What do you think?
Rate this book
A Theory of Meaning
The meaning of all plant and animal organs as utilizers of the meaningfactors external to them determines their shape and the distribution of their constituent matter.
The question of meaning is, therefore, the crucial one to all living beings. Only when we have solved this question will there be any point in investigating causal connections, which are always extremely limited, because the activity of living cells is directed by their ego-qualities.
The question of meaning is, therefore, the crucial one to all living beings. Only when we have solved this question will there be any point in investigating causal connections, which are always extremely limited, because the activity of living cells is directed by their ego-qualities.
54 pages, Unknown Binding
27 people want to read
About the author
Jakob Johann von Uexküll
18 books18 followersJakob Johann Baron von Uexküll was a German biologist.
He was the father of Thure von Uexküll, M.D. and grandfather of Jakob von Uexküll.
He was the father of Thure von Uexküll, M.D. and grandfather of Jakob von Uexküll.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 16, 2021
Why does the spider spin its web? Why is the bee repulsed by closed shapes and finds open ones inviting? Why does the duckling imprint the first living being it sees with ultimate significance?
Uexküll observes that pre-ww2 biology (the behavioristic model) is unable to answer those questions, because they lack an essential idea by which organisms behave; as interpreting subjects in a world of meaningful signs. Moreover, those organisms don't merely respond to signs in the way the behavioristic "reflex arc" would have it. The spider doesn't respond to the fly; it creates a web that is fly-like, without ever seeing a fly. Organisms aren't machines - they are subjects that follow nature's plan.
This work is full of examples that escape the behavioristic (mechanistic) model of animals. Yet in other ways it already anticipates many of the points that Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologists would apply to humans. Is the stone on the pavement primarily a stone for me - a sediment, round, brown, small? Or is it primarily the function it plays for me (a sign) - part of the pavement, a projectile I throw into the water, etc.?
Whatever the case, my experience of the world is ultimately permeated with the specific meanings my mood/spirit will imprint on them. We can't see the naked phenomena; they're always signs that are already answering to what I'm looking for (food, sex, beauty, etc.)
Some memorable quotes:
Goethe:
„Were the eye not sunlike, It could never gaze upon the sun.“
Uexküll:
„Were the sun not eyelike, It could not shine in any sky.“ (page 190)
„Environments were certainly simpler at the beginning of the world-drama than they were later. But, in them, each carrier of meaning faced a recipient of meaning. Meaning ruled them all. Meaning bound changing organs to the changing medium. Meaning bound food and the consumers of food, predator and prey, and, first and foremost, males and females in amazing variety. Everywhere there was a progression, but nowhere progress in the sense of the survival of the fittest, never a selection of the better by a plan-lessly raging battle for existence. Instead, a melody reigned which entwined life and death.“ (page 196)
Uexküll observes that pre-ww2 biology (the behavioristic model) is unable to answer those questions, because they lack an essential idea by which organisms behave; as interpreting subjects in a world of meaningful signs. Moreover, those organisms don't merely respond to signs in the way the behavioristic "reflex arc" would have it. The spider doesn't respond to the fly; it creates a web that is fly-like, without ever seeing a fly. Organisms aren't machines - they are subjects that follow nature's plan.
This work is full of examples that escape the behavioristic (mechanistic) model of animals. Yet in other ways it already anticipates many of the points that Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologists would apply to humans. Is the stone on the pavement primarily a stone for me - a sediment, round, brown, small? Or is it primarily the function it plays for me (a sign) - part of the pavement, a projectile I throw into the water, etc.?
Whatever the case, my experience of the world is ultimately permeated with the specific meanings my mood/spirit will imprint on them. We can't see the naked phenomena; they're always signs that are already answering to what I'm looking for (food, sex, beauty, etc.)
Some memorable quotes:
Goethe:
„Were the eye not sunlike, It could never gaze upon the sun.“
Uexküll:
„Were the sun not eyelike, It could not shine in any sky.“ (page 190)
„Environments were certainly simpler at the beginning of the world-drama than they were later. But, in them, each carrier of meaning faced a recipient of meaning. Meaning ruled them all. Meaning bound changing organs to the changing medium. Meaning bound food and the consumers of food, predator and prey, and, first and foremost, males and females in amazing variety. Everywhere there was a progression, but nowhere progress in the sense of the survival of the fittest, never a selection of the better by a plan-lessly raging battle for existence. Instead, a melody reigned which entwined life and death.“ (page 196)
May 13, 2025
Thoughts:
1. Where does the assumption that simplicity and "elegance" (both ever-changing, culturally-contextual notions) are the harbingers of Truth? Would it not be more reasonable (and more "intuitive") to assume a relationship of direct proportionality between the complexity of the explanans and the complexity of the explanandum? I suppose that it would be unfair to consider an elusive notion of simplicity as the sole criterion of decision when confronted with the choice between different approaches to world-making, given that, as Carnap repeatedly remarks, the implicit potential for the unfolding of new theoretical horizons linked to the adoption of a given theoretical framework as opposed to another should also be factored into one's commitments. If this were not so, certain brands of theistic explanation (such as Occasionalism, for example) would consistently rank among the simplest and most elegant options available, or so would the positivists hold, covering the broadest phenomenal ground while being ever-recyclable in light of novel "discoveries" (assuming these to be at all possible within a framework so resilient to the "shock factor" of disruptive novelty). Regardless of whether or not this view accurately reflects the state of affairs we are to work with, the notion that the fostering of an endless stream of novelty is the ultimate marker of the right epistemological path is not exempt from the need to justify itself. The question for me boils down to what kind of disposition should serve as the counterpoint to paradox - are we to fight against it with a view to eventually prevailing over it? Or are other attitudes reasonably conceivable?
2. The operativity which configures itself around certain objects imprints them with meaning.
3. Neutral objects can only exist for an entity capable of discerning their inherent potential for being subordinated to the pursuit of non-existing ends. That is, a self-reflexive being who can think of the world in terms of hypothesis.
4. The sum of a multiplicity of individual ego-qualities cancels out the individuality inherent in each of them, causing the macro-organism which results from their combination to behave as a mechanism devoid of an ego-quality of its own (or, at least, one which is significantly weakened or diluted). Can this process of progressive de-individuation - i.e. this relationship of inverse proportionality between organizational complexity and the strength of the ego-qualities of the complex's components - also be observed in human affairs? I'm not strictly referring to the human being considered physiologically or sociologically, but also to the activities he engages in - e.g. as scientific disciplines develop, they tend to become colder, mechanistic, impersonal.
5. What would be the objection to considering human activities (scientific, artistic, or generally creative) as possessing an Umwelt of their own, as operating like organisms in their own right? Perhaps it is the fact that we engage in them while under the impression of their subordination to our conscious control, similarly to how we tend to conceive of language: given that, ironically enough, our notion of what is to be deemed "natural" perfectly coincides with that which is seen as falling outside the scope of our conscious control, we are prevented from being capable of looking at them as something living, natural, autonomous. Also noteworthy is the bias to construe human operativity as artificial on the basis of it being consciously deliberate - man producing a skyscraper is as natural a phenomenon as a fungus producing spores. The presupposition of freedom appears to be setting us apart from our natural context - it alienates us.
6. Subsistence of any kind would not be detectable within a context of pure randomness.
7. How is a framework of knowledge-acquisition purged and sterilized of all metaphysical sensibility expected to advance (or rather, to improve) our understanding?
8. Why would one naturally assume mechanism to be the more obvious option over against animism (or, to avoid such a loaded term, "entelechy-ism")? It is doubtful whether this is a fair characterization of the actual situation: one could certainly argue that, historically, various varieties of "entelechy-ism" have consistently prevailed over mechanistic conceptions of the world, and that they did so on the strength of their immediate, "naive" intuitiveness. In modern times, man appears to have labored with a view to uprooting himself from this foundational intuitiveness in order to substitute it with a presuppositional baseline imprinted on the "things-are-not-as-they-seem" precept - the notion that such a view is to any extent void of metaphysical commitments in its own right seems to me very hard to defend, especially if the logical framework that is adopted in order to do so is one imprinted on Ockhamistic cost-efficiency.
9. Why are we so bent on portraying the natural world as devoid of intentionality? Up to what degree of convolution can a theory of explanation based on lifeless reflexivity and tropism be considered to hold? And why exactly would a theory of nature imprinted on blind chance be considered more intuitive than one presupposing a deliberate agency?
10. How can we possibly hope to transcend the binding thisness of knowledge as we (only can) know it?
1. Where does the assumption that simplicity and "elegance" (both ever-changing, culturally-contextual notions) are the harbingers of Truth? Would it not be more reasonable (and more "intuitive") to assume a relationship of direct proportionality between the complexity of the explanans and the complexity of the explanandum? I suppose that it would be unfair to consider an elusive notion of simplicity as the sole criterion of decision when confronted with the choice between different approaches to world-making, given that, as Carnap repeatedly remarks, the implicit potential for the unfolding of new theoretical horizons linked to the adoption of a given theoretical framework as opposed to another should also be factored into one's commitments. If this were not so, certain brands of theistic explanation (such as Occasionalism, for example) would consistently rank among the simplest and most elegant options available, or so would the positivists hold, covering the broadest phenomenal ground while being ever-recyclable in light of novel "discoveries" (assuming these to be at all possible within a framework so resilient to the "shock factor" of disruptive novelty). Regardless of whether or not this view accurately reflects the state of affairs we are to work with, the notion that the fostering of an endless stream of novelty is the ultimate marker of the right epistemological path is not exempt from the need to justify itself. The question for me boils down to what kind of disposition should serve as the counterpoint to paradox - are we to fight against it with a view to eventually prevailing over it? Or are other attitudes reasonably conceivable?
2. The operativity which configures itself around certain objects imprints them with meaning.
3. Neutral objects can only exist for an entity capable of discerning their inherent potential for being subordinated to the pursuit of non-existing ends. That is, a self-reflexive being who can think of the world in terms of hypothesis.
4. The sum of a multiplicity of individual ego-qualities cancels out the individuality inherent in each of them, causing the macro-organism which results from their combination to behave as a mechanism devoid of an ego-quality of its own (or, at least, one which is significantly weakened or diluted). Can this process of progressive de-individuation - i.e. this relationship of inverse proportionality between organizational complexity and the strength of the ego-qualities of the complex's components - also be observed in human affairs? I'm not strictly referring to the human being considered physiologically or sociologically, but also to the activities he engages in - e.g. as scientific disciplines develop, they tend to become colder, mechanistic, impersonal.
5. What would be the objection to considering human activities (scientific, artistic, or generally creative) as possessing an Umwelt of their own, as operating like organisms in their own right? Perhaps it is the fact that we engage in them while under the impression of their subordination to our conscious control, similarly to how we tend to conceive of language: given that, ironically enough, our notion of what is to be deemed "natural" perfectly coincides with that which is seen as falling outside the scope of our conscious control, we are prevented from being capable of looking at them as something living, natural, autonomous. Also noteworthy is the bias to construe human operativity as artificial on the basis of it being consciously deliberate - man producing a skyscraper is as natural a phenomenon as a fungus producing spores. The presupposition of freedom appears to be setting us apart from our natural context - it alienates us.
6. Subsistence of any kind would not be detectable within a context of pure randomness.
7. How is a framework of knowledge-acquisition purged and sterilized of all metaphysical sensibility expected to advance (or rather, to improve) our understanding?
8. Why would one naturally assume mechanism to be the more obvious option over against animism (or, to avoid such a loaded term, "entelechy-ism")? It is doubtful whether this is a fair characterization of the actual situation: one could certainly argue that, historically, various varieties of "entelechy-ism" have consistently prevailed over mechanistic conceptions of the world, and that they did so on the strength of their immediate, "naive" intuitiveness. In modern times, man appears to have labored with a view to uprooting himself from this foundational intuitiveness in order to substitute it with a presuppositional baseline imprinted on the "things-are-not-as-they-seem" precept - the notion that such a view is to any extent void of metaphysical commitments in its own right seems to me very hard to defend, especially if the logical framework that is adopted in order to do so is one imprinted on Ockhamistic cost-efficiency.
9. Why are we so bent on portraying the natural world as devoid of intentionality? Up to what degree of convolution can a theory of explanation based on lifeless reflexivity and tropism be considered to hold? And why exactly would a theory of nature imprinted on blind chance be considered more intuitive than one presupposing a deliberate agency?
10. How can we possibly hope to transcend the binding thisness of knowledge as we (only can) know it?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews