Jakob von Uexkull
There is no creature who perceives all of what is and what happens.
Summary
Jakob von Uexkull (1864 - 1944) was an Estonian biologist who had important achievements in the fields of muscular physiology and the Cybernetics of life. He was also a pioneer of semiotic biology, or Biosemiotics.
He proposed that the Species is the Organism and the Individual is the Organ (see Vital Unconscious and Biocentric Principle).
Ideas
-
Umwelt (
Environment
orSurrounding World
), - It means the
Biological Foundations
that lie at the center of the study of both Communication and Signification (orSign
in the human (and non-human) animal. - Organisms can have different Umwelten (
Self-centered Worlds
), even though they share the same environment.
See Also
Edgar Morin: French writer and philosopher, studied Information Theory, Cybernetics, and Systems Theory and opened a new field of research into Complex Systems.
Fritjof Capra: a physicist who has done research on Particle Physics and Systems Theory.
Gregory Bateson: British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist and Cybernetician whose work intersected that of many other fields.
Heinz von Foerster: scientist combining physics and philosophy who worked in the field of Cybernetics and was essential for the development of the theory of Radical Constructivism.
Henri Atlan: biologist and professor of biophysics, interested in applying Cybernetics and Information Theory to living organisms, he has a an international reputation for his research on the self-organization of cells and Artificial Intelligence.
Links
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_von_Uexk%FCll
Biography: http://www.zbi.ee/~uexkull/cv.htm
Biosemiotics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosemiotics
Torsten Ruting, Jakob von Uexkull - Theoretical Biology, Biocybernetics and Biosemiotics
,
http://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/home/rueting/UexECMTB.doc