JACOB VON UEXKÜLL

The Place, a flower-strewn meadow, humming with insects, fluttering with butterflies. Here we may glimpse the worlds of the lowly dwellers of the meadow. To do so, we must first blow, in fancy, a soap bubble around each creature to represent its own world, filled with the perceptions which it alone knows. When we ourselves then step into one of these bubbles, the familiar meadow is transformed [...] A new world comes into being.

Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944) was an Estonian biologist who spent a good part of his life in Germany. He achieved much in the fields of physiology, animal behavior, and cybernetics and is most known for his concept of umwelt, or the perceptual world of the subject. Throughout his work he expressed a concern that our own human perspective, individual and as a species, is not the sole bearer of truth, but amongst and interdepending on a multitude of other life-worlds. A beautiful mosaic he offers.

from TOOLS OF MIND


His work was never given the attention it deserved during his lifetime, however through the writings of philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, and semiotician Thomas Seebok, the significance of his work is being freshly realized.

In Tartu, Estonia one can find JAKOB VON UEXKÜLL CENTRE. His name and legacy have also found resonance amongst the umwelts of MoKS: AVAMAA