Jakob von Uexküll

Image

8 September 1864 – 25 July 1944

Jakob von Uexküll, a biologist of Baltic German descent who was born in Estonia and spent much of his life here, is one of the central figures associated with the Department of Semiotics. His principal contribution to biology was the theory of the Umwelt—or the “own-world”—which examines living beings’ subjective perception of their environment and their meaningful embeddedness in the world: how organisms create meaning in the world and subsequently act within it through those meanings. Uexküll called these subjective worlds Umwelten.

Each living being has its own Umwelt, consisting of those things it is capable of perceiving in its environment and that are important—or meaningful—for its subsequent activity. Thus, every organism’s world is constituted only by the meaningful elements that matter to it, those possessing what Uexküll termed a particular “tone” of meaning. Every being—including humans—therefore lives, as it were, in a “bubble” filled with meanings: its Umwelt.

The theory of Umwelten, with its subject-centred perspective on life, is unique within biology and forms one of the foundations of biosemiotics. Uexküll’s work has profoundly influenced many major figures in modern thought, including Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze.

His son, Thure von Uexküll, was likewise an active and influential scholar in psychosomatic medicine and an honorary doctorate of the University of Tartu. The Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu actively continues to develop the Uexküllian tradition, as well as biosemiotic theories more broadly, through research and teaching.

Uexküll’s summer residence is located at Puhtu, on Estonia’s western coast. He spent nearly every summer there and drew inspiration and insight from the place while writing his principal works. The Department of Semiotics also organises seminars in Puhtu, providing an opportunity to exchange ideas on meaning-making in nature in a place that was significant to and inspired Uexküll.

A collection of selected books and articles by Uexküll, Omailmad (Umwelten, 2012), has been published in Estonian. It includes, among other texts, two of his best-known works: the popular A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men (1934) and Theory of Meaning (1940), a foundational text of biosemiotics, as well as selected writings from Theoretical Biology (1920).