehre,

1940: 8

Figure 3. The functional cycle such as represented in the ®rst edition of Theoretische Biologie

(UexkuÈll 1920: 117)

486 T. JaÈmsaÈ

point of view. In UexkuÈ ll's model, all action starts in the recognitionof a Merkmal-TraÈger (a perceptual cue carrying a certain meaningand forming together with it a perceptual sign) and ends with the pro-duction of a Wirkmal-TraÈger (the carrier of a new meaning as a reactionto the meaning of the perceptual sign). The girl, picking ¯owers, recog-nizes the color as a critical optic mark; the ant, getting up and touchingthe surface, recognizes the surface of the stalk as a critical hapticmark; the larva of the spittlebug recognizes the most suitable point forboring through the surface into sap ducts as a critical olfactory mark;and ®nally, the cow recognizes the chemical quality of the sap in the bladesas a critical gustatory mark. The term `mark' is here an equivalent ofthe German expressions Merkmal-TraÈger or Merkmal. Instead of `mark',the terms `token' or `sign' might be used as well.TheMerkmal-TraÈger orMerkmale (or in English, `marks/tokens/signs')

will be processed Ð as Figure 1 shows Ð in `Merk-Organe', i.e., in organswhich process the ¯owof signs.UexkuÈ ll emphasizes the physical features inhis diagram. The termMerk-Organ immediately refers to the physiologicalinstrument of recognizing a sign. Semiotically, the point is, of course, in theprocess of the signi®cation or the semiosis which transforms the sensationof a sign into an experience of meaning.Thure von UexkuÈ ll (1987: 168) points out that his father's terms

Merkmal and Wirkmal actually refer not to signs but cues. The Merkmalis a perceptual cue while the Wirkmal is an operational cue. To showthe di�erence, he quotes certain passages from UexkuÈ ll (1970 [1934]: 11,1973 [1928]: 102). A cue or a characteristic feature is explained to bea sign simultaneously. For example, a perceptual cue of the blue ofthe sky might be interpreted as a Wirkmal-TraÈger, as an operational cuetransposed to the outside. The blue of the sky is, thus, primarily a pro-jection from a subject's inside, not necessarily an objective quality. Thisagrees with the theoretical background of UexkuÈ ll's functional cycle inKant's philosophy (cf. below).The use of the word Mal instead of the word Zeichen seems to imply

that UexkuÈ ll really made a distinction between the two. However, theanalysis in this article is based mainly on Bedeutungslehre. The book doesnot seem to clearly di�erentiate between the terms Mal and Zeichen.Although the distinction observed by Thure von UexkuÈ ll is justi®ed anddeepens the understanding of UexkuÈ ll's semiotic model, the contentualdi�erence between `cues' and `signs' is here largely ignored.Now we will examine UexkuÈ ll's diagram in more detail. The

Bedeutungs-TraÈger (carriers of meaning) belong to the Umwelt (object).The Bedeutungs-EmpfaÈnger (receivers of meaning, or subjects) use theirMerk-Organe (perceptual organs) for recognizing the most signi®cant


features of the Merkmal-TraÈger. The reception of meaning will be trans-mitted to the Wirk-Organe (e�ectors) that produce a Wirkmal-TraÈger,a sign which is a responsive action to the received meaning. TheWirkmal-TraÈger could be translated as è�ectory sign(s)' while the respective signsof reception might be translated as `receptory signs'. Correspondingly, wecould speak, of course, of è�ectory' and `receptory meanings'.

The e�ectory sign is often Ð UexkuÈ ll points out Ð rewarding fromthe perspective of the subject and as such closes the circle. The girl'sWirkmal-TraÈger is produced by means of picking the ¯ower, the ant'sWirkmal-TraÈger by means of getting up to the area of nutriment, thespittlebug larva'sWirkmal-TraÈger by means of boring through the surfaceof the stalk and of tapping the sap, and the cow's Wirkmal-TraÈger bymeans of pulling the blades up and swallowing them.

In semiotic terms (Figure 4), the functional cycle consists of fourelements, those of a receptory sign; a corresponding meaning experience;a pragmatic meaning experience containing directive thoughts or feelingson the basis of the receptory sign and meaning and an e�ectory sign, anaction that realizes the e�ectory meaning. The girl who is going to pick¯owers in a meadow sees a ¯ower (a receptive sign) the color of whichpleases her (a receptory meaning experience). She thinks, `The ¯ower isbeautiful. I wish to keep it!' (the e�ectory meaning), and ®nally picksthe ¯ower (the e�ectory sign).

According to UexkuÈ ll, the Umwelt divides into outer and inner zones.The central perceptual organs, like eyes or ears, receive aMerkmal-TraÈgerfrom the outer zone, i.e., from outside the mind. In the inner zone, thesensation of the carrier of meaning will be processed into an organizedperceptionwith the characteristics ofmeaning. Instead of the termUmwelt,UexkuÈ ll sometimes uses the word Eigenwelt (eigen òwn', Welt `world'),stressing the point of view that the Umwelt is as if it is òwned' by thesubject.2 To own entails here the di�erences depending on the di�erencesof the subjects. Humans see a ¯ower in a meadow in a di�erent waycompared to that of a bee. The human's world is other than the world ofthe bee. All species are ontologically tied to their particular Umweltenand cannot throw themselves outside the boundaries of them.

Kalevi Kull and Mihhail Lotman (1995: 2468±2469) combine the termÙmwelt' with Yuri Lotman's term `semiosphere'. The article shows thatthe form of the Estonian equivalent of the term Umwelt, omailm, i.e., `theworld of one's own' (a strict equivalent of UexkuÈ ll's term Eigenwelt)emphasizes the subjectivity of the Umwelt.

From a semiotic point of view, the explication of the meaning experi-ence in the ®gure of the functional cycle designed by UexkuÈ ll himselfin Bedeutungslehre (Figure 1) is a bit inadequate. The text of the book is

488 T. JaÈmsaÈ

more relevant. The terms used by UexkuÈ ll indisputably show that hewas fully aware of the two chief terms of language-modeled semiotics,`meaning' and `sign'. UexkuÈ ll emphasizes the importance of meaningprocesses. They are, he thinks, the key to the understanding of allbiological activities. In accordance with that, he also seems to stressthat the meaning and the sign are inherent parts of each other. Heis Ð besides Peirce Ð the ®rst to characterize sense perceptions andmotions as signs. In Bedeutungslehre, he thus uses the terms Sehzeichen(visual signs), HoÈrzeichen (auditive signs), Riechzeichen (olfactory signs),Geschmackzeichen (gustatory signs), and Tastzeichen (tactile or hapticsigns) (UexkuÈ ll 1940: 26). The major term including the contents ofthe di�erent perceptual signs is in UexkuÈ ll's term Merkzeichen. He alsouses the term Wirkzeichen to refer to motor reactions to perceptualsigns. They might be called `motor' or `motive signs' or `signs of motion'.The term `e�ectory signs' is recommended above. Unlike the perceptualsigns, UexkuÈ ll does not classify the e�ectory signs.

Figure 4. The author's attempt to introduce UexkuÈll's functional cycle in semiotically more

explicit terms


In Figure 1, the terms Merkmal-TraÈger und Wirkmal-TraÈger haveroughly the same content as the term Zeichen (sign). The term TraÈger(`carrier') emphasizes, however, the sign as a form or a trigger that willproduce a certain content. Instead of them, UexkuÈ ll often uses the shortervariantsMerkmal andWirkmal (cf. above) in the text. The wordMal refersto an act of marking or to a result of it. The compounds Merkmal andWirkmal are not used in ordinary German. Both Merk- and Wirk- arestems, derived from the verbs merken `to notice' and wirken `to have ane�ect on something'. The meaning of the word Merkmal can be para-phrased as à sign (or cue) that is noticed, or paid attention to' or à sign(or cue) of perception' and the compound Wirkmal as à sign (or cue)produced as an e�ect of perception' or à motor sign (or cue)' or à sign(or cue) of motion', respectively.

Judging from the meanings of the Finnish and Estonian equivalentsof it, the origin of the stem merk- is probably to be connected witha meaning of `sign'. The Finnish merkki and the Estonian maÈrk areloanwords. They are derived from Old Swedish (SSA 1995) or Germanic.Both merkki and maÈrk have the meaning of `sign', and the word merkkiis the stem of the verb merkitaÈ `to mean'.

The diagram of the functional cycle by UexkuÈ ll concerns only animals.Plants and animals do not have, of course, identical organs for thereception and ful®llment of meanings. UexkuÈ ll states,

Das Haus der P¯anzen entbehrt des Nervensystems, ihm fehlen die Merk- undWirkorgane. Infolgedessen gibt es fuÈ r die P¯anze keine BedeutungstraÈ ger, keine

Funktionskreise, keine Wirkmale und keine Merkmale.3 (1940: 9)

UexkuÈ ll agrees that plants have cells doing the same jobs as the organsof animals do. We cannot help thinking, though, that UexkuÈ ll's diagramis, because it is meant to concern only animals, too narrow. The structureof plants di�ers from that of animals. Plants do not move in the samesense as animals do and, therefore, do not need any motor organs.But they, too, receive Merkmal-TraÈger and react to them by producingWirkmal-TraÈger. As is well-known, the presence of light is vital forplants. Almost all schoolchildren know that green plants usually receivelight from the sun all day and turn to face it as it travels across the sky.Thus, in plants, the physical sign of light (Merkmal) produces the motorsign of turning to the source of light (Wirkmal). As a reaction to the signof light, the most important productive Wirkmal-TraÈger is, of course,the chain of biochemical processes called `photosynthesis'.

The extension of the applications of the diagram to plants explicatesonly what is inherently built in UexkuÈ ll's ®gure, nothing else. The

490 T. JaÈmsaÈ

extension is necessary also from the viewpoint of the generalization of thetheory that can be aimed at all kinds of semantic and semiotic processes.In the dialectics of Merkmal and Wirkmal, of the processes of

sign and meaning, UexkuÈ ll (1940: 13±19) emphasizes the importanceof what he calls Bedeutungsverwertung (utilization of meaning). TheBedeutungsverwertung is connected with the Bauplan (plan of construc-tion). This plan determines which of the huge number of potentialcarriers of meanings are really utilized and which are not. Only thosemeaning factors are used that are `mindful' from the viewpoint ofthe plan of construction in each animal's or plant's life. The utilizationof meanings that agree with the plan contribute to the realization ofthe organism's objects in life.UexkuÈ ll compares the whole of the plans of construction of life with

music and the theory of composition. Every sensation received rep-resents Ð as UexkuÈ ll calls it Ð an Ich-Ton (`I tone', or `ego quality') ofthe object in question. The organism responds to an I tone of an objectwith a certain I tone of its own or with a variety of tones called `melody'.Organisms evolve from an embryo that represents a primary melody.This primary melody potentially involves what the embryo will actuallybecome. The ®nal form of the initial melody of a human embryo will grad-ually evolve into an adult human being. Every species has a character-istic melody distinguishing it from all other species. This does not implythat the characteristic melody could not be changed. On the contrary,the total range of melodies is like a living organism where all melodiesin¯uence each other and can be eventually transposed and transformed.The use of the term Ich-Ton implies that UexkuÈ ll holds only subjects,

not objects, to be real. UexkuÈ ll deduces the abundance of melodies innature from what he calls Kompositionslehre (theory of composition). Thetheory includes the principles by which all subjects (and objects) in natureare built to act in a way particular only to the possibility of tones andmelodies that distinguish a certain being or thing from the others. The basicrules of the theory of composition are hidden. UexkuÈ ll clearly gives usto understand that behind all natural phenomena is a great spirit. Indeed,he once uses the word Gott-Natur Ð as a matter of fact, an allusion toGoethe again Ð to describe the inner aspect of nature.The ontology of the meaning in nature is perhaps the main point

in UexkuÈ ll's later works. He deals with it in the book Der unsterblicheGeist in der Natur (1938) and in its sister work, the posthumous DasallmaÈchtige Leben (1950). The latter was completed by his wife, Gudrun,and son, Thure. Thure von UexkuÈ ll has done a signi®cant job as aninterpreter of his father's work. He has also edited a collection ofwritings by UexkuÈ ll entitled Kompositionslehre der Natur (The Theory


of Composition in Nature) (1980). For its part, the title of the bookshows how important the musical metaphor is considered in UexkuÈ ll'sthought.

Contrapuntal rules form the core of the theory of composition.Counterpoint (in German, Kontrapunkt) determines how the di�erentsounds can be combined. The words Kontrapunkt and counterpoint derivefrom the Latin expression punctus contra punctum `point against point',i.e., `note by note'. In old notation, notes were expressed in points. Theterms Kontrapunkt and Punkt, the latter being the logically necessarycounterpart of the ®rst, are key terms in UexkuÈ ll's description of theinterplay between an organism and its Umwelt.

UexkuÈ ll gives many examples of animals and plants in interactionwith their environments. The most detailed one is perhaps that concerninga tick. The example has often been used in animal psychology.

The point in UexkuÈ ll's well-known example is a tick, the counterpointis a mammal. A tick needs a mammal's blood to be able to go on with lifeand reproduction. In the Umwelt of the tick, `the recognition of a prey andthe attack on it and the exploitation of its blood' is termed `the joint ruleof meaning' by UexkuÈ ll. The points and counterpoints of the tick exampleare four:

1. The smell organ is adjusted to only one smell, that of butter acid(point) Ð The only smell common to all mammals is the one of butteracid in their sweat (counterpoint).

2. A palpation organ is available to secure for the tick the way out ofthe hair of its prey (point) Ð All mammals are hairy (counterpoint).

3. A temperature organ indicates warmth (point) Ð All mammals havea warm skin (counterpoint).

4. The tick has a sting which is ®t to bore through the skins of all kindsof mammals and simultaneously serves as a hydraulic pump at once(point) Ð `All mammals have a soft, sanguine skin (counterpoint)'.

As mentioned, the introduction above is mainly based on UexkuÈ ll'sbook Bedeutungslehre. In Das allmaÈchtige Leben, he continues theanalysis and Ð what is perhaps most important Ð applies the idea ofthe theory to language, too. Chapter 4 of the book, entitled `Am Flussufer'(By the river), is completely devoted to the topic. After having dealt withhearing a sequence of sounds of a foreign language, he continues asfollows,

GehoÈ rt dieLautfolge einer unsbekanntenSprache an, so erhaÈ lt sich eineBedeutung.Das ist der zentrale Akt, der jeder SprachverstaÈ ndigung zugrunde liegt. Auf das

seine Bedeutung tragende Wort erfolgt die Antwort, die aus einem sinngemaÈ ssenWort besteht, das eine Bewegungsfolge in unserem Sprachwerk hervorruft und

492 T. JaÈmsaÈ

Wirkklavier veranlasst, bestimmte Luftwellen hinauszusenden. Auch in diesemFalle spielen die parabiologischen Phasen die Hauptrolle. Auf die parabiologischeMerkphase folgt durch SinnverknuÈ pfung die parabiologische Wirkphase. Alle

Handlungen beduÈ rfen somit eines Merk- und eines Wirkorganes und werdenerst durch das Eingreifen des zentralen Bedeutungsaktes ermoÈ glicht.4 (UexkuÈ ll1950: 46±47)

In Das allmaÈchtige Leben, UexkuÈ ll calls the things such as they arepresumed to really be (die Dinge an sich in Kant) `biological', and thethings such as they appear for us in the Umwelten (die Dinge fuÈr uns inKant) `parabiological' (UexkuÈ ll 1950: 35). He is fully aware of the centralposition of the act of signi®cation. By `signi®cation' or `semiosis' Ð thespeci®cation of the terms used above is perhaps needed Ð is meantthe process in which either a sign is interpreted as a meaning or a meaningis interpreted as a sign, or both.UexkuÈ ll also designates the process of signi®cation in a series of ®gures

(Figure 5). The musical metaphor of his theory of composition inBedeutungslehre is applied in the ®gure to all elements of signi®cation.He compares the receptors and e�ectors with a piano. An ear is describedas the piano of reception, a joint is described as that of e�ect. A sequenceof sounds (Lautfolge), e.g., those that constitute the word home, is likea question that an addresser asks. The question carries a meaning(bedeutungstragende Frage). This phase of the functional cycle of lan-guage is called by UexkuÈ ll the phase of the `central formation of mean-ing' (zentrale Bedeutungs-Bildung). An arrow combines it with the otherphase of the cycle, that of the `central utilization of meaning' (zentraleBedeutungs-Verwertung). The second phase is a sequence of motions(Bewegungsfolge). It is speci®ed by UexkuÈ ll as the `reply carrying meaning'(bedeutungstragende Antwort). It is, for example, the addressee's reactionto the meaning of the utterance of the word home, an utterance of anotherword, in the simplest case. It presupposes that the addressee performsa sequence of movements of articulation. The question and the answerhave a shared sense (gemeinsamer Sinn). The sense refers to something, inthis case to the object called home.Figure 5 de®nes the signi®cation or the semiosis in a new way compared

to the idea of sign and meaning in Bedeutungslehre. The discussion ofthe two is largely implicit because of the topic. UexkuÈ ll does not expresslyaim at creating an articulated theory of sign and meaning but at a descrip-tion of the functions of the organisms in terms of signs and meaninginstead. Anyway, the functional cycle in Bedeutungslehre implies thedivision of communicative items into sign and meaning. The notion of`sense' was dealt with by John Stuart Mill in his System of Logic in 1843(Skorupski 1995) and, following in his footsteps about half a century later,


by Gottlob Frege. Then the notion was questioned, and even totallydenied, for example, by Bertrand Russell (cf. Ludlow 1997: 557±655).Anyway, Mill's and Frege's contribution presupposes, in turn, a tripledivision of the elements concerned into signs, meanings, and senses. Asa matter of fact, the view of the three elements of semiosis in Figure 5is close to the Peircean triadic relations of signs. Simultaneously, wehave to remember that although de Saussure mostly speaks of two-sidedsigns he now and then seems to take even the senses (or objects or referents)into consideration. In principle, uncertainty of the very nature of signsprevails. The confusion is perhaps mostly due to the di�erences betweenthe terms used and, in particular, to the meanings assigned to them.

Figure 5. UexkuÈll's representation of language inDas allmaÈ chtige Leben (UexkuÈll 1950: 47)

494 T. JaÈmsaÈ

Philosophical backgrounds

As stated by Kalevi Kull and Mihhail Lotman (1995: 2472), the basicviews of the world in UexkuÈ ll date back to romanticism. The Romanticmovement was close to idealism in philosophy. UexkuÈ ll's philosophicalstandpoint can be seen right at the beginning of Bedeutungslehre.The author uses a passage from the dialogue Sophistes by Plato as themotto of the book. In it, Plato carries on the controversy againstmaterialists who believe in Ð as he refers to it Ð only what can be seen ortaken hold of:

The materialists pull everything down from the sky and out of the invisibleworld onto the earth as if they wanted to clench rocks and oak trees in their ®sts.

They grasp them, and stubbornly maintain that the only objects that exist arethose that are tangible and comprehensible. They believe that the physical existenceof an object is existence itself, and look down smugly on other people Ð those who

acknowledge another area of existence separate from the physical. But theyare totally unwilling to listen to another point of view. (UexkuÈ ll 1940: 1)

The aim of the motto is to support UexkuÈ ll's polemic against the bio-logical mainstream of the time and to demonstrate his idealistic worldview. Right at the beginning of his Introduction to Bedeutungslehre,UexkuÈ ll (1940: 1) mentions how he has been criticized by Max Hartmannfor holding out groundless hopes (eitele Ho�nungen) to the general public.What are those forlorn hopes? The author does not deal with them inmore detail. He says, however, that the use of the word PlanmaÈssigkeit(`purposiveness', or in the strict sense of the word: `that everything shalltake place according to a plan') has been the reason for the criticism.Apparently, the critics have held the presence of a plan in natural pro-cesses as unveri®able. They might have reckoned with the content ofthe term in a metaphysical sense without paying attention to the notionof `Bauplan'. In his analysis of the Bauplan (plan of construction), Sebeokhas stressed the importance of an organism's body as an Umwelt.It `converts the external world of experience into an internal one ofrepresentation in terms of the Bauplan with which a speci®c species isendowed' (Danesi 1994: xvi).But the notion of PlanmaÈssigkeit has in UexkuÈ ll's thought a wider sense

as well. The controversy seems to have concerned the gap between theexpectations based on science and belief. From the viewpoint of empir-ical science, the two were considered as opposites. In a sense, UexkuÈ llhad returned to a lost age of natural theology, tying the notion of Godtogether with that of nature. Since the mid-nineteenth century, thepositivism de®ned by Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Herbert


Spencer, etc. has dominated also the scienti®c paradigm until veryrecently. According to this, facts, rationality, and thought based on whatcould be empirically veri®ed are the main principles of the sciences.Metaphysics has been considered to be mere speculation and excluded.Compared to his critics' positivism, UexkuÈ ll was a dissident (cf. Kull andLotman 1995: 2471±2472).

Sciences have dogmas that resemble churchly truths. The status of adissident is never easy. This is re¯ected not only in the Introduction toBedeutungslehre but in the dedication of the book, too: Meinen wissen-schaftlichenGegnernzur freundlichenBeachtungempfohlen (`Recommendedfor my scienti®c opponents' friendly attention'). The irony of the wordsreveals much, the inner meaning of a whole career. UexkuÈ ll was far aheadof his time.

The point in UexkuÈ ll's criticism against most of his colleagues Ð andagainst Max Hartmann in the Introduction of Bedeutungslehre Ð wasthe claim that they had totally neglected the role of meaning in theirresearch and approved of a mere registration of successive or simul-taneous events in natural processes as the object of science. UexkuÈ ll calledit `mechanization of science'. He combined the word bedeutungsblind(`blind for meaning') with Hartmann and the `dogmatic' view of science.The notions of `sense' and `meaning' were the most important ones inUexkuÈ ll's scienti®c thought. As mentioned earlier, UexkuÈ ll seems to havebeen aware, to a considerable degree, of the basic principle of language-modeled semiotics, the division of signs into form and content. This wasnot due to his familiarity with semantics or semiotics but to his convic-tion that meanings are the building material of reality and the guidingelements of natural processes. This insight might have been con®rmedby Ernst Cassirer's work in the early 1920s. In The Philosophy of SymbolicForms by Cassirer (1955 [1923]: 85±114), especially chapters 2, 3, and 4(Ùniversal function of the sign: The problem of meaning', `The problemof representation and the structure of consciousness', and Ìdeationalcontent of a sign: Transcending the copy theory of knowledge') date backto his profound philosophy of language from that or even a former time.Sign and meaning became key concepts to UexkuÈ ll. Bedeutungslehre andDas allmaÈchtige Leben are full of indications of it.

Cassirer has dedicated a brief chapter (À clue to the nature of man: Thesymbol') in An Essay on Man (Cassirer 1972 [1944]: 23±26) to UexkuÈ ll'sbasic biological views. His texts seem to be chie¯y based on the ®rst edi-tion of UexkuÈ ll's Theoretische Biologie from 1920. He describes UexkuÈ ll asa critic of contemporary biology and as a researcher for whom empiricalinvestigations have the principal role and who more or less overlooksmetaphysical and epistemological considerations. `Wishing to avoid all

496 T. JaÈmsaÈ

psychological interpretations, he follows an entirely objective or behav-ioristic method' (Cassirer 1972 [1944]: 23). This does not do UexkuÈ ll fulljustice, especially if his last works are considered.True, Bedeutungslehre does not explain its philosophical and other

foundations.Nevertheless, the whole is philosophically tuned i.e., it aims ata synthesis. UexkuÈ ll's biology-based and, in many respect, very originalphilosophy takes shape, as stated, especially in his last works. All of themexcept the posthumous work appeared before Cassirer's Essay, butCassirer lived in America then, and apparently was not familiar with them.Thus, it is understandable that Cassirer sees him more as a practicalresearcher.Cassirer's characterization of UexkuÈ ll as a vitalist (Cassirer 1972 [1944]:

23) is interesting. It ties him with a controversy in theoretical biologyand philosophy from the late-nineteenth century. As Thure von UexkuÈ llhas shown (1987), his father's vitalism di�ered from what is usuallylabelled as such. Vitalism is an idealistic theory juxtaposing matter andlife and often rebelling also against Kant's epistemology, which wasconsidered to be too narrow (cf. Mocek 1997 [1991]: 934±936; Inwood1995: 901±902). Its point of departure is a doctrine from Aristotle, accor-ding to which life can never be explained in materialistic terms only. Lifefollows a plan of construction while matter does not. Thus, UexkuÈ ll states:

Our mind [GemuÈt] possesses an inner plan that is revealed only when it is in

action. _ Form [Gestalt] is never anything else than the product of a plan withinindi�erent matter Ð matter which could have taken shape in some other form.(1973 [1928]: 150)

Vitalism was against positivism and might be interpreted to have been,ultimately, against Kant, too, because of his epistemological criticismof metaphysics. But above all, it was aimed against Darwinism. TheDarwininian doctrine was seen as a mechanistic explanation of nature.The word PlanmaÈssigkeit as an anti-Darwinian term was to Hartmannand his colleagues a sign of vitalism and as such a red ¯ag.The use of the word Gott-Natur in Bedeutungslehre and in Das

allmaÈchtige Leben refers Ð as mentioned Ð to Goethe. UexkuÈ ll mighthave agreed with Goethe who at the age of twenty had written in his diary,`We know God only through Nature. Anything that exists necessarilybelongs to God's essence because God is the only one that exists'. Theword (Gott-Natur) occurs in the couplet, `Was kann der Mensch imLeben mehr gewinnen/Als dass sich Gott-Natur ihm o�enbare?' (`Whatmore could the man win in his life that the Divine Nature be revealedto him?' Quoted in UexkuÈ ll 1950: 141). Goethe's notion of `God'was in¯uenced by Baruch Spinoza's `pantheistic identi®cation of nature


and God and maintained that everything in nature is animate and expres-sive of God's presence' (ZoÈ ller 1996 [1995]: 301). Goethe supported theidealistic pantheism of a contemporary German philosopher, FriedrichWilhelm Schelling, too. Schelling had dubbed his system ÀbsoluteIdealism' or `the System of Identity'. It encompassed two subdivisions,transcendental idealism and the philosophy of nature. As far as I know,UexkuÈ ll never mentions Schelling by name in his books. In point offact, Schelling's thought seems to be closest of all to his. Goethe, Spinoza,Schelling, and Plato at the head of them, seem to have had the mostimportant metaphysical in¯uence on UexkuÈ ll.

Even in Das allmaÈchtige Leben, UexkuÈ ll is primarily not a semioticianbut an ethologist. He is interested in semiotic systems because they con-tribute to a deeper understanding of animal behavior. In Bedeutungslehre,he speaks of the Goethean Urbilder (proto-images) as the initial modelsfrom which the present abundant diversity of life has welled forth by wayof innumerable metamorphoses. In connection with his description ofhuman language, he returns to the idea of the Urbild. He refers toWolfgang KoÈ hler, a gestalt psychologist, and to the tests performed byhim among captive apes (Kohler 1959 [1925]; Cheney and Seyfarth1990: 276). For apes, climbing up is associated with the trees and not withladders, as for humans. And UexkuÈ ll states, using the typical terms ofDasallmaÈchtige Leben (UexkuÈ ll 1950: 48), Ìm Lebensdrama eines A�en gibt eseben keine vitale Szene À�e und Leiter', sondern nur die Szene À�e undBaum' (Ìn the ape's play of life, there is just no vital scene of `àn ape andand a ladder'' but only one of `àn ape and a tree'' '). UexkuÈ ll oftencompares life with a play. The term `vitale Szene' was borrowed from arecent ethological study by Bilz (UexkuÈ ll 1950: 21). The most importantpoint in the passage is UexkuÈ ll's statement that di�erent species each haveonly such Urbilder of meaning that are included in the Umwelten they livein.

The meaning of the motto in Bedeutungslehre is, of course, importantnot only because of its polemic. The factual content of it is signi®cant aswell. The motto expresses his commitment to idealism. Plato was thegreatest teacher of German Romanticism and Idealism. His view that pro-cesses of nature are guided by spiritual models or patterns called by himìdeas' or `forms' was acknowledged in German Romanticism. Plato'sGreek term for an idea, eidos, derives from the verb idein `to see' andoriginally referred to `the look of a thing'. Plato uses the word eidosmetaphorically. The metaphor stresses the importance of sight among thesenses. Therefore, the Platonic idea is like a hidden proto-image controllingwhat the individual things as representations of ideas will look like andhow they are to be seen.

498 T. JaÈmsaÈ

As mentioned above, UexkuÈ ll does not explicitly deal with hisphilosophical models or forms in Bedeutungslehre. In this respect, DasallmaÈchtige Leben is more open and has much to tell about Plato inparticular. In his posthumous work, UexkuÈ ll equates an Umwelt witha dim cave to the walls of which the inhabitants are chained. Light shinesfaintly from afar. But the inhabitants are fettered by the space of thecave and cannot believe in anything else but in the truth of the cave. Thisis the famous cave allegory by Plato.In a sense, by referring to the Goethean term Urbild (proto-image),

UexkuÈ ll comes close to Plato's doctrine of ideas in Bedeutungslehre. TheUrbild is Ð as mentioned Ð a model or a basic form underlying thediversity of the abundance of di�erent natural phenomena. As an ama-teur botanist, Goethe had also used the term Urp¯anze (proto-plant) andmeant by that the supposed basic form of all plants. The terms Urbild andUrp¯anze are, of course, not to be regarded as equivalents to the Platonicideas or forms. Goethe criticized Plato in many respects. It is di�cultto think that all species and all phenomena of life would each have devel-oped from a single basic form. Probably, the terms have to be interpretedrelated to Plato's eidos. Goethe might have meant a conceptual patternof the concrete phenomena.Henri Broms, a Finnish semiotician, has entitled his collection of

essays about cultural semiotics in the Goethean spirit, Alkukuvien jaÈljillaÈ(In Search for the Proto-Images). Broms equates the term with thePlatonic eidos and with the term invariance used by two semioticiansof the Moscow-Tartu School, Ivanov and Toporov (Broms 1992[1984]: 203).The well-known aphorism by Goethe, Àlles VergaÈ ngliche ist nur ein

Gleichnis' (Ànything that vanishes is only a simile') implies that all formsand processes of nature represent the fundamental layer of signs withmeanings, that of Urbilder. Both Plato and Goethe seem to suppose thatwhat we see and what will vanish when the time comes is composed ofsigns the spiritual patterns of which lie far beyond our reach. This isimportant from the perspective of UexkuÈ ll's notion of Umwelt, too.The signi®cance of the pattern mentioned is connected with the philo-sophical meanings of the notions of òbject' and `subject'. The Umwelt isthe world of a subject. But do the Platonic forms and the GoetheanUrbilder, or the invariants, belong to it or only underlie it?Plato and Goethe seem to have distinguished Ð implicitly at least Ð

the two levels of signs. Besides, it agrees with a theme of GermanRomanticism, that of pantheism and the pantheistic philosophy espe-cially as proposed by Schelling. UexkuÈ ll was apparently a disciple andkindred spirit of Plato and Goethe. This does not imply that UexkuÈ ll


would have only embraced Plato's and Goethe's ideas. No, UexkuÈ ll'ssemiotic ethological model is the ®rst of its kind and deeply original.

The philosopher who hasmost in¯uence onUexkuÈ ll's theory ofmeaningis, no doubt,Kant (cf. Allison 1995: 435±438). Kantmakes a basic notionaldi�erence between the phenomenon and the noumenon. Both words areof Greek origin. The word noumenon derives from the verb noien `to appre-hend, to conceive', and the word phenomenon from the verb phainein`to appear'. A thing such as it appears to us, is in Kantian terminology,a `phenomenon'. The German equivalents of it used by Kant are theexpressions Erscheinung or ein Ding fuÈr uns. The three names refer toa subjective act of reception. The noumenon, in German ein Ding an sich,refers to a supposed real thing behind the object of reception. In principle,the dichotomy between phenomenon and noumenon roughly correspondsto the eidos and its appearance in Plato or to theUrbild and its appearancein Goethe.

As a matter of fact, there is, however, a clear epistemological di�erence.Plato presumed a direct connection between a thing and the idea of it.In Kant, the connection is an indirect one. The world in which we live isa re¯ection of our mind. The objects of our perception and thinkingare inside our minds. Thus, our world is just the world in our mind. Thephenomenal world of our mental world is, however, governed, Kantmaintains, by permanent noumenal rules. The twelve categories discoveredby Kant appear in our intuitions, concepts, and perceptions. The pos-sibility of mathematical and logical deduction shows, Kant argues, that thesubjective images of objects do come from somewhere, from the noumenalworld. Kant's idealism is said to be `transcendental' because we don't havedirect access to the noumenal world. But we cannot doubt, though, theexistence of it. We can deduce it from the regularities in our phenomenalworld.

The `Copernican revolution in philosophy' by Kant suggests that wehave to reverse our way of viewing cognition. `Instead of thinking of ourknowledge as conforming to a realm of objects, we think of objects asconforming to our ways of knowing' (Allison 1995: 436). This is thestarting point for the notion of `Umwelt' in UexkuÈ ll. Kant had noticed thatperceptions of space and time originate in mind and are not externalimpulses having the spatial and temporal appearance merely on the basisof external objects. Current brain research has con®rmed Kant's conclu-sion. Because the most essential components of perception are endo-genous, what about the rest of them? The worlds where organisms liveare subjective. The basic thesis in UexkuÈ ll's doctrine is the conclusionthat organisms don't deal directly with outside objects but with the signsof them.

500 T. JaÈmsaÈ

The existence and meaning of an object depends in UexkuÈ ll's Umweltenon the worlds where the organisms carry out their plans of life.The type of the meaning might be called Ð adapting the dichotomy byKant Ð `phenomenal'. Objects must have their `noumenal' meanings,too, but we cannot recognize them. The noumenal realm is more a matterof belief than of knowledge.The Umwelt comprises both the inner and the outer zones. The division

is not clearly seen in the ®gures. UexkuÈ ll hints at it in the text. The innerzone is a mental zone, the outer one is that of perception with thesense organs (like eyes, ears, nose) or of operation with motor organs(like hands, paws, or masticatory organs). From the perspective ofthe Kantian point of departure, the zones cannot be distinguished. Thisis in UexkuÈ ll's mind when he in Das allmaÈchtige Leben quotes Goethe'sverse, `Was ist aussen, das ist innen' (`What is outside that is inside').In his Introduction to Bedeutungslehre, UexkuÈ ll ®rst mentions Ð as

stated Ð Max Hartmann's criticism because of the use of a teleologicalword PlanmaÈssigkeit. The signi®cance of implicit plans in di�erentUmwelten of di�erent species is one of the keys to the understanding ofUexkuÈ ll's doctrine. For example, the hand is what it is because it hasful®lled an important part in the implicit plan (Bauplan) of the humans.UexkuÈ ll has received from Kant the seeds of his aversion to the mech-anization of science and of his emphasis on the governing power ofinherent plans. His view is not quite similar to that of Kant. While Kantuses the words Zweck (purpose) and ZweckmaÈssigkeit (purposiveness),UexkuÈ ll prefers the words Plan and PlanmaÈssigkeit. Kant's view of natureis crystallized in his well-known slogan,ZweckmaÈssigkeit ohne Zweck (pur-posiveness without a purpose). Perhaps he means by this that nature doesnot have only a sole purpose to be ful®lled but rather one to be de®ned.As Cassirer points out, he agrees in his emphasis on the purposivenessin nature with Aristotle, who held it as the highest principle of nature.And he quotes Kant's thoughts on the study of nature. It should aim at theunderstanding of the whole and at the ability `to spell appearances in orderto be able to read them as experiences' (`Erscheinungen [zu] buchstabieren,um sie als Erfahrungen lesen zu koÈnnen') (Cassirer 1993 [1940]: 69). Thequote is from the Prolegomena zu einer jeden kuÈnftigen Metaphysik, die alsWissenschaft wird auftreten koÈnnen (Prolegomena to All Future Meta-physics that will Represent Oneself as a Science) of 1783. At once, Kant'smetaphor of spelling and reading in the quote is worth paying attention to.It is an implicit reference to sign and meaning.In fact, Kant was one of the pioneers of semiotics. In his Introduction

to the second part of Anthropologie, the title is as follows, `Die anthro-pologische Characteristik: Von der Art, das Innere des Menschen aus


dem AÈ usseren zu erkennen' (`The anthropologic characterization: theway of recognizing the inner of man from the outer of man'). The textbegins (Kant 1968 [1798]: 285), `In pragmatischer RuÈ cksicht bedient sichdie allgemeine, natuÈ rliche (nicht buÈ rgerliche) Zeichenlehre (semioticauniversalis) des Wortes Charakter in zweifacher Bedeutung _'5

Claus Emmeche (1990) has seen Kant's aesthetics as one of the keys toUexkuÈ ll's doctrine of Umwelt. The in¯uence is obvious. Nevertheless,Kant's epistemology is here considered to have had a more decisive rolein UexkuÈ ll's thought.

In his work UÈber die aÈsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer ReiheBriefen (On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Collection of Letters)from 1793±1794, Kant writes,

Ein organisiertes Produkt [wie die Natur] ist das, in welchem alles Zweck und

wechselseitig auch Instrument ist. Nichts ist in ihm umsonst, zwecklos, oder einemblinden Naturmechanismus zuzuschreiben.6 (Helferich 1999 [1998]: 262)

Kant acknowledges that the notion of Zweck is anthropomorphic. Butalthough the purpose of nature is a secret it must be attributed to it. Heopenly opposes the mechanization of nature by Newton (Helferich 1999[1998]: 263).

Neo-Kantianism had a very high standing at German universities fromthe 1870s to the times of Nazism. Compared to the golden age of GermanRomanticism and Idealism, the time from the mid-nineteenth century tothe 1930s often seemed to be an era of decay (LuÈ bcke 1987 [1982]). Theopinion was deep seated in Germany until Hitler's rise and explainsmuch of Spengler's pessimism in his Untergang des Abendlandes. WorldWar I was, of course, held to be a manifestation of it. As a disciple ofKant and as a philosophical idealist, UexkuÈ ll clearly realized that thesciences, too, are cultural phenomena and may go in a wrong directionalong with the cultures supporting them. He never came to terms with thesciences, which had become, in his view, fragmented and, in general, didnot even try to achieve all-embracing views of research problems.

In biology, one of the few synthetic enterprises was Darwin's theory ofevolution. In UexkuÈ ll's eyes, slogans such as `the struggle for life' byDarwin and `the survival of the ®ttest' by Spencer, seemed to be over-simpli®cations, even irrelevancies. The most important ingredients ofUexkuÈ ll's theory Ð the meanings Ð had no place in Darwin's concep-tion. In Bedeutungslehre, UexkuÈ ll's criticism against Darwinism can bemostly read between the lines. But in Das allmaÈchtige Leben, he indicateshis aversion directly.

In broad outline, UexkuÈ ll seemed to know the contemporary philo-sophical trends in Germany. Of the neo-Kantian streams, the Marburg

502 T. JaÈmsaÈ

school was perhaps closest to him. In his thinking, such as it appears inBedeutungslehre, we can ®nd features of two professors of philosophy atMarburg, Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer. Natorp had combined Kantiandoctrine with that of Plato. And Cassirer, Natorp's pupil, had dealt withsymbolic forms as partly manifestations of the Kantian categories in theearly 1920s. Apparently,Bedeutungslehre is in¯uenced by Cassirer's notionof `symbolic forms'. The book ends with a poetic introduction of naturalsigns as symbols. UexkuÈ ll does notmention here Cassirer's name, however.As stated above, Cassirer shows understanding for UexkuÈ ll in An Essayon Man Ð using, for some unknown reason, the second part of UexkuÈ ll's®rst name, Jakob Johann(es). Cassirer was possibly the only philo-sopher ever to consider in his works the doctrine of Umwelt duringUexkuÈ ll's lifetime. According to Thure von UexkuÈ ll (1987: 175), his fatherand Ernst Cassirer were friends. Anyway, both of them were professorsat the University of Hamburg at the same time.

Links to contemporary thought of sign, meaning, and language

American pragmatism and Charles Sanders Peirce

UexkuÈ ll seems to have had only a very vague idea of contemporarylinguistics. Philosophy was the ®eld he obviously had a better commandof. As mentioned, he knew Cassirer's sophisticated interpretationsof symbolic forms as manifestations of the twelve Kantian transcen-dental categories. Each of the four basic categories Ð quantity, quality,relation, and modality Ð has been divided into three sub-categories(Helferich 1999 [1998]: 254±255). But Cassirer's enterprise was philo-sophical, not linguistic. Linguistics and philosophy had not yet inter-twined in the early-twentieth century. Later on, semantics and pragmaticsbecame common areas for both.Bedeutungslehre has no linguistic basis. What it has rather is a pragmatic

and semiotic frame of reference and as such is applicable also to language.Above all, the linguistic and semiotic signi®cance of Bedeutungslehre isin its pragmatics. From a pragmatic point of view, it belongs to the mostimportant contributions of the century. As a sign theory meant to explainthe relationship between an organism and its Umwelt, it is the ®rst andonly one.Logically, all relations introduced by UexkuÈ ll in Bedeutungslehre are

explicitly dyadic. Dyadic relations are frequent in philosophy andlinguistics. In linguistics and semiotics, they are important because of


the principle of the two-fold division of linguistic and semiotic elementsinto form and content.

Dyadic relations were not characteristic of Kant. He favored triadsinstead. Kant was not very popular in America in the mid- and late-nineteenth century. One of the few American philosophers who becamefamiliar with Kant's logic and adopted his model of triadic (three-placed)relations was the man who coined the term `pragmatism'. He was CharlesSanders Peirce. In Peirce, categories are always arranged into three-placed relations and are divided from the categories of the ®rst rank(Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness) into an in®nite set of triadic relationsof lower rank (CP 1.353). Peirce regarded himself as a logician aboveall and was well aware of the signi®cance of the form of relations.

UexkuÈ ll was di�erent. He did not explicate at all the logical types ofrelations in his system; certain shortcomings of the systematics in hispresentation can be discerned, especially in the diagrams. His strength iselsewhere. That almost all of UexkuÈ ll's relations are two-placed maysimply be due to his empirical starting point in the study of the relation-ships between an organism and its Umwelt. The old philosophical andespecially Kantian (if also Hegelian) dichotomy of subject and object wasa relevant basis for his theory. It could meet his philosophical ambition.His model in Bedeutungslehre succeeded in making something peculiarin which contemporary sciences had failed. The Umwelten were claimedto be entities, not mechanistically split up into separate tenets.

According to Charles W. Morris, Peirce, too, was an idealist. Peirce'sidealismwasdescribedbyMorris (1977: 276±280) as `evolutionary'. Insteadof the traditional term `metaphysics', Morris uses the term `cosmology'.Peirce's evolutionary idealism is de®ned as a part of his `cosmology'.Peirce claims (CP 6.33) that matter as a result of evolution will graduallydevelop into pure reason or spirit. Morris holds Peirce's idealism to bean exception in American pragmatism (cf. some features of mysticism inWilliam James, however). He connects Peircean idealism with the Platonictradition from Schelling to Hegel (Morris 1977: 278) and mentions Kantonly as a model of logic. Since the late 1860s Peirce had emphasized thatthought is composed merely of signs (CP 5.265) and, hence, understandshis mission to be in developing a comprehensive logical theory of signs.

American pragmatism is the ®rst philosophical movement under-scoring the signi®cance of life such as it can be veri®ed in experimentalinvestigations. Peirce has de®ned pragmatism in his `pragmatic maxims'(CP 5.467). They put weight on three things: action, experience, andmeaning. Morris summarizes the `pragmatic maxims' as follows (Morris1977: 207): 1)Action and experience are joined together bymeaning. 2) Thestance is not individual. 3) The stance is general and concerns types of

504 T. JaÈmsaÈ

action and experience. 4) The di�erent formulations aim at concepts rather,not at signs. The last maxim, Morris thinks, diverges from semiotics.Peirce's `pragmatic maxims' ®t well into the framework of UexkuÈ ll's

theory of meaning. Experience and action are the two chief poles in thefunctional cycle. They are joined together by meanings. Morris's concernabout the remoteness of the `pragmatic maxims' from semiotics seems tobe groundless. Concepts and meanings are, of course, the most essentialpart of semiosis. IfMorris means by that the ignorance of form as a built-inpart of the semiotic signs in Peirce's work, he does not do Peirce full justice.Peirce was aware of the fact that there are no meanings without formsbut mostly took it as self-evident and, therefore, passed over it. UexkuÈ ll,too, emphasizes the signi®cance of meanings without clearly dividingthe sign into form and content. Morris's arguments hold true more forUexkuÈ ll. All in all, Peirce's `pragmatic maxims' are amazingly close tothe principles of the functional cycle by UexkuÈ ll. But for sure, in the timeswhen Bedeutungslehre was written, Peirce was known only to a narrowAmerican audience. Anyway, UexkuÈ ll was not familiar with him. The simi-larity must be based on the shared but separate insights of the importanceof the cycles of action and experience in the process of signi®cation.The semiotic pragmatics of UexkuÈ ll bears an astonishing resemblance

with that of Peirce, too. In his diagrams, UexkuÈ ll explicitly distinguishestwo aspects of the sign processes, òbjects' orBedeutungs-TraÈger as carriersof meaning and `subjects' or Bedeutungs-EmpfaÈnger as receivers of mean-ing. The diagrams concern the process of signi®cation or semiosis froma pragmatic point of view. As mentioned, neither the division of signs intoform and content nor the Peircean triangle appear perhaps as explicitly asa semiotician or a linguist would wish to formulate the terms and the rules.Factually, the diagrams and the text imply both. The term Bedeutungs-TraÈger refers to a form or a `representamen' Ð as Peirce often expressesit Ð and the term Merk-Organ presupposes that the organ not onlyprocesses the form but transforms it into a meaning Ð an ìnterpretant'by Peirce Ð and then into a new form or representamen,Wirkmal-TraÈger,again.In UexkuÈ ll's Kantian and Platonic view, the world of the supposed real

objects is dawning from outside the borderlines of the Umwelt. The objectsacquire their faces in the Umwelt but are faceless outside it. The content ofthe term òbject' is largely shared both in Peirce and UexkuÈ ll. Thatdi�erence is maybe well-grounded and worth mentioning insofar as thenotion of object as a sign is an inherent part of the semiosphere in Peircewhile it seems primarily to be a `causa e�ciens' outside the Umwelt ofsigns in UexkuÈ ll. In his (so far unpublished) paper at the congress ofthe IASS in Dresden Fall 1999, John Deely pointed out how the central


attribute of the noumenon in Kant Ð the `inknowable' Ð changed intothe `knowable' in Peirce.

UexkuÈ ll never did such an about face but remained true to the veryessence of the noumenon, and we have to ask if Peirce really did an aboutface either. Both UexkuÈ ll and Peirce obviously think that the objectsappear in signs only. Most of the signs embodying objects are indices,Peirce claims. Without knowing anything of Peirce's indices as a typeof sign, UexkuÈ ll talks in Bedeutungslehre about di�erent kinds of per-ceptual signs. The realization that our sensations are, as a matter of fact,not objects Ð as common sense presupposes Ð but signs of them musthave been an extremely signi®cant experience for both.

As a theoretician of signs, Peirce is the greatest `forerunner' (althoughnot in the usual sense of the word) of UexkuÈ ll. In an early essay, Peircestresses Ð as has already been alluded to Ð that not only the things per-ceived but even thoughts consist of signs (Morris 1977: 224). Explicitly,UexkuÈ ll does not seem to go this far in Bedeutungslehre. But Thure vonUexkuÈ ll (1980: 51±58) emphasizes in the introduction to a collection of hisfather's writings that the semiotic doctrine of the Umwelt concernsexperiences as well. This is a consistent view. If the objects external to theUmwelt are only representations of signs, why should the objects endo-genous to it be di�erent? InTheoretische Biologie (1973 [1928]: 40), UexkuÈ llposes a bold but tenable claim, `Da die TaÈ tigkeit unseres GemuÈ ts daseinzige uns unmittelbar bekannte StuÈ ck Natur ist, sind seine Gesetze dieeinzigen, die mit Recht den Namen Naturgesetze fuÈ hren duÈ rfen'.7

One of the few friends of Peirce, William James, had a slightly quali®edattitude towards the term `pragmatics' (Magill 1990: 494±501). The termgoes well, however, with the emphasis on practical experiences in con-temporary American philosophy. Generally speaking, the underlyingphilosophy of American pragmatism is, however, quite far from UexkuÈ ll'sidealism. Peirce is one of the few pragmatists in America who aimed fora great general survey in the spirit of idealism. Morris thinks thatPeirce's idealism actually con¯icts with everything he has done. Thischaracterization does not, perhaps, do justice to Peirce. In general, prag-matists followed the mainstream of positivism, they left metaphysicsoutside and paid attention mainly to the registration of successive events.As amovement of psychology, behaviorismwith its passion for the mecha-nization of behavior and for the condemnation of the use of the wordsoul has spent its earliest years in the cradle of American pragmatism. Thebehavioristic interpretation of pragmatism is, of course, alien to UexkuÈ ll'stheory of signs.

Sebeok emphasizes, with reason, that UexkuÈ ll's theory of meaningbelongs to the ®eld of pragmatics, in particular the branch he calls

506 T. JaÈmsaÈ

`zoopragmatics'. He de®nes zoopragmatics in terms of informationtheory,

Zoopragmatics is concerned with the manner in which an animal encodesa message, how this is transmitted in a channel, and the manner in which the user

decodes it. (Sebeok 1972: 124)

American pragmatism such as it appears in Peirce signals the futurebloom of a science called `pragmatics'. In linguistics, pragmatics wasaccepted as a distinct branch of inquiry only in the late 1960s. In philos-ophy, the acceptance of pragmatics took place about a decade before.Anyway, it is important to note, once again, that Peirce and UexkuÈ llwere great forerunners of the current science of pragmatics, as wereFerdinand de Saussure Ð a supposition that may astonish most expertson him Ð and especially Karl BuÈ hler. A closer look at pragmatics in thepresent sense of the word and at its pioneers will be taken below.The linguistics of the New World was, generally speaking, close to the

doctrine of pragmatism but is usually labelled `American structuralism'(see e.g., Fought 1995: 295±306). Philosophical and psychological prag-matism, the latter being called `behaviorism', were intervowen in it.Behaviorism, true, was based on a very narrow de®nition of pragmatismand had, in fact, little to do with the exuberant tradition of Peirce.In linguistics, the study of meanings was generally left outside. The neglectof semantics is usually blamed on Leonard Bloom®eld, a great Americanlinguist, and especially on his pupils. Nevertheless, Bloom®eld dealswith meanings in detail in his classical bookLanguage. Two chapters of hisbook, for example, are devoted to the problem of meaning (Bloom®eld1984 [1933]: 138±157, 425±443). However, the majority of linguists heldsemantics Ð compared particularly to phonology and morphology Ð tobe too `obscure' to be dealt with in rigorous scienti®c terms. The term`language science(s)' partly re¯ects the attitude among most linguists ofthe time: they thought that in principle, linguistics should ful®ll the samehigh standards of rigorousness as the natural sciences.This view of the unscienti®c character of the study of meanings was

once accepted as a central dogma of linguistics; a large number of linguistsof today may still agree with that kind of `linguistic behaviorism'. As forthe form of language, the ideal of science in linguistics has worked well.One of the very best examples of the achievements of this mainstream oflinguistics is Bloom®eld's book Language (1933).In the wake of American pragmatism, there were a few scholars who,

inspite of the rigorous empirism they followed Ð generally speaking Ð intheir investigations, did not shun intuitive generalizations either. EdwardSapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf belonged to this group. Sapir's teacher


was the German-born anthropologist Franz Boas. Sapir started the studyof native American languages at the end of the nineteenth century.Whorf was Sapir's pupil at Yale University and, spurred on by him, beganto investigate the vernacular of Hopi Indians in Arizona in 1932. Thesupposition known as the `Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' or the `Principle ofLinguistic Relativity' claims that the vocabulary and the grammar ofdi�erent languages re¯ect the culture each of them bears a relation to.Vocabularies and grammars of di�erent languages di�er between tribesand especially between the native and the other Americans. Sapir andWhorf found that the agreement between the linguistic features and theculture (or an environment in a broad sense) was, in fact, amanifestation ofa sharedworld view. Sapir emphasized the di�erences in vocabularies whileWhorf did it on the basis of the di�erences in grammars.

The `Principle of Linguistic Relativity' became well-known in a bookby Sapir aimed at educating laymen, Language (1921). Among linguists,the principle has always been more or less questionable. But Sapir andWhorf's claim is the ®rst instance where linguists have noticed the inter-play between the parlance and theUmwelt of the people who have acquiredthe parlance, especially as their ®rst language.

The roots of the `Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' date back to John Locke andWilhelm von Humboldt. In principle, I think the hypothesis is acceptable.It is in full accordance with UexkuÈ ll's sign theory with its emphasis on thesubjectivity of the world of each organism. It holds true, of course, forhumans as a species but can be extended to di�erent cultures as well.

UexkuÈ ll's model stresses, in a Kantian spirit, the intertwinement of thesubject and its Umwelt. The Umwelt is completely determined by theinternal implications of the subject concerned. Therefore, the linguisticUmwelt is di�erent not only in di�erent species and cultures but probablyalso in di�erent individuals. Here and elsewhere, the notion of di�erence is,of course, relative.

Ferdinand de Saussure

Bloom®eld's stance on the study of meanings was stated above. In general,linguistics in the ®rst decades of the twentieth century did not involvea close inspection of meaning. Illustrative of the tradition was OttoJespersen's view in hisPhilosophy of Grammar. He says that `this branch oflinguistic science [that of meaning]' deals with `general' and not with`special facts' and because of that `it is not customary to include semanticsin grammar' (Jespersen 1935 [1924]: 35). Michel BreÂ al's term seÂmantiquefrom 1897 became, however, established thanks largely to Jespersen.

508 T. JaÈmsaÈ

In general, the terminology used in the study of meaning was still partlyunstandardized in the mid-twenties when Jespersen's book originallyappeared.Chomsky appreciates Jespersen because the Danish linguist is one of

the ®rst to realize the miracle of the acquisition of language:

_ without any grammatical instruction, from innumerable sentences heard andunderstood [the child] will abstract some notion of their structure which is de®nite

enough to guide him in framing sentences of his own. (Chomsky 1997 [1993]: 49±50)

Jespersen was also one of the ®rst linguists who clearly showed the twointertwining levels of language. The Danish School of linguistics andsemiotics with Louis Hjelmslev as its foremost representative has signi®-cantly bene®ted from the clear distinction of form and meaning byJespersen. Hjelmslev's work was mainly logical and mathematical and,hence, regardless of its importance to the formalization of the implicationsof semiotic theory, lies quite remote from UexkuÈ ll's pragmatics. Becauseof it, Hjelmslev will be disregarded in this discourse.

Jespersen expresses the relationship between form and content as follows: Nowany linguistic phenomenon may be regarded either from without or from within,

either from the outward form or from the inner meaning. In the ®rst case we takethe sound (of a word or of some other part of linguistic expression) and then inquireinto the meaning attached to it; in the second case we start from the signi®cationand ask ourselves what formal expression it has found in the particular language

we are dealing with. If we denote the outward form by the letter O, and the innermeaning by the letter I, wemay represent the twoways as O±I and I±O respectively.(Jespersen 1935 [1924]: 33)

The binarism of language was, in principle, understood in classical antiq-uity. Then, language was held to be the only existing sign system or code.The ®rst clear view of the double nature of a sign can be found in theStoics. Their division of signs into semainon `signi®er' and semainomenon`signi®ed' was de®nedmore accurately as aistheton `perceptible' and noeton`thinkable' (Householder 1995: 96). In modern times, the ®rst well-knownanalysis of a sign was performed by Peirce in the 1860s. Above, we havedealt with the notions of sign in Peirce and UexkuÈ ll. UexkuÈ ll's concept of`sign' largely corresponds to that of Peirce but is not as well-articulated asin Peirce.Jespersen justi®ed his concentration on the study of form solely and

the exclusion of meaning by the `fact' that linguistics should concern only`speci®c' features of particular languages and not `generic' features ofall languages. This argument was untenable even in the 1920s. Generallinguistics had been approved of as an academic profession long since.


Wilhelm von Humboldt, a former minister of Prussia, wrote in the 1820sabout the importance of general linguistics (Humboldt 1973: 12±20).

At the University of Geneva, the ®rst professor of general linguistics hadformerly been the professor of Sanskrit. Thanks to a wise administrativedecision, this professor Ð Ferdinand de Saussure Ð had been obliged toprepare lectures for his new position. The historical lecture courses ongeneral linguistics at the University of Geneva were given three times,in 1907, 1908±1909, and 1910±1911. De Saussure used Ð it was said Ðto throw the class notes away or, anyway, to keep them carefully in hisown desk drawer. Perhaps he was too much aware of the inadequaciesof them. Some of his pupils understood their value better andfashioned from their own lecture notes Cours linguistique generale in1916, three years after their professor's death. The fame of de Saussuregrew little by little. Finally in 1959, an English translation of the Coursappeared (Joseph 1995). The lecture notes in all surviving notebookshave been published in a French-English edition in three volumes inthe 1990s.

A tradition of a general theory of signs had been started by Aristotleand elaborated on by the Stoics and by the Scholastics of theMiddle Ages.Then, the tradition was almost broken. Ferdinand de Saussure estab-lished it again. Martin Krampen (1987: 67) pays attention to the Swedishlinguist, Adolf Noreen, as de Saussure's forerunner. As early as in1887, Noreen quite extensively dealt with a science that he happened tocall Ð using almost precisely the same term as de Saussure did twodecades later Ð semology.

The point of departure for de Saussure is the de®nition of the notionof `sign'. We do not know whether he was aware of the Stoic division ofthe sign into semeinon and semeinomenon (cf. above), but, anyway, hisdivision of the sign into signi®cant and signi®eÂ precisely corresponds toit. Elsewhere, he compares the sign to a sheet of paper where one siderepresents the acoustic image and the other side represents the concept.This characterization is more original. The use of the expression `acousticimage' presupposes that from the viewpoint of language sounds are nota physical but a mental thing. The mind recognizes them and attachesparticular sequences of them to the concepts concerned. De Saussure'stopic was Ð as mentioned above Ð general linguistics. Therefore, hemostly ignored sign systems with the exception of language. But he usesthe term semiologique for a general theory of signs and gives his audienceto understand that the rules of language are, in principle, applicable to theother sign systems as well. The division of the sign into two Ð the acousticimage and the concept Ð implies that the mental images of signs are notonly acoustic but might be visual, haptic, etc., as well. This justi®es the

510 T. JaÈmsaÈ

interpretation that is close to the semiotic point of departure in UexkuÈ ll:that de Saussure, too, understands that we don't receive stimuli fromoutside directly but that they are conveyed by signs. And signs are, ofcourse, mental things.Jakobson's (1975: 12) and Sebeok's (1976) remarks that de Saussure's

value as a semiotician has been exaggerated are, true, to some extent justi-®able. In addition to the general theory of linguistic signs, de Saussure doesnot deal with other sign systems in detail. But his work has provided a ®rmfoundation for semiotic analysis in general. This is above all because lan-guage is like other systems of signs, and de Saussure has provided a goodexample of a semiotic analysis of language. The fallacy that languagecopies other signs systems is, in fact, a subplot in the semiotic play where deSaussure's conception of the linguistic sign has been generalized Ð oftenon untenable grounds Ð to all kinds of signs.Jespersen does not mention de Saussure. For Hjelmslev, de Saussure's

work was only a starting point. Likewise, UexkuÈ ll apparently has nothingto tie him directly to de Saussure.But, in fact, there are many links between de Saussure's and UexkuÈ ll's

theories. De Saussure's schema of language use can be outlined prag-matically in a circuit between two linguistic functions, those of phonationand audition. As Figure 6 shows, acoustic images are converted into con-cepts in audition while concepts are converted into acoustic images inphonation. It is noteworthy that de Saussure's model presented in acircuit is, in principle, similar to that by UexkuÈ ll. UexkuÈ ll, too, divides the

Figure 6. A pragmatic application of de Saussure's theory of language. The applier, Dafydd

Gibbon from the University of Bielefeld (Gibbon 1996), calls it `De Saussure's Conceptualistic

Circuit Model'


whole into two ®elds, but his model is more clearly pragmatic and semi-otic and the halves in his original diagram have been called `perceptual'or `perceptory' and `motor' or òperational' or è�ectory' (cf. Figures 1±4).De Saussure applies exactly the same pattern but not mainly to indicesas UexkuÈ ll does but to language signs. His model mirrors some kind ofan Umwelt, too. Language is for de Saussure a social thing above all.De Saussure divides language into two representations, langue and parole.Not only is parole, i.e., speech (or writing), social but langue, i.e., themental system that speech is based on. Thus, according to de Saussure,the totality of langue and parole Ð called by him the langage Ð formsa social world of its own. It might be called an Ùmwelt' with reason but,of course, de Saussure did not use the term and was not able to articulatethe relationship between the subject and the sign objects as clearly asUexkuÈ ll did.

Sign processes are in de Saussure horizontal, or linear, and verticalrelations. Linear relations are called `syntagmatic' while the vertical onesare called `paradigmatic'. In practice, syntagmatic relations are realizedsuccessively in actual sentences or texts or discourses. Paradigmatic rela-tions are alternative elements to be placed in linear (horizontal) sequences.When speakers make a choice, e.g., between the words lady and woman,they accept the choice as a part of their discourse and thus actualize it.UexkuÈ ll does not use the terms `syntagm' and `paradigm'. There are noequivalents of them in UexkuÈ ll's model. But they might easily be attachedto it.

The reception of a Merkmal-TraÈger and the motor response to it, aWirkmal-TraÈger, can be interpreted as a syntagmatic relation. It takesplace on two levels, those of form and content. One of the key notionsin UexkuÈ ll is Bedeutungsverwertung (utilization of meaning). On thebasis of the Bedeutungsverwertung, an organism selects the carriers ofmeaning that it receives and reacts to. The choice of theMerkmal-TraÈger inthe Umwelt is a matter of actual shifts in paradigms. UexkuÈ ll (1950: 158)mentions that meanings are the building materials of all life Ð a statementquoted above. To recognize its role on the stage of its Umwelt, an organismmust make a choice between Ð and UexkuÈ ll quotes Plato here Ð `TheFour Basic Ideas of Life'. UexkuÈ ll has referred, true, to this Platonic viewalso in the ®rst edition of Theoretische Biologie. The four are medium,nutriment, enemy, and sexual partner. If they form, in a sense, a syntagm,the signs and meanings connected with each of them constitute a para-digm. Of course, the number of potential relationships, both horizontallyand vertically, depends on the character of the Umwelt of the speciesand extends from a few in viruses and bacteria to an immense numberin humans.

512 T. JaÈmsaÈ

In the paradigmatic continuum, elements di�er from each other incouples of alternative two-placed relations. Thus, the words lady andwomen both refer to a female, but they have a di�erent Ð as de Saussureterms it Ð valeur (`value') in di�erent contexts. Both words representconceptual structures in which only a few components di�er. The choiceof one of them re¯ects the speaker's attitudes to the situation and theimage he has of the process of communication.One of the main points in de Saussure's doctrine is the claim that signs

are arbitrary, not motivated. Instead of the word wife the word fru couldbe used, as Swedes do, or the word vaimo, as Finns do. The questionof the arbitrariness or motivatedness of signs has been controversialsince classical antiquity. The debate had been revived in the nineteenthcentury especially by William Dwight Whitney and Wilhelm vonHumboldt. While Whitney stressed the conventionality of language withthe Greek word nomos `convention' as the key, Humboldt emphasizedthat language must be considered to be ultimately based on nature.Whitney's view was known as the `nomos view' while that of Humboldtwas known as the `physis view' (from Greek physis, `nature'). As a youngman, de Saussure had personally met Whitney and admired Whitney'swork ever since (Joseph 1995).From the perspective of UexkuÈ ll's theory of meaning, we might say

that both views have domains of their own. One of the best knownexamples in animal psychology dates back to Konrad Lorenz's observa-tions in the 1930s. Lorenz had discovered that a newly hatched goslingstarts following a human if it ®rst sees a human instead of its ownmother. Lorenz uses the German word PraÈgung (imprinting) to refer toan early event in a gosling's life Ð such as that it starts followingthe animal that it has come to see ®rst, not necessarily a goose butsometimes a human as well.UexkuÈ ll deals with the example by Lorenz and explains that the human

Merkmal-TraÈger has received the meaning `mother' in the gosling'sUmwelt. Simultaneously, this also illustrates how human babies acquirea given language. Words, regardless of their forms, get a certain meaningon the basis of having been connected by the baby with a certain ®gure inher/his Umwelt. From this point of view, words and language as a wholeare arbitrary. But strong innate tendencies compel the gosling and thehuman baby to ®nd in their Umwelten a ®gure ful®lling the meaningof `mother', or Ð put more precisely Ð a primary meaning like that con-ditioned by the Umwelt of a goose or a human. The connection of a certain®gure and a certain content of it is strongly motivated once it has cometrue. And the connection is motivated also in the sense that it must respondto the `language' of innate structures of the organism concerned in order


to be realized. A gosling does not accept a pail or a ¯agpole as its mother,and neither does the human baby. Innate orders make conditions. Butboth examples concretely demonstrate also that the Umwelten aredetermined by the subject's innate structures and tendencies.

Saussure's term `valeur' and UexkuÈll's term `Bedeutungsverwertung'in terms of intentionality

Implicitly, the notion of ìntentionality' has been dealt with above. It hastaken place twice, once in connection with Kant, another time withUexkuÈ ll. Kant and UexkuÈ ll do not expressly use the term ìntentionality'but other terms, instead, with a relative meaning. Kant seems to followhere, in principle, the Aristotelian idea of telos (goal). The often quotedexpression by Kant, ZweckmaÈssigkeit ohne Zweck, can be interpreted asKant's conviction that nothing takes place only by chance. This is builtinto human intuition. Therefore, Kant connected the idea of purposivenesswith our mental capacity and supposed it to be an anthropomorphicfeature. If nature really has any purpose, it is impossible for us to know.

As mentioned above, UexkuÈ ll accepted the idea of purposiveness ata certain level but instead of the word ZweckmaÈssigkeit used anotherexpression, PlanmaÈssigkeit. The term Bauplan refers to an inherent planin an organism's behavior governed by the principles according to whichit is built. The BauplaÈne of, for example, a swallow and an earthwormare largely di�erent. The behavior of a swallow is quite di�erent from thatof an earthworm. Thus, the word PlanmaÈssigkeit designates in UexkuÈ ll aninherent plan to be realized not only in the organisms' life but in all lifein general.

The term ìntentionality' indicates, in principle, that a subject is directedin a process or state at an object, i.e., the subject controls it in one way oranother. The sense of intentionality may be very broad. If someone writessomething there is no doubt about the intentionality of the act. But if arock is falling or has lain at a certain location for billions of years, can wespeak of intentionality in this connection?

The term ìntentionality' was used by Scholastic philosophers in theMiddle Ages but was revived as late as in the 1870s by Franz Brentano anda pupil of his, Edmund Husserl. In his Logische Untersuchungen publishedin 1900, Husserl laid the foundations of an epistemology called later`phenomenology' (Sajama and Kamppinen 1987: 27±40). Like Plato, hethought he had found a method of going zu den Sachen selbst (to the veryfacts) and did not see the subjectivity of the researcher as posing anobstacle to the pursuit of the truth.

514 T. JaÈmsaÈ

TheHusserlian phenomenology has exerted a great impact on semiotics.In his generally excellent introduction to pragmatic semiotics, SvendErik Larsen (1998: 839±844) classi®es the phenomenological school asone of the four most important movements in semiotics. The others areStructuralist semiotics, American semiotics, and the Moscow-TartuSchool.In the article concerned, Larsen states how the philosophical de®ni-

tion of the notion of ìntentionality' is insu�cient from the perspective ofpragmatics (Larsen 1998: 838). Larsen distinguishes ®ve types of inten-tionality, the 1) general, 2) subjective, 3) ontological, 4) specifying, and5) strategic classes of intentionality. The term `general intentionality'means that àny process of creating meaning is directed towards anobject'. General intentionality applies to both organisms and machines.The term `subjective intentionality' refers, according to Larsen, to the fact`that there is consciousness or human subjectivity involved'. The thirdtype Ð òntological intentionality' Ð asks what kind of a reality we areinvolved in, dream, wakefulness, imagination, etc. `Specifying intention-ality' ìs inherent in the fact that a semiosis is aiming at identifying or givinga speci®c meaning to the intended object, e.g., in the semantic structureof a given sign system' (Larsen 1998: 838). `Specifying intentionality' is notexplained in more detail. Perhaps it might be applied to UexkuÈ ll's exampleof the di�erent meaning functions of ¯ower stalks for di�erent utilizers ofthem. `Strategic intentionality' represents the ìnstrumental purposivenessof the discourse', i.e., telling or asking someone to do something, etc.No doubt, Larsen's division does more justice to di�erent kinds of con-

texts than one single notion of ìntentionality' does. But simultaneously,though the distribution of the terms is meant to be complementary,the logico-semantic relationships between them are random and the scopesof the terms overlap. The content of `subjective intentionality' is toonarrow. The words `consciousness' and `human subjectivity' connectedwith it are controversial, especially from the viewpoint of UexkuÈ ll's theoryof meaning. Subjects are perhaps not necessarily `conscious' in thetraditional sense of the word. The grounds for distinguishing animal andhuman behavior are untenable, especially from the perspective of thesign model presented by UexkuÈ ll. They merely re¯ect the old anthro-pomorphism. A relevant and strict de®nition of the type of intentionalityconcerned in a particular context might be di�cult, sometimes muchtoo di�cult. Therefore, here simply ìntentionality' will be spoken of.It chie¯y refers to type 1 in Larsen's classi®cation.Currently, intentionality is considered to be one key to a deeper

understanding of human behavior (cf. Lyons 1995), but trials of extendingits scope to animals, let alone to inorganic nature, are few. One of the


naturalizers of intentionality is Ruth Garrett Millikan. She maintains thatintentionality is an objective natural feature. After having discussed therole of intentionality in humans (Millikan 1984) she extended it to otheranimals as well (Millikan 1989).

Intentionality is here assigned to all living organisms as an essentialfeature. In point of fact, intentionality is considered to be a part of theinorganic processes, too, but because intentionality is only of minorimportance from the perspective of the topic it won't be dealt with in anydetail. Logically, the implicit intentionality of UexkuÈ ll's Umwelt theorycan be expressed in a formula, x(Rinte(y)), where x represents the subject,y the object (or the Umwelt), and Rinte the type of an intentional relatortying the subject and the object together. The relator is the key factor inall action. If a dog is dreaming and moving its paws as if it is running,the state of intentionality is that of dreaming which, in turn, has theintentionality of running. Intentionality is involved in all organisms.All organisms try to maintain an equilibrium. Each act they perform aimsat that. If they are hungry they hunt, if they have had enough to eat theyrest, etc. But the stimulus-response language is not as simple. Organismsare not machines. Kull (1993: 54±55) speaks of self-reproducing systemsand the possible step by step variations in the lives of organisms. Bothprocesses and states are guided by intentionality, the ultimate meaningof which remains hidden. At the same time, we have to remember thatthere are no di�erences of value between changes and non-changes.Intentionality is an expression in a metalanguage and refers to the stateor process that an organism (or a thing) embodies.

The following will aim at binding together two central terms of deSaussure's and UexkuÈ ll's models, those of valeur and Bedeutungsverwer-tung. Intentionality is supposed to be the common feature of the two.

The term valeur appears in de Saussure's class notes very often. Later on,it became the chief point in structuralism. The `value' of an element inlangue depends on the position of the element concerned in the system.According to Charles Patois' notebook, de Saussure speci®ed the termin his lectures in 1908±1909 as follows,

En tout systeÁme, il n'y a rien d'autre que des valeurs; les autres reÂ aliteÂ s sont desillusions. Ces valeurs sont composeÂ es di�eÂ remment suivant les systeÁ mes. Lesvaleurs, en tout cas, ne sont jamais des uniteÂ s simples, surtout dans la langue ouÂ

l'on ne peut meÃ me deÂ limiter l'uniteÂ mateÂ rielle hors de sa valeur. Pas de di�eÂ rencefondamentale en linguistique entre ces cinq: Avaleur, identiteÂ , uniteÂ , reÂ aliteÂ

linguistique, eÂ leÂ ment concret de linguistique. _ La valeur est la basis de l'identiteÂ .

MeÃ me chose de parler de reÂ aliteÂ ou de valeur, de valeur ou d'identiteÂ oureÂ ciproquement. Leur seule base aÁ ces di�eÂ rents termes.8 (Komatsu and Wolf1997: 125±125a)

516 T. JaÈmsaÈ

The following note in Patois is illustrative. According to it, the lecturerhad underlined that a `value' of something always depends on somethingelse. As an example of this, he compares one idea x with two elements,marcher (to walk) and marchant (walking). The values of the two areinterdependent. The decisive factor is that node of the net of a languagea unit in question belongs to. The relation of the unit to the other unitsdetermines its place in the system.Now, let us suppose that we have to write an essay on language.

The author of the essay is the subject, the essay on language is the object,and the relator is the act of writing with a whole ocean of sub-acts involved.The intentionality guides the process. The author wishes to completehis contribution. The subject is Ð even by writing his essay Ð in anunbalanced state, as if between being and non-being. His intentional statemirrors his relationship to the object. Each element, let it be a morpheme,a sentence, a paragraph, a passage, or the text as a whole, must undergo abattle of values. On the basis of it, passages will be rewritten again andagain, new words, sentences and points of view will be chosen. The ®nalarrangement of the units of the essay will re¯ect the value the author hasgiven to the parts included in the work and their mutual relationsunderlying the text.De Saussure's term valeur can thus be dealt with in terms of inten-

tionality. But this applies also to the Umwelt outlined by UexkuÈ ll. Theterm whose function is close to the content of valeur is Bedeutungsverwer-tung. UexkuÈ ll points out that realities of organisms are based onmeanings.Thus we can understand the relationship between an organism and itsUmwelt, in principle, as being similar to the author's Umwelt when he iswriting an essay. When a dog is out walking with its master, kept on aleash by him, it examines the Umwelt where it currently is. Only those signsthat have a meaning for it are paid attention to. This is an expressionof Bedeutungsverwertung such as UexkuÈ ll proposes in his model. Thesurroundings where the master and his dog are walking are mostly madefor humans, not dogs. The signs and meanings to be used by the masterare quite di�erent. The dog tries to have access to an Umwelt of its own.It is attracted Ð as is well-known Ð to signs of other dogs and the meresight of a representative may cause uncontrollable excitement.The sign and meaning systems in a dog's and in a man's Umwelten are

di�erent. The value of each element depends on its place in the system ofrelations of other elements. The principal rules of the utilization of signand meaning elements, the stream of the successive choices of them, don'tdi�er in the dog's Umwelt from those in its master's Umwelt, although theUmwelten are internally distant from each other. Dogs don't write essaysand humans don't sni� marks of smell. But the discourse they construct


all the time is their lives. Life is composed of acts. In dogs, it comprisesgetting familiar with other dogs, the smells of them, the alternation ofaggressive and friendly emotions. Intentionality concerns the largelyinherent rules of each organism and has a determining role in the decisionsof choosing the signs and meanings that will be used or ignored.

Unlike de Saussure, UexkuÈ ll avoids any formalizations and, therefore,does not openly deal with the logical analysis of relations. His view ofmeaning di�erences is clearly more vivid and concrete as he characterizeseach perception as an Ich-Ton. Theoretically, the metaphorical use of theIch refers to the implication that whether an entity is a subject or anobject only depends on the perspective adopted in the situation concerned.On the other hand, the Ich as the name of an object individualizes theobject, not only as a class but especially as a member of a class. In practice,recognition in a subject's world always takes place on the basis of theobject's individuality, not on the basis of logical oppositions, i.e., ofthe structural distribution.

The notion of `I' is close to that of `self'. JohannesMuÈ ller, a physiologistfrom the early nineteenth century, served as a great model of a scientist forUexkuÈ ll. According to Thure von UexkuÈ ll (1979: 41), MuÈ ller's descriptionof the communicative processes in a cell might be expressed as `theelementary self' in semiotic terms.MuÈ ller might have in¯uencedUexkuÈ ll inhis choice of the highly original term `I' as a speci®er of an entity in theUmwelt. But another source of in¯uence has been, no doubt, the Gestalttheory.

Gestalt theory and Karl BuÈhler

Apart from semiotics, UexkuÈ ll's scienti®c work is today best known Ð asmentioned many times before Ð in animal psychology. Umwelt undInnenwelt der Tiere (1909) is the pioneering work in the ®eld. UexkuÈ ll'sexample of a tick and mammals as its `prey animals' from Bedeutungslehreis frequently used, not only in the entry on animal psychology in theEncyclopedia Britannica (as mentioned above) but in numerous ordinary,even semiotic, non-®ction books, e.g., inMerrell (1998: 235±236, 264±265).Typically, the important context of UexkuÈ ll's theory has been generallyignored. EvenMerrell does not say aword to indicate thatUexkuÈ ll used theexample of a tick and a mammal to illustrate the subtle interplay betweenpoint and counterpoint, an interplay where his metaphor of the theoryof musical composition made the stage with its commonplace actorsabsolutely dramatic. And Merrell does not avoid mentioning how a tickclimbs up a tree and drops from there into a mammal's hair. A small

518 T. JaÈmsaÈ

traditionally cited detail that oversimpli®es the typical behavior of thetick and does not necessarily hold true.Today, UexkuÈ ll's books are rare in Germany and still rarer in the U.S.

As I was preparing this contribution, not one of the English translationswas available in the largest internet stores of used books in the U.S.A couple of the old editions, the latest from 1980, were randomly available.In Germany, the only exception is Theoretische Biologie. A few copiesof an impression from the early seventies are available and a reprint isbeing planned.In the 1950s, UexkuÈ ll was more topical as a scientist, especially in

psychology. In a dictionary of psychology from that decade by Peter R.HofstaÈ tter, his name is mentioned on six pages, mostly in an entry entitledAnlage und Umwelt. The German word Anlage refers especially to plannedparts of surroundings, such as buildings, parks, streets, etc.Because of his contribution to animal psychology, it is probable that

UexkuÈ ll has been in¯uenced by the German psychological movements ofthe age. In the entry of his dictionary, HofstaÈ tter mentions anotherbiologist, Karl Ernst von Baer (cf. Kull 1998) Ð both of them from theUniversity of Tartu in Estonia Ð as a forerunner of UexkuÈ ll. HofstaÈ tteralso puts weight on how Gestalt psychologists, like Kurt Lewin, hadcarried on research with humans and their Umwelten in UexkuÈ ll's spirit(HofstaÈ tter 1960 [1957]: 23). Baer had noticed that a `moment' lasts1/18 second for humans, 1/40 second for ®ghting ®shes (Betta splendens),and 1/3 second for snails. Lewin, for his part, speaks of the Umfeld(5Um-`around'+-feld `®eld4Umfeld the `®eld around', i.e., `the ®eldthat constitutes the area of one's own') of human individuals and howthe `Umfeld' is structured by the individual's character, personality,inventory of experiences, and prevailing status of needs.Gestalt psychology was born as a protest against a mechanistic view

of human behavior. Max Wertheimer especially had criticized the tradi-tional school of psychology for this. The article byWertheimer that is con-sidered to have started the Gestalt movement appeared in 1912. AlthoughGestalt psychologists did not explicitly speak of meaning as such, they didstress the meaningfulness in all action. Meanings were thought to controlaction in the spirit of Goethe's aphorism quoted byUexkuÈ ll, too, as menti-oned above: `Was ist innen, das ist aussen' (`What is inside, that is outside').As for the connection between Gestalt psychology and UexkuÈ ll, it is

important to note that UexkuÈ ll refers to gestalts in Das allmaÈchtige Lebenquite often. The most important passage is, no doubt, where UexkuÈ llde®nes gestalt as a form with a meaning. In the same book, he stresses thatmeanings form the world. Obviously, theMerkmal-TraÈger are ®gures withmeanings.


The notion of `Feld' in Gestalt- und Ganzheitspsychologie (Gestalt andholistic psychology) is largely similar to the notion of `Welt' in UexkuÈ ll.Both branches of psychology have adopted their main thesis from Platoand Aristotle, who had maintained that the whole is always more than thesum of its parts. Philosophically, the movements have links with FranzBrentano's philosophy, especially his `psychology of actions' and itsemphasis on intentionality. The very notion of `gestalt' involves a subjec-tive perspective; the formation of gestalts depends on the subject's experi-ence and action. Thus, the notion of `gestalt' is connected with UexkuÈ ll'sview that the object is determined by the subject's typical relationship withits Umwelt and the type of action it is going to perform. UexkuÈ ll speaks of`tones' and `melodies' and their interplay that will have an e�ect of its ownon every participant in the commonUmwelt. The idea seems to be includedin the so-called `Ehrenfels criteria'. Christian von Ehrenfels, a pupil ofBrentano, put forward in 1890 his ideas of the GestaltqualitaÈten (qualitiesof gestalts) and considered them to depend on two criteria: those ofUÈbersummativitaÈt (that the sum is more than the parts of it added up) andTransponierbarkeit (possibility of transposition). The ®gure perceived canbe held as a gestalt if, on the one hand, the sum is more than the parts, andif, on the other hand, the ®gure can be transposed. `Transposition' is herea musical term. It refers to variations of a certain piece performed orwritten using a key that di�ers from the original one. The criterionof UÈbersummativitaÈt is clear enough, that of Transponierbarkeit needsclari®cation. Ehrenfels terms a perception of a ®gure the Verlaufsgestalt(process gestalt) if it is still recognizable although all tones of it aretransposed to another pitch or are even modulated (HofstaÈ tter 1960[1957]: 142±143).

Experiences in UexkuÈ ll's theory of meaning form gestalts. The prin-ciple of subjectivity in animal semiosis meets the criteria. The whole inUexkuÈ ll's functional cycle is always more than a mere mechanistic experi-ence of a mechanistic reception of a Merkmal-TraÈger, and the motorreactions vary, too. The leading role of meaning and the subjective natureof meaning and the Umwelt in UexkuÈ ll's model fully accord with thebasic ideas of Gestalt psychology. Cycles of sign functions are not repeatedlike certain melodies in only one single key. On the contrary, tones andmelodies are frequently transposed, though they, nevertheless, remaindiscernible. But as UexkuÈ ll underlines, transposed melodies can and willlead to entirely new melodies that on the basis of the `theory of com-position of nature', especially according to the `rules of counterpoint'Ð as UexkuÈ ll characterizes them Ð may come to mean something new.These new melodies may represent some kind of `evolution' Ð perhapsthe term `change' would ®t better, as mentioned above, UexkuÈ ll does not

520 T. JaÈmsaÈ

accept the central Darwinian terms. In sum, the movement of Gestaltpsychology has in¯uenced UexkuÈ ll's biological theory of meaning, butde®nitely not to such an extent that it might in any way dim the light oforiginality in his theory.No doubt, Gestalt psychology is important as an introduction to some

pivotal theoretical points of departure in UexkuÈ ll's theory of meaning.In accordance with this, a semiotic view of action akin to that of UexkuÈ llcan be seen Ð more or less Ð in Karl BuÈ hler's work. BuÈ hler has appliedthe Gestalt psychological view of action and functions to language andother semiotic systems. His work was appreciated by some linguists, aboveall by Roman Jakobson. Representatives from the Circle Linguistique dePrague, which Jakobson also belonged to, regularly visited BuÈ hler inVienna, where he and his wife, the developmental psychologist CharlotteBuÈ hler, were living in the 1930s. Karl BuÈ hler's signi®cance as a highlyin¯uential ®gure in linguistics is indisputable. UexkuÈ ll might have beenfamiliar with BuÈ hler's theory, as well.BuÈ hler developed his theory of language functions throughout his

scholarly active life. His preliminary outline of the theory appeared in ananalysis of a sentence in 1918. His model of language and sign functionsin general took shape ®rst in the article about axiology of languageabout ®fteen years later (BuÈ hler 1933: 19±90). The article appeared ina reprint in 1969. BuÈ hler used the article in an unrevised version for hismain work Sprachtheorie (BuÈ hler 1934: 12f).After the outbreak of World War II the BuÈ hlers spent the rest of their

lives in the U.S. Karl BuÈ hler wrote mostly unpublished articles during thistime. His exceptional signi®cance as a theoretician of language was ®rstacknowledged in July 1979 when Thomas A. Sebeok delivered a lecture onhim. Two years later he published a respectful and sympathetic essay onBuÈ hler considering him one of the greatest forerunners of current semi-otics (Sebeok 1987). In 1984, BuÈhler-Studien appeared in two volumesconcerning especially BuÈ hler's theory of language, and currently there areplans to publish some of the numerous manuscripts that BuÈ hler wrote inthe U.S. (Musol� 1998: 1057±1058). In 1990, BuÈ hler's Sprachtheorieappeared in an English translation entitled Theory of Language.The introduction of BuÈ hler's semiotic model takes place here in order

to show the links between his and UexkuÈ ll's theories and to providebackground to UexkuÈ ll's semiotic thinking. The points in common will beoutlined below.HofstaÈ tter was a pupil of BuÈ hler. By combining the core contents of the

two books,Die Krise der Psychologie (1927) and Sprachtheorie, HofstaÈ ttersummarizes in the Introduction to Psychologie his teacher's views ofpsychology and the functions of language. One of his diagrams can be seen


in Figure 7. Instead of the word `psychology', he might have used the term`psychological functions'. The functions consist of Erlebnis (experience)and Verhalten (behavior) (cf. the perceptual and motor ®elds in UexkuÈ ll'stheory of meaning). The functions manifest, for example, the Gebilde(cultural constructs). TheGebilde encompass language, works of art, socialinstitutions, etc.

Figures 7 and 8. HofstaÈtter's (1960 [1957]: 10) diagram of Karl BuÈhler's schema of

psychological communication (on the left). Alongside is a diagram of his so-called Organon

model from 1934 with English translations of the terms (Habermas 1988: 278). The word

organon `tool' is a quote from Plato's dialogue Kratylos. The model is based on the view of

language Plato introduced in the dialogue. The expression GegenstaÈ nde u Sachverhalte means

in English `things and propositions'

522 T. JaÈmsaÈ

Figure 8 represents BuÈ hler's view of communication. BuÈ hler calls itthe organon model. The meaning of the Greek word organon, `tool orinstrument', occurs in Old Greek in at least two contexts. Firstly, organonis an instrument of perception Ð the sense organ Ð or an instrument ofbodily action Ð the body part; secondly, it is an instrument for theproduction of speech (Wittstock and Kauczor 1988: 52, 28).As stated by Habermas (1998 [1988]: 277±280), BuÈ hler's model is prag-

matic, semiotic, and intentionalistic. The model concerns not only signsof speech but perceptual and motor signs as well. One reason for the adop-tion of the term organon might be that BuÈ hler hereby wishes his model tobe related to the German tradition of the philosophy of language. In thenineteenth century, Humboldt had created a system concerning languageas a whole. He had described language as a twofold system. Accordingto the terms used by him, it was a combination of ergon and energeia. Theword ergonmeans à product of work'. The word energeia derives from twoparts: en- ìnside' and ergon. Thus, ènergeia' means `that which in¯uencesinside a product of work and creates it'.9 Although BuÈ hler's single termexpresses less than the two in Humboldt, it also highlights the fact thatlanguage and signs in general are like tools by which our sign actionsare realized. Language and other sign systems are described by BuÈ hler asinstruments of life and of its actions, especially those of communication.The focus in BuÈ hler's diagram is the triangle with an S (sign). Thus, the

diagram refers to sign processes in practice. The circle surrounding thetriangle designates a sense perception. The intersections of the circle andthe triangle embodywhat BuÈ hler calls das Prinzip der abstraktiven Relevanz(the principle of the abstractive relevance). It implies that sense perceptionsare always individually modi®ed.The triangle has two meaning functions. Inside the circle, it means that

only the subjectively important will ®lter into the consciousness of thereceiver and travel on. Outside the circle, the triangle refers to the factthat subjective impressions and a certain evaluation will be associatedwith the sense perception. A sender is in BuÈ hler's model at the sametime a receiver. As the sender receives a sense perception from outsidehe transforms it into a code like language (i.e., into signs) according tothe principle of abstractive relevance. Then he lets the construction go onto the receiver. Communication has come into being.Although BuÈ hler was a psychologist and not a linguist or a philosopher,

he can be compared with good reason to Peirce and de Saussure as apioneer of language and sign theory. His Sprachtheorie is probably the ®rstbook to make a general survey of language from a functional pointof view. It has the subtitle Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache(The Representational Function of Language).


As the diagram shows, BuÈ hler deals with two further functions, thoseof expression and appeal. In communication between two people, onehas the role of sending a message and the other that of receiving it. Thesender realizes all three functions. Firstly, he conveys information ofsome experience of his (Darstellung, i.e., the representational function).Secondly, his discourse of information is an expression of his inner state(Ausdruck, or the expressive function). Thirdly, the discourse aims at achange in the receiver's inner state or, anyway, tries to have an in¯uenceon him/her (Appell, or the appealing function).

The Circle Linguistique de Prague was the ®rst herald of linguisticpragmatics. The text of Theses Presented to the First Congress of SlavicPhilologists in Prague, 1929 begins: `Language like any other humanactivity is goal-oriented' (Steiner 1982: 5). In the analysis of sentences, thePrague School, and Jakobson in particular, tried to take communicativefunctions into account. Jakobson moved to the U.S. in 1942. About twodecades later, when pragmatics of language was more in vogue, he outlineda functional schema of communication (Jakobson 1960: 350±377).

Jakobson's model does not decisively di�er from that of BuÈ hler. Hehas, however, analyzed the communicative functions in more detail.Jakobson calls the roles in the functional structure of discourse `consti-tutive factors', of which there are six. The representational factor re¯ectsthe context of the message. For example, this text is a message based onthe context (i.e., on everything the author knows of the topic). The expres-sive factor re¯ects the sender's role in the message. The conative factor isrepresented in what kind of an e�ect the sender of the message wishesto have on a receiver. The phatic factor is manifested in an action thataims at keeping up the contact between the sender and the receiver. Themetalingual factor appears in how the sender considers the code used.For example, a speaker's expression, `in a word', ful®lls the metalingualfactor. Finally, the poetic factor is included in a message mirroringanother message. Metaphors, parables, humor, and the like transform aninformative message into a poetic one or use language, or other codes,purely for a play.

The emphasis on goal-orientation in the program of the Prague Schoolre¯ected the signi®cance of the phenomenological philosophy and theGestalt psychology of the era. Both stress the importance of intentionality,i.e., goal-orientation, and of the wholeness of communicative situationsas ®elds of some kind.

In the same year as Jakobson launched his Constitutive Factors Model,BuÈ hler published the book Das Gestaltprinzip im Leben der Menschen undder Tiere (The Principle of Gestalt in the Lives of Humans and Animals).BuÈ hler synthesizes what Gestalt psychology can contribute to a deeper

524 T. JaÈmsaÈ

understanding of both humans and animals. The closeness between BuÈ hlerand UexkuÈ ll is re¯ected in a brief chapter of BuÈ hler's book. It deals withUexkuÈ ll's doctrine of Umwelt.Functions of language are not explicitly included in UexkuÈ ll's theory

in Bedeutungslehre. On the contrary, in Das allmaÈchtige Leben, UexkuÈ llhas plenty to say about language. Moreover, we have to keep in mindthat language functions do not di�er, in principle, from other kinds offunctions. The types of language functions could well be classi®cationsof the sign functions described by UexkuÈ ll. As can be seen in DasallmaÈchtige Leben, UexkuÈ ll was deeply familiar with the principlesof Gestalt psychology as well as with Karl BuÈ hler's work (as mentionedabove).The sender's expression corresponds inUexkuÈ ll's diagram to aMerkmal-

TraÈger. It will be processed into a meaning or a complex of meanings bythe receiver. The motor reaction of the Wirkmal-TraÈger is usually an actof pronunciation but it might be, of course, any speci®c act, whatever thatis aroused by the Merkmal-TraÈger and the meaning experience connectedwith it. The most usual reaction could be an almost imperceptible mentalmovement on the basis of the meaning experience of theMerkmal-TraÈger.In discourse analysis, scholars use the term tenor (i.e., the general purportor drift, especially intentionality, of a document or speech) to describewhat kind of an e�ect the participants of a ®eld, in overlapping Umwelten,have on each other.HofstaÈ tter's version of BuÈ hler's schema of communication is still deeper.

A detailed analysis would not be appropriate here. The focus from theperspective ofUexkuÈ ll's theory ofmeaning is on the smaller triangles insidethe big one. Erlebnis (experience) and Verhalten (behavior) are psycho-logically inter-linked. UexkuÈ ll's pragmatics might be expressed inthese terms, as well. The semiotic functions are mentioned on the sidesof the big triangle. Nevertheless, BuÈ hler's analysis is di�erent and fromthe standpoint of the Umwelt not as relevant as UexkuÈ ll's.Let us still return to BuÈ hler's last book. It appeared three years before

his death. In it, BuÈ hler had collected together his main theoretical thoughtson Gestalt psychology. The image is fragmentary and episodic, almostaphoristic, and exactly because of this is so revealing. In the Preface, herecalls his book published in 1913,Die Gestaltwahrnehmungen (Perceptionsof Gestalt), and quotes a passage from it where he, in turn, quotes AdolfHildebrand and his sentence (BuÈ hler 1960: 7), `EinDrama, eine Symphoniehat eine Architektur, einen inneren Bau, ist ein organisches Ganzesvon VerhaÈ ltnissen _ (`A play, a symphony has an inner structure, it isan organic whole composed of relations'). Hildebrand's division betweenDaseinsformen andWirkungsformen (existing and in¯uencing forms) in his


bookDas Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst (The Problem of Form inthe Visual Arts, sixth edition in 1908), seems to have had an indirectin¯uence not only on Gestalt psychology but on UexkuÈ ll's ethologicaltheory of sign and meaning as well.

BuÈ hler extends the gestalt rules to all organisms. UexkuÈ ll is one ofthe few scientists he mentions. In fact, he discusses extensively, in manypages, UexkuÈ ll's tick example, and has a passage of about two pagesdedicated to UexkuÈ ll's important work (BuÈ hler 1960: 26±28). BuÈ hler issorry for the omission of the notion of `gestalt' in UexkuÈ ll without takinginto account that the use of the name `I' of the ®gural speci®ers in percep-tions factually corresponds to the notion of `gestalt'. Moreover, he is notacquainted with UexkuÈ ll's Das allmaÈchtige Leben where the notion of`gestalt' appears explicitly. Anyway, BuÈ hler seems to presuppose thatUexkuÈ ll's term Merkmal-TraÈger refers, in fact, to the same. The whole ofa stimulus and its meaning in UexkuÈ ll's theory pleases him. In connec-tion with UexkuÈ ll, BuÈ hler speaks of the `semantic stimulus-responseschema'.

BuÈ hler's work is one of the great pioneering works in modernlinguistics and semiotics because it heralded the future analysis of com-munication realized in the theory of speech acts and, in fact, laid thefoundations for it. BuÈ hler termed the idea die Situationstheorie der Sprache(The Situational Theory of Language) (BuÈ hler 1934: 23) and mentioneda British linguist as a forerunner of it. His name Ð Alan Gardiner Ð hasbeen forgotten long since. In his work Theory of Speech and Language(1932), Gardiner claims for instance that

the act of speech is a highly complex, purposeful mode of human action _which arises in the intention of some member of the community to in¯uence oneor more of his fellows in reference to some particular thing. (Gardiner 1932: 62)

Theory of speech acts

The theory of communication, termed `speech act theory', has been devel-oped using ideas similar to those in Gardiner and on the basis oflanguage functions introduced ®rst by BuÈ hler and since by Jakobson andHalliday. Halliday's classi®cation will be passed over. His model offunctions is as such very sophisticated and has exerted a great impactespecially on language instruction. The so-called communicative modelof language instruction is based, to a large extent, on Halliday's model.The functions in Halliday's model are, however, related to those in BuÈ hlerand Jakobson.

526 T. JaÈmsaÈ

In 1955, the main ®gure in the òrdinary language philosophy' ofthe Oxford School, John Longfellow Austin, delivered his WilliamJames lectures at Harvard. Judging from the very detailed edition ofthe lecture text, Austin obviously planned publishing it but ®nally drop-ped it for some reason. All in all, the list of Austin's publications isvery short; he seems to have had an exceptionally critical attitudetowards his works. Austin's theory of speech acts, or `linguistic acts', asfor example, Horn (1995: 489) calls them, was published posthumou-sly seven years later by James O. Urmson (Austin 1962). The point ofdeparture in Austin is the sentence in Wittgenstein's ®rst posthumousbook, Philosophische Untersuchungen Ð `The meaning of the wordis its use in language' (Wittgenstein 1953 [1951]: 43; cf. Magill 1990:653±661).In speech act theory, two levels are distinguished: on one hand, that

of `locutionary' acts, and on the other hand, that of ìllocutionary' and`perlocutionary' acts. The terms were coined by Austin. They are basedon the Latin participle stem locut Ð of the verb loqui `to speak' but arearti®cial English adaptations and as such not used before.The speech act theory will be introduced here, of course, because as

a pragmatic theory of speech it is very close to the semiotic theory of actionand to the active signs andmeanings inUexkuÈ ll's theory. The links betweenthe two will be outlined towards the end of the introduction.Locutionary acts represent the propositional meaning. The sentence,

`The window is closed', has as a locutionary act the function of a merestatement that a certain window is closed in the situation where theaddresser of the sentence is present with some addressees who are pro-bably intended to hear what she/he says. The locutionary act comprisesthe proposition. When each morpheme is added to a former one, the sumis the statement that the window concerned is closed. Locutionary actscan be divided into three: the `phonetic', `phatic', and `rhetic' sub-acts.The phonetic subact comprises the phonation of the sentence in question,the phatic sub-act comprises the sentence from a formal point of view(the morphological and syntactic perspective), and the rhetic subactexpresses the content of the sentence and, thus, expresses an àssignmentof reference'. Because conveying the reference is of primary importancein this type of linguistic action, the locutionary act is also called the`reference act'.The core of Austin's theory is in the ìllocutionary' and `perlocutionary'

acts. The very same sentence, `The window is open', is seldom a statementonly, but if so, it would ful®ll the task given to the utterance of it bythe addresser. In that case, she/he would only state that the windowhappens to be open, that's all.


The illocutionary meaning is termed `force'. The force of statingsomething (the force of argument) is essential in the language ofscholars and scientists. And when the forces clash with each other Ð asthey do now and then Ð it will result in controversies between mean-ings, individuals, and schools. It is not rare only in ordinary life thata simple statement, like `The people A [that the addresser happens tobelong to] are better than the people B [the reference group of theaddressee]', may have opposite illocutionary forces and lead to, insteadof the use of language, the use of heavier sign systems like that of armsand ®sts. The illocutionary meaning is the meaning that the addressereither really attaches to his statement or is believed to have attached to it(or both).

Let us imagine a housewife coming home feeling `dead beat'. Herchildren and her unemployed husband are sitting at the table and playingcards. At that moment, she is out of tune with them, more or less, andher Umwelt re¯ects that she feels that the air in the room is even stalerthan it actually is and says so in a smothered voice or openly ventingher anger on her loved ones. Thus, she whispers or cries, `The windowis closed!' In Austin's terms, this is an `illocutionary act'. It expressesher attitude to the situation and embodies the intentionality thatcomes into being mainly as a result of her fatigue. The housewife'sillocutionary act aims at a change in the situation. One of the peoplesitting at the table stands up, goes to the window and opens it. Theresponse to the illocutionary act is called by Austin the `perlocutionaryact'. As we can easily see, Austin's theory is ultimately a semioticone. In perlocutionary acts, it takes into account not only linguisticbut also the motive responses, embodied, for example, in closing thewindow.

The theory was developed later particularly by another philosopherof the Oxford School, John R. Searle, ®rst in 1965 in an article `Whatis speech act?' and in numerous contributions after that (cf. also Searle1969). One of the most important approaches to the speech act theory bySearle was taken in 1976 when he classi®ed speech acts on the basis of theverb types used. Searle proposes ®ve functions: representative (to believe),directive (to tell to do something), commissive (to promise), expressive(to thank), and declarative. The last was called by Austin `performative'.The `declarative' or `performative' function is realized, for example, ina clergyman's sentence, `Thus, I baptize you John'.

Austin had presumed that speech acts are conventional things, inherentin the language. The ®rst developers of discourse analysis, John Sinclairand Malcolm Coulthard, showed in 1975 that they were essentiallycommunicative.

528 T. JaÈmsaÈ

Speech act theory is still an actual theory in philosophy and linguistics.It is and will be elaborated on almost continuously. The recentdevelopment of the theory will be, however, passed over.In connection with speech act theory it is perhaps never mentioned

that BuÈ hler was, in fact, a great pioneer of it. Two of his three termscontentually correspond to the respective terms in speech act theory.The `locutionary act' (or `reference act') corresponds to what BuÈ hlercalls Darstellungsfunktion (representational function). It was stated abovetogether with his two other terms:Ausdrucksfunktion (expressive function)and Appellfunktion (appealing function). Both of them classify what inthe sender's message is usually included. TheAusdrucksfunktion representsthe essential of the sender's state when he/she expresses the message.Attitudes, the balance of mind, the mood etc., are embodied in the messageand appear, of course, more clearly in the paralinguistic features of thespeech, e.g., in the intensity and pitch and strain of the voice, etc. They arenot represented in Austin. But BuÈ hler's term Appellfunktion perfectlycorresponds toAustin's term `illocutionary act'. On the other hand, BuÈ hlerdoes not pay attention to what Austin calls the `perlocutionary act'.Linguistic acts do not decisively di�er from other types of acts. Long

before speech act theory was developed, UexkuÈ ll outlined a functionalcycle that is suitable for describing, in addition to humans' linguisticbehavior, also animals' communicative and other acts in general. Thefunctional cycle applies, as stated, to acts of plants, too. Let us take oneexample to illustrate how well UexkuÈ ll's schema really works and howclose it is to speech act theory. In our example, there is a functional cyclebetween a cow and a dairymaid. A cow expresses by mooing that it istime for milking and for taking her into the cowshed. A cow's mooingis a `locutionary' or `reference act'.The treatment of the cow's mooing as a reference act shows very

clearly the shortcomings of traditional linguistics and its biased focusingon the registration of external things. So far, we do not have animallinguistics, although it might provide a salutary lesson to linguists andcould well undermine their strong belief in the uniqueness of the humanlanguage from a structural point of view. In applying `external' linguisticsto the reference act, we should pay attention to the sound, to the problemwhether there are morpheme-like sequences that might mean somethingand what the mooing message refers to.Probably a certain rule holds for both humans and animals: com-

municative signs are always used for something. A cow's mooing as anillocutionary act tries to convey to a dairymaid who has a considerablecommand of a cow's sign behavior that the cow wants to be taken into thecowshed and milked. The perlocutionary act is the dairymaid's reaction.


She will take or not the mooing cow into the cowshed and milk her.The balance of needs has then been restored. This will take place ina perlocutionary act.

From the perspective of the dairymaid, the cow's mooing is aMerkmal-TraÈger. The woman hears it and gives it a meaning. The reactionof the meaning is the Wirkmal-TraÈger that she carries out. She will takethe mooing cow Ð together with the other cows of the herd Ð intothe cowshed and start milking it. From the viewpoint of the dairymaid, thecow is an object while from the viewpoint of a cow, the dairymaid(and the cowshed and the intention of having been milked) are objects.

Two extensions of UexkuÈ ll's theory

The inner Umwelt

UexkuÈ ll's functional cycles are mainly concerned with the interactionbetween an organism and its perceptual Umwelt. The expansion of thetheory to human life in Das allmaÈchtige Leben deals only with linguisticperceptions from outside and motor responses to them directed, likewise,outside. The entire inner zone has been ignored. The following will tryto expand UexkuÈ ll's semiotic theory to an interplay of an agent andhis/her inner Umwelt with the ideas or the underlying objects of mind,i.e., thoughts, concepts, feelings, attitudes, etc. After a relatively compre-hensive analysis of the central position of concepts and language in thepsychic functional cycles, the tangle of intertwined threads will be put inorder, at least in the sense that the connection between UexkuÈ ll'sfunctional cycle and the use of it as amodel of inner events will be describedin outline. It will be realized in a diagram, in an adaptation of the same®gure (Figure 5) I used to demonstrate the semiotic nature of UexkuÈ ll'scycle at the beginning of the article.

Since the mid-seventies, the `grammar of thought' has been developedpurposefully. The present keen study of the relationship between lan-guage and thought is based on an old tradition. As a pioneer of the study oflanguage, Aristotle is still in¯uential. Aristotle's view of a sign is called`representational'. There are three levels to be considered: the linguistic,the epistemological, and the ontological (Keller 1995: 36±43). Aristotle wasthe ®rst to clearly make a distinction between the three. The sounds(phonai) constitute linguistic signs (symbola) that refer to epistemologicalnotions or propositions (pathemata) which, in turn, refer to ontologicalthings and events (pragmata). The pathemata are best known as conceptsand states of a�airs while the pragmata form the level of reference with

530 T. JaÈmsaÈ

referents or objects. The `speculative' grammar of the Middle Ages wasdeveloped on the three-level doctrine of Aristotle. One of the mostprominent Aristotelian philosophers of language was Thomas Aquinas(Pasnau 1997: 558f).In his book published in 1975, Thought and Language, Jerry Fodor

coined the term mentalese, the language of thought. Thinking waslanguage-like and had the grammar of its own, as Fodor put it. Anothermodern pioneer of the view that language represents thought is NoamChomsky. While Fodor seems to base his view on Aristotelian empirismand the objective presence of the objects we perceive, Chomsky believesin inner knowledge and in Platonic ideas. Language originates, accordingto him, in innate logical structures of knowledge. Its main function is notto communicate but to embody thought (Chomsky 1986, 1997 [1993]).There are many theories of the relationship between language and

thought. Because of the topic, they will not be discussed here. Instead, anapplication of UexkuÈ ll's view of signs to the supposed relationship withsigns, meanings, and so-called èxperiential objects' will be introducedin Figure 9. The model will be demonstrated only in rough outline.It follows the schema of the three levels in Aristotle. Peirce as the greatestfrontiersman of semiotics followed the Aristotelian triad of language,thought, and world. The best known classi®cation introduced by himis that between `sign' (like an element of language), ìnterpretant(e.g., a mental image), and òbject' (an element or a combination ofelements in the outside or inside world).All of the three great pioneers of the study of language Ð Humboldt,

de Saussure, and Chomsky Ð divided language into two segments, thoseof the language act in practice and of language as a capacity or knowledge.Why? It is perhaps because the manifestations of language are alwayssingular, i.e., individual, while language as a capacity or knowledge isgeneric. When one hears or sees a clause, e.g., Ì met John downtown', asa sequence of sounds or letters, what one hears or sees is this very clause,a sensation of this. All signs are singular. If one sees a ®re in the forest,hears a cry, tastes sweetness in a dessert, or feels anxiety, one has to dealin a certain time or span of time and in a certain place with a certainsingular object. Another illustration of the singularity we are dealingwith when receiving a sign (or producing it) might be the sight of a bird.If one sees a swan one, of course, sees an individual swan, not the classof the birds in question.In linguistics, the sequences of sounds or letters are divided into

morphemes on the basis of what each of them refers to. Thus, in the clauseÌ met John downtown', the morpheme I refers to the pragmatic subjector the addresser of the clause, the morpheme met refers to a common


situation with a certain person in the time before the moment of utterance,the morpheme John refers to the person met, and the morpheme downtownrefers to the place where the meeting between `I' and `John' happened.What is decisive is, of course, the gestalt or the whole of the clause.

But the same is, in principle, valid also for the other kinds of signs.When someone sees a ®re in the forest, hears a cry, tastes sweetness in

Figure 9. A diagram of the inner Umwelt with signs and meanings. The representations are

signs of objects that will be given meaning by concepts (C) in Cognitive Space. Experiential

Space can use representations not only from outside but from inside, too. Also the singular

appearances of concepts can be matched in thinking with concepts and represented in language

and the other codes, i.e., sign systems. The concepts convey the objects in di�erent codes to the

experiencer himself and can be used also for the transmission of them to outside people

532 T. JaÈmsaÈ

the dessert, or feels anxiety, the sensation above all forms an indivisiblewhole but can also be as if it is resolved into morphemes, each of themreferring to a certain entity. In the cases above, the relations mightbe expressed in linguistic paraphrases, too: Ì see a ®re in the forest', Ì heara cry', Ì taste sweetness in the dessert', Ì feel anxiety'. The codes connectedwith di�erent senses di�er, of course, from that of language. They haverealms of their own. Language is not the model for the other codes butmay represent them, though. That gives language a special position. Thelanguage representations of sensations demonstrate that every sensationof an object, i.e., a sign, is, in fact, similar to the clause where the wordÌ' represents the subject of an Umwelt, the word `John' an object of it, andthe word `met' both of them in regard to each other.The morphemes and the entities of a sensation have the same character.

They can be understood only on the basis of each of their references.We usually say that a clause like Ì met John downtown' has a meaning ormeans a certain state of a�airs. The meaning is composed of concepts.Each morpheme of the clause Ì met John downtown' is matched witha certain concept, with what it means to be an Ì', to `meet' in the past,to be a `John', and to be `downtown'. This is, of course, a very roughdescription but, nevertheless, demonstrates what the morphemes areabout. The concepts are tools of understanding and transform a sensation,a physical event, into a perception and an experience. Each morphemein the clause has a singular referent mediated by the concepts. Conceptsgive the singular event a generic character. For example, identifying a ®reis due to the generic concept matched with it. Without the presence ofthe concept concerned, the person who has a sight of ®re would not haveknown what he/she has actually seen (cf. the form of receptive dysphasiawhere the concepts are missing or confused and the child may call a pieceof bread a `cookie' or a `rock', or the like). The concepts are the very objectsof the sensations described above. So are they in the clause, too: theaddresser (or the one whose Umwelt the clause deals with), a man called`John', the act of meeting, the downtown place. In this case, they have theircounterparts outside the addresser's mind as well. As a matter of fact, thereferents or objects are entities in his/her mind. He/she has a mental imageof the relation between the entities mentioned in the clause.Understanding that a sensation of the sounds that form a clause is

equivalent to the sensations of the other kinds of signs is the pivot here.All sensations, even hearing a sequence of sounds of a clause, are at ®rstindices and can be classi®ed only thereafter into other types of signs.Linguistic signs are usually called `symbols'. In addition to `symbols' andìndices', they are ìcons' as well. Language mirrors the Umwelt in gram-matical structures, e.g., in the typical SVO order (subjectzverbzobject),


in the sounds used, etc. It can iconize itself as well. Poetic language ismostly the use of the language of language. (On the character of iconicelements cf. Ho�meyer and Emmeche 1991.)

The concepts are perhaps not merely concepts but conglomerations ofconceptual elements. The elements can be arranged in di�erent ways.Therefore, the concepts di�er in di�erent languages and re¯ect the Umwelt(the language community) represented by them. Although concepts varyfrom language to language and even from dialect to dialect, their make-upseems to be composed of universal components (Deleuze and Guattari1994 [1991]: 19±20). Russell called the universal components `logicalatoms' (Sainsbury 1995).

Apparently, it is as if concepts are cloaked in transparent veils. Theitems of most concepts don't have clear-cut borderlines between eachother. The concepts of a particular language are rewritten all the time bythe culture of the community concerned. The same holds, of course, forthe concepts such as the individuals of the community understand them.The matching through morphemes with the perceptual and conceptuallevels demonstrates the simultaneity of the perceptual reception and theconceptual production.

Language terms are to some extent confusing. Especially the term`meaning' is very vague. The terms used by UexkuÈ ll in the diagram Ðin spite of the fact that they are close to those of behaviorism Ð areclearer. At a general level, it would be perhaps more relevant to speakof `reception' and `production'. Then, it is a peripheral question if onefeature in a sign process is really a sign and another feature a meaning.Reception is essentially reception of a sign, but it may involve processesof production, too. Thus, the act of production is not always that ofproducing a meaning. But if we speak of a sign as a stimulus whichprovokes something more in the mind and identify that as a `meaning',it might be acceptable.

On the basis of dictionaries, we have a deep rooted mental image thatwords are like things. The typical image of things is, in fact, wrong, asthe many functions of a ¯ower stalk presented by UexkuÈ ll exemplify.The relation or the function in which a thing appears gives the thing ameaning. It is the same in speech or writing. The meaning of a word in thedictionary is only an approximation. The real meanings occur only in adiscourse. The discourse gives the word used a certain function. Froma functional point of view, each clause, not to say anything of a discourse,seems to be a net of conceptual functions in which, roughly speaking, theformer always entails the latter, in a sense, `I ((met)((John) downtown)))'.

From a logico-functional point of view, clauses are nets of relations.They seem to follow the formula xRy, x and y being arguments and

534 T. JaÈmsaÈ

R a relator. In traditional philosophical semantics, relations are largelyneglected while things instead are placed at the center of the stage.In a clause like Ì met John downtown', the words I referring to the

addresser and downtown referring to a locality are arguments while theword met is a relator. The clause shows that an event took place whenthe addresser and John saw each other and performed an act of com-munication. Although the relator refers to a reciprocal act, the chosenperspective is that of the addresser or the subject. In a logical formula,the clause might be expressed as follows, argux PROC (STAT) arguy.The relators represent three main types, CAUS (PROC (STAT)),PROC (STAT), and STAT. The subtypes are much more.The symbol STAT (i.e., stative) with a decisive subsymbol shows the

quality that distinguishes the act concerned from the other acts. Thesymbol PROC (i.e., processive) of the string PROC (STAT) appears,for example, in the description of the clause À wind arose'. The stringx PROC (x STATexis) indicates that a change is attached to the act andthe act is di�erent at the moment t1 or before the wind has arisen com-pared to that at the moment t2 when it has happened already. The staticsymbol might have a subsymbol exis (i.e., existential) referring to the factthat a process x, wind, has the primary quality of existence.The symbol CAUS (i.e., causative) refers to a source of energy, or

an agent, that accomplishes the act. The clause Ì wrote a letter' impliesthe relator of the typeCAUS ((PROC) (STAT)), more precisely xCAUS((y PROC) (y STATexpr)), because the act of writing presupposes some-one (x) to use his energy for the writing of a letter (y). The process pre-supposes a change similar, in principle, to that in the former example. Tothe static symbol should be attached the subsymbol expr (i.e., expressive).The subsymbol refers to the act of expressing Ð more closely, that theargument y is produced as a result of an expressive act.A clause of the type `Finland lies high up in the north' implies the relator

of the type STAT; the symbol indicates that the quality of a country lyingsomewhere does not change. It might be speci®ed by the subsymbolloca (i.e., locative): x STATloca y. This descriptive model is introduced inmore detail in JaÈ msaÈ (1986, 1987, 1996).As stated above, from the perspective of language and other codes too,

the levels of sensations and concepts inherently match each other.The term `level of outer representations' in Figure 9 refers to the percep-tions from outside the subject's Umwelt. Once these representations,e.g., an auditive perception of the clause Ì met John downtown' or avisual perception of a ®re in the forest, have developed in the mind, itis as if they have been ®ltered onto another mental layer and can usuallybe recalled from there at any time. The stored experiences constitute


here the `level of inner representations'. In principle, everythingexperienced will remain in the mind but, of course, the mind is veryselective in storingmemories and especially in recalling them. The principleof Bedeutungsverwertung is realized. The level of inner representationsdecisively di�ers from that of outer representations because everythingoriginating in the mind can be represented at this level. The levels of theouter and inner representations together encompass what is called herethe `experiential space'. Inner representations don't come, of course, onlyfrom outside. They largely originate from inside.

Figure 10 tries to demonstrate how UexkuÈ ll's model of the functionalcycle can be applied to illustrate how the semiosis (or the signi®cation) asa pivotal process of mind comes about. As an example, let us presume thata girl pays attention to a certain ¯ower in a meadow. The sight of the¯ower is an outer representation that is processed in the cognitive spaceand matched with a certain concept, with that of `¯ower'. The conceptenables the girl to know that the thing she has a sight of is a ¯ower.The sight of a thing and its conceptual mapping can be named the

Figure 10. An expansion of UexkuÈll's functional cycle to the description of the semiosis or the

signi®cation (cf. Figure 5). Every mind constitutes a semiosphere where all events are, in fact,

processes of the semiosis. UexkuÈll's functional cycle can be applied to designate not only the

behavior of animals in their Umwelten but human behavior bymeans of lingual and other semiotic

codes. As a matter of fact, the forms of life are essentially the same in all their appearances. The

only di�erence is a gradual and qualitative one.

536 T. JaÈmsaÈ

`perceptual sign' (Merk-Zeichen) in UexkuÈ ll's model. In Peirce's terms,there is an object (a ¯ower) and an interpretant of it (the concept of`¯ower'). The representamen can be manifested in many forms Ð in apronounced or written word ¯ower, in a picture of it, in an act of picking,etc. This time, the perceptual sign is an object that will be interpretedin di�erent kinds of representamens. The representamens embody thesubject's response to the perceptual sign and result in them. The responseconstitutes the `motor sign' (Wirk-Zeichen).The ¯ower never appears alone but as a part of the continuous mental

functional cycle of the subject. That's why items like the thing `¯ower' andthe concept of it and the manifestations of the concept are like particles ina certain body of matter or like words in a certain discourse or text.Let us return to Figure 9. The diagram has one important point

missing Ð the rules. Traditional grammar devotes much attention tothem, and so does the generative grammar of Chomsky. Nobody knowshow the rules really function. But it is possible to see the problem ofrules also from the viewpoint of intentionality.Intentionality is the basic biological power that in humans implements

a human-like behavior and in other species of organisms a behaviorpeculiar to each of them. It is interpreted here semiotically as a con-tinuous process of reception and a production of signs. It can be supposedthat intentionality is realized by two kinds of rules Ð speci®c ones thatrepresent the species concerned, and universal ones that represent allorganisms.In fact, intentionality is largely outside our epistemological possibil-

ities. Nevertheless, we can suppose that it mainly drives at establishingorder, an arrangement of elements. Possibly, there are, in fact, two kindsof intentionalities Ð positive and negative. The former aims at order whilethe latter, on the contrary, aims at disorder. This is, of course, a meta-physical interpretation of which there are insu�cient proofs. But it mightbe useful, though. The dialectics of any organism and especially that of thehuman being consists of endless e�orts to restore an equilibrium, e�ortsthat never lead to any ®nal conclusion. The equilibrium is a between-state of being and non-being. It is perhaps the very quality of life thattruly makes the discourse of living Ð in Milan Kundera's well-knownparadoxical words Ð `intolerably light'.We have stated several times above that experiences are always singu-

lar events. Swans we see or clauses we hear cannot be generic. Only the levelof concepts gives the experience a generic meaning. The realm of conceptsmight be called `cognitive space'. Concepts are nameless. But from inside,they control the processes of signi®cation that end in names and, fromoutside, they control the corresponding opposite processes from names


to the equivalents of them in consciousness. In addition to concepts, cog-nitive space involves cognitive structures, the texts that are there to pro-duce for humans a human-like behavior and for individuals of our speciesan individual behavior, and for other kinds of organisms the `grammar' ofbehavior that distinguishes them from each other.

Chomsky, a Platonist who believes in innate ideas, calls the knowl-edge concerning language and its use in cognitive space Ð as iswell-known Ð `competence'. From the viewpoint of UexkuÈ ll's signtheory, Chomsky's anthropomorphic fallacy based on the uniquenessof human language seems to be fatal. Darwin already emphasized thathumans don't have anything that would not be present in the otherspecies, too. The competence of using signs is really not the private pro-perty of humans but, in point of fact, an essential part of each organism.The `vocabulary' is, of course, smaller in species that don't have suchan extensive nervous system as humans do. Simultaneously, each itemof the sign inventory is much more signi®cant in `lower' species.

There are some concepts of basic importance that will be assigned toa certain object right at the outset of life. We have spoken above ofLorenz's term PraÈgung and of his example of a human as a substitutemother for a gosling. The activation of the concept `mother' seems tosignify above all that a gosling acts as an agent (a subject) in an interplaybetween it and its Umwelt. The reciprocity between a certain gosling andits mother or a human substitute for her presupposes that the principleof point and counterpoint by UexkuÈ ll is operating. A newly hatched birdneeds, of course, nourishment and security. The fact that a certain objectcan provide them activates the basic concept of `mother'. From that timeonwards, the object has the conceptual label of `mother'.

The principle of point and counterpoint explains in general how thebasic concepts in an organism's life will be speci®ed. The example aboveis one of them. There might be, of course, more. The concepts of`danger', `enemy', `friend', `parents', etc., generally belong to them. Theyare basic not only in the life of the so-called lower organisms but in thatof humans, too. An individual of a certain species lives in a dialecticrelationship with the objects in its Umwelt. The way the points Ð e.g.,the intentions directed towards the parents (a desire for security, etc.) Ðmatch the counterpoints (the parents' readiness and ability to respondto the desire) will make the design of the concept. The correspondenceof point and counterpoint in a particular case will be learned as anadditional feature attached to the basic concept. The character of theadditional features will, of course, have an in¯uence throughoutthe individual's life. Pathological or deviant behavior may be mainlydue to these features.

538 T. JaÈmsaÈ

Both the outer and inner representations seem to project somethingoutside the Umwelt. It is an epistemological question that interests usespecially from an ontological point of view. Common sense does notdoubt the existence of the outside world. Objects are there but they areinside the mind, too. If no outer world of objects existed, how would itbe possible to speak of things common to all, or of events reported innewspapers? But there are object-like invariants inside the mind as well.The recent investigation of brain functions con®rms that the recognitionof the qualities of time and space attached to an outside object is not dueto the qualities of the object itself but to the perception of it produced inthe brain (cf. `genetic epistemology' and the Kantian postulates of spaceand time in Jean Piaget, Winkelman 1996). Space and time are permanentfeatures of concepts controlling perceptions.As mentioned many times above, Kant was for UexkuÈ ll the most

in¯uential thinker from the perspective of the doctrine of the Umwelt.Kant understood that space and time were `inner forms of perception'.Thus, he emphasized the existence of a subject, an experiencer, as thestarting point of his philosophy. On that very basis, UexkuÈ ll developedhis theory of the Umwelt.Thinking, or imagination, or recalling past memories, are language-like

only in one sense. The arguments and the relators form relations and, inprinciple, an in®nite number of combinations of them. The experientialspace di�ers from the sole outer and inner representations because of itsability to exploit the transparency between the three spaces and make useof all possible elements at the three levels. Besides, themind is able to createmuch that did not exist as such before. In thinking, it can exploit conceptsright away and, for example, formulate new scienti®c theories or Ð asmore usual Ð reformulate them.UexkuÈ ll's sign theory is, as far as I know, the ®rst of those concerning

communicative action that might be interpreted as considering bothdirections of communication Ð from an addresser to an addressee,and vice versa. To a certain extent, the application of the model inthis passage is, true, that of autocommunication. Yuri Lotman wasthe pioneer of autocommunication studies (cf. Broms 1988). He pre-sented a model of it in the early 1970s. The merit in Lotman's modelis paying attention to the fact that communication largely takes placein one's own mind. Because Lotman approaches mental communica-tion from another kind of frame of reference, it is mentioned here onlytangentially.In the present application of UexkuÈ ll's model it is possible to think not

only of the ®ltration of signs into the cognitive and the experientialspaces but of the opposite process, too Ð the chain of transformations of


the objects, the reabsorption, in the experiential space into concepts inthe cognitive space and from there into signs.

The inanimate Umwelten

Ernst Cassirer (1972 [1944]: 23) describes UexkuÈ ll as `a resolute championof vitalism' and contrasts biology with those sciences that deal withinorganic nature. If we think that life must have emerged on the basis ofinorganic processes and is not unique in that sense, we then have to searchfor a common philosophical basis for both organic and inorganic pro-cesses. As is well-known, Einstein linked matter and energy together inhis most famous formula. It is not impossible that, ultimately, the strictdi�erence between matter and consciousness or Ð in traditional terms Ðmatter and spirit is an Umwelt-based division and belongs to the basicsof human thought. Perhaps matter and spirit are only the two aspectsof our way of classifying the entity that, we think, must ®ll the spacesuch as we perceive it (JaÈ msaÈ 1994). Anyway, the contrapuntal principleof interaction in UexkuÈ ll's model excellently applies to the descrip-tion of inorganic processes as well. This has links with linguistics butactually belongs to the present ®eld of biosemiotics. As stated above,however, it might be more relevant to speak of the `semiotics of nature',or the like.

Cybernetics deals with self-regulatory systems. The systems concernedmight be explicated also in UexkuÈ ll's model. In 1932, the Americanphysiologist Walter Cannon spoke about `the wisdom of the body' andcoined a term to carry the meaning of the systems that kept the bodilyfunctions in equilibrium. The term was `homeostasis'. Homeostaticsystems can be understood as functional cycles in the very same senseas UexkuÈ ll understood the processes in animal psychology. Thus, forexample, the homeostatic system of the regulation of temperature can bedescribed in UexkuÈ ll's functional cycle. There are many signs indicatingthat the temperature of the body is going too low or too high. The signmay come from the skin. There are two kinds of temperature detectors ÐMerkmal-TraÈger Ð on the surface of the skin, receptors of heat and cold.The message from either of them travels to the anterior hypothalamusin the brain. The receptors in the hypothalamus receive the meaningof `cold' if the sign has come from a cold receptor on the skin and thatof `heat' if the sign has come from a heat receptor, respectively. Theinterpretation of the meaning of `cold' in the hypothalamus producesa Wirkmal-TraÈger of huddling and shivering, and the interpretation ofthe meaning of `heat' produces a sign with the opposite reaction of panting

540 T. JaÈmsaÈ

and sweating. In this case, the point of interaction is the body and thecounterpoint is its temperature. The detectors and bodily reactions forma network of devices and functions that keep the body temperature inbalance.The functional cycle is applicable even to physical processes. The inter-

play between air and water can demonstrate that. Let us suppose in thisinterplay that the air is the point and the water the counterpoint.The motion of molecules in the air slows down until the thermometer hasfallen to zero. The slowmotion of the air molecules is a carrier of meaning.The water will start reacting to it in a decisively di�erent way at thetemperature of zero degrees. Then, freezing begins. But the covering of iceis like a shield. The temperature under the shield will remain above zeroand reach at the bottom a level of four degrees. This will take placemainly because warmer water is heavier. In a sense, the covering of iceensures that the band of zero degrees is as narrow as possible and theconditions for life in the water can continue. To adapt the musicalmetaphor inBedeutungslehre, there are several melodies carrying the subtleequilibrium between point and counterpoint.The equilibrium between all physical and chemical factors has aston-

ished many scientists. Two of them, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis,have sketched the so-called Gaia Hypothesis to explain why everything onEarth seems to form a well-balanced whole. The hypothesis was originallyput forward in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. The point of departurein the hypothesis is the answer to the question of why Earth seems to di�eressentially from the other planets in our solar system. Lovelock's andMargulis' answer is that Earth, unlike the other planets, has to promotelife. In his book, The Ages of Gaia (1988), Lovelock explains the inter-connectedness of all the terrestrial systems. Gaia, as Lovelock puts it,is a living creature. Rocks belong to it just as a shell belongs to a snail.Lovelock crystallizes the main idea of the hypothesis,

Speci®cally, the Gaia hypothesis [says] that the temperature, oxidation, state,acidity, and certain aspects of the rocks and waters are kept constant, and that thishomeostasis is maintained by active feedback processes operated automatically

and unconsciously by the biota. (Lovelock 1988: 19)

The Gaia hypothesis is probably too narrow because it can be interpretedto give Earth, from a universal point of view, a uniquemeaning and as suchto represent traditional anthropomorphism. Is life Ð such as we perceiveit Ð the only indicator of the level of evolution? But in principle, thehypothesis, in spite of some of its qualities that might be illusory, is a stepin the right direction.


Cosmologists often speak of tiny di�erences between subatomic parti-cles that seem to decide and to have decided the fate of the universe.If a certain thing A had been slightly di�erent, the birth of the universewould never have taken place. An eminent British born cosmologist atthe University of Massachusetts, Edward Harrison writes,

We do not know why natural qualities, such as the strength of gravity, the speedof light, the electric charge on the electron and so on have the values they do. Yetthe slightest variation of their values would result in a barren universe without starsor light. Why are they precisely adjusted to give rise to life? (Harrison 1995: 201)

Harrison has three possible answers: God, highly intelligent beings inanother universe, or the anthropic principle. The last tries to be logicalbut seems as such to explain nothing. It argues that the universe iswhat it is because we are interwoven with it and if we were not a partof it the universe would be di�erent. Harrison himself stands for thetheistic alternative. The anthropic explanation undeniably has elementsof circularity.

Stephen Hawking asks the same kinds of questions. Had the density ofthe universe one second after the supposed Big Bang been greater or lesserby just one part in a thousand billion, the universe would either haverecollapsed or been essentially empty after ten years. And Hawking(1997 [1993]: 136) wonders, `How was it that the initial density was chosenso carefully? Maybe there is some reason why the universe should haveprecisely the critical density?' He states about the laws governing theuniverse, `These laws may have been ordained by God', and goes on,`Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began,it cannot answer the question: Why does the universe bother to exist?I don't know the answer to that' (Hawking 1997 [1993]: 89±90). Hawkingis, of course, a rationalist but he is a cosmologist, too, and tran-scendental questions seem to be closely connected with his work. Einsteinonce said (Ho�man 1972), `the most incomprehensible thing about theuniverse is that it is comprehensible'.

In sum, the fact that everything in nature, both in the macrocosm andin the microcosm, forms an amazing harmony lends support to UexkuÈ ll'sbasic insight in his Bedeutungslehre and Das allmaÈchtige Leben. UexkuÈ llseems to emphasize two things. His chief point is in the doctrine of theinterplay between two (or more) species of organisms. One organism iscalled `point', the other the `counterpoint'. The melodic in¯uence fromA to B and from B to A binds the pair together. But the signs cannot bedistinguished from their contents. The reciprocal in¯uence concerned takesplace in all sign processes and the transmission of meanings is the crucial

542 T. JaÈmsaÈ

thing in them. UexkuÈ ll con®ned himself to biological processes. Withoutknowing anything of Peirce's work, he did more for biological semioticsthan anyone else before.The extension of UexkuÈ ll's model to inorganic nature might be in

accordance with its author's views if the strict division of the conceptof nature into the organic and inorganic halves were abandoned. In hislast book, UexkuÈ ll (1950: 22) refers to Plato's idea of the universe asa living entity. The rotation of stars is Ð UexkuÈ ll follows Plato's way ofthinking Ð an expression of an inner life. And he continues thatthe emergence of life such as we know it is only a coherent result fromthe primary existence of life in the broad Platonic sense.

A personal credo

One of the participants of the discussion in Das allmaÈchtige Leben is thecurator of a university. At German universities, curators used to betreasurers and administrators of justice. As Kalevi Kull has told me,the characters in the work including the curator, probably had theirmodels in real life. Kull could even name them. Now, we have to aska crucial question. Did UexkuÈ ll `photograph' the models of the charactersin his book and remain in everything true to what they had said in a realdiscussion? The answer is very simple. Of course not. Above all, DasallmaÈchtige Leben is a literary work and re¯ects his thinking at the end ofhis life. The literary model is the Platonic dialogue. Just as Plato overtwo millennia earlier had used the form of a dialogue in presentingcontroversial or partly opposite views, so also did UexkuÈ ll. The charactersin UexkuÈ ll's book seem to represent his deep insight of life with itsmeaningfulness. The only real antagonist is the character of the zoologist.He stands for the mechanistic world view, the typical ®gure in the currentnatural sciences, a man who con®nes himself to a mere registration ofprocesses and refrains from giving any meaning to them as metaphysical`nonsense'. All in all, the curator seems Ð with all his questions Ð torepresent the same views as does the author as the `I' of the discussion.He crystallizes his vitalistic scienti®c credo as follows:

Das Wichtigste aber sind die Umwelten und ihre gegenseitige Durchdringung

sowie ihre VerknuÈ pfung untereinander. Jedes Ding, ja, jede Eigenschaft einesDinges hat seine Bedeutung in irgendeiner Umwelt. Diese Bedeutungen zuerkennen, ist die Aufgabe der Biologie. Die Zoologen, die sich nur um den mecha-nischen Aufbau der Tier- und P¯anzenkoÈ rper kuÈ mmern und nur nach Ursachen

und Wirkungen fragen, sind grundsaÈ tzlich bedeutungsblind. Sie laufen uÈ ber dieSchriftzuÈ ge derNatur hinweg, ohne nach ihremSinn zu fragen.10 (UexkuÈ ll 1950: 19)


UexkuÈ ll rebukes the zoologist for the oversimpli®cation of nature,the identi®cation of the `signatures of natural processes' by registeringsuccessive and simultaneous events, the causes that in¯uence certaine�ects. The dogmatic epistemology of the natural sciences excludeseverything else. What is to be noted is that UexkuÈ ll does not refuseempirism as such. He criticizes it only if it calls for a monopoly onall `interpretations' of scienti®c results. This is not only mechanistic buttrivial, UexkuÈ ll seems to think.

The use of the word SchriftzuÈge in the quote is very revealing. It givesus an impression that the scientist who succeeds in the registration ofthe single event in a certain process is like a schoolchild who has discoveredthe order of the letters in a certain sentence and believes, hence, he/sheis able to read it. The word bedeutungsblind expresses the idea thatif a scientist neglects the meanings in his/her ability to understand thenatural processes is similar to a schoolchild who recognizes the letters ina sentence but does not understand anything of it.

`In the beginning was the Word'. The ®rst part of the initial sentence ofSt John's Gospel has its theological interpretation, of course. But it might®t in well also with the semiotic explanation of the `Big bang'. The originalindivisible whole divided into two Ð matter and energy, or form andmeaning. The two-fold character of language might re¯ect how the sup-posed primary proto-substance could have split into two aspects, thoseof form and content. Form is material, or like it, and content is a certainkind of an expression of energy, just peculiar to the form concerned.Because matter and energy, form and content, are only aspects of eachother we easily exaggerate the contrast between them. The division isprobably Umwelt-conditioned. But because no species can detach itselffrom its Umwelt, we as humans have to accept the dialectics. If werecognize the letters in the sentences of nature and believe we are justreading nature itself, we make ourselves guilty of an inexcusable stupidity.The knowledge of form is not enough. To be able to read, one must under-stand, too, what is written. The realm of understanding is more importantby far than the mere recognition of signatures of di�erent phenomena.

As stated earlier, UexkuÈ ll does not avoid using the word Gott-Naturin his confession. The word occurs Ð as noted Ð in a poem by Goethe.Apparently, this great admirer of the poet has quoted it to show hisconviction. UexkuÈ ll probably thought that there is a power behindeverything whom we might call `God'. I believe in it as well. But if I saythat I believe in God I say that I believe in God, that's all. The claim thatan intentionality divided into an in®nite number of intentional cycles at,perhaps, an in®nite number of levels might tell something more. And theclaim that all intentional cycles are included in a big one that governs

544 T. JaÈmsaÈ

the whole of nature would bring a child-like belief a bit closer to the rulesof the game of science.The biological theory of meaning of UexkuÈ ll and the applications of

it in this text pose three main questions. The most important is as follows.1) If nature is like a discourse, can we stop at the level of form and settlefor that of epistemological reasons or can we, especially us semioticians,in our ambition to achieve a total view, try to interpret the meanings thathave produced the form of the discourse?The further questions are connected with a few prejudices in our

cultural tradition. 2) Is the language of Homo sapiens sapiens really sounique that other animals don't have anything like it? The answer thatis given here is that there is no unbridgeable gap to be closed betweendi�erent species. The concepts of earthworms are enough for theirUmwelt. They need not communicate about a Formula 1 race or the grossnational product. Animals have concepts like those of `danger' or `safe' or`mother' that are activated by a respective sign. Of course, the humanconceptual world is far more sophisticated; the di�erence is, though, notopposite but gradual.3) Are the opposites `animate/inanimate' really valid? Or is this a mere

anthropomorphism? Do we think like children at a certain age thata bicycle is animate because it moves? The chemical and physicalelements seem to have their Umwelten, too. Should we somewhat revisewhat we hold as a self-evident fact and try to think that the opposite ispossibly due to our commitment to our Umwelt? Where is the distinctborderline between the living and the lifeless? Perhaps Plato was rightwhen he maintained that everything is alive.

Notes

1. The representations of the functional cycle in UexkuÈ ll's books Theoretische Biologie,

1920 (Figure 3), andUmwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere, 1921 (See the ®gure at the beginning

of this volume), show that the idea of the functional cycle was ready in UexkuÈ ll's

mind more than twenty years before Bedeutungslehre appeared (Figure 2). The latter

di�ers only slightly from the former ones: in the 1940 version the terms `Merkwelt'

und `Wirkwelt' are missing. UexkuÈ ll probably wants to stress in Bedeutungslehre

that the Umwelt is one indivisible whole with a continuum of action and reaction.

Cf. J. von UexkuÈ ll 1980: 271, 275.

2. Cf. UexkuÈ ll (1950: 19): `ein jedes Ich baue sich mit Hilfe seiner Sinnesorgane eine eigene

Welt, die Sie seine Umwelt nennen'.

3. The house of the plants lacks the nervous system; it does not have the perceptual and

motor organs. Consequently, there are for plants no carriers of meaning, no functional

cycles, no motor signs, and no perceptual signs.

4. If the sequence of sounds is included in a language we are familiar with, it will get

a meaning. The word with its [recognized] results in a response that comprises a word


with a sense [a thought composed of words Ð either seemingly or really]. Such a word

calls forth a sequence of motions in our language device and causes the active piano

[the motive and e�ective part of the device] to send out certain waves of air. Even in

this case, the parabiological phases play the lead. The parabiological phase of reception

is followed through the linkage of the senses by the parabiological phase of e�ect. All

acts thus need an organ for reception and e�ect and become possible only because of

the intervention of the act of signi®cation.

5. Pragmatically, the general, natural (not conventional) doctrine of signs (semiotica

universalis) uses the word character in double meaning. (The interpretation is from

Holenstein 1988: 9.)

6. An organized product [like nature] is one in which everything has a purpose and, in turn,

also an instrument. Nothing in it is super¯uous, purposeless, or to be counted as a blind

mechanism of nature.

7. Because the activities of our mind are the only piece of nature immediately known to us

the rules of mind are the only ones that with reason might be called the laws of nature.

8. In every system, there are only values; the other realities are illusions. These values are put

together di�erently depending on the systems. Values, in any case, are never simple units,

especially in a language where we cannot even determine the material unit apart from

its value. No fundamental di�erence in linguistics among these ®ve: `value, identity,

unit, linguistic reality, concrete element of linguistics'. _ Value is the basis of identity.

It is the same thing to speak of reality or of value, of value or of identity and vice versa.

This is the sole basis of these di�erent terms.

9. Cf. the chapters Ìnnere Sprachform' (`The inner form of language') and `Verbindung

des Lautes mit der inneren Sprachform' (`The connection of the sounds with the inner

form of language') in Humboldt's (1973: 82±94) work ÙÈ ber die Verschiedenheit

des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Ein¯uss auf die geistige Entwicklung des

Menschengeschlechts' (Òn the dissimilarities between the structures of human

languages and the in¯uence of the dissimilarities on the spiritual development of

humanity').

10. The most important things are, though, the Umwelten and the mutual penetration of

them into each other as well as their connections with themselves. Each thing, each

characteristic has its meaning in any Umwelt. The detection of these meanings is

the function of biology. The zoologists, who worry only about the mechanical struc-

tures of the animal and plant bodies and seek causes and e�ects, merely are, in principle,

blind to meanings. They pass over the signatures of nature without seeking the sense

of them.

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1, 37±47.

550 T. JaÈmsaÈ

Ð(1980). Einleitung: PlaÈ doyer fuÈ r eine sinndeutende Biologie (Die Bedeutung der Lehre

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Tuomo JaÈ msaÈ (b. 1940) is Lecturer in Finnish at the University of Joensuu, Finland

ntuomo.jamsa@joensuu.®o. His research interests include semiotics, the philosophy

of language, and semantics. His major publications include Semantics of the Most

Frequent Finnish Verbs (1986), The Origin of the Words `Lappalainen' (Lapp) and `Lappi'

(Lapland) (1988), `Signs and meanings in education' (1999), and `The concept of nature

in ancient Finns and Karelians' (1999).


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