The new concept of Umwelt:

A link between science and the humanities*

JAKOB VON UEXKU

LL
The world is so full of variety and appears to our eyes so continually in
new forms, that a change in our perception of the world is no cause for
a great upheaval. A quick look into the Umwelten of our friends and we
nd a rich variety of perceptions of the world. It would indeed be strange
if we were to nd a uniformity of world views.
This changes as soon as we concentrate on a single object. There the
agreement is so complete that no change in the perception seems possible.
It is precisely here, in the perception of the simplest objects, that we
experience a change in perception that is so impressive because that is
where we least expect it.
To make myself quite clear, I put a bell on the table and let it sound.
There is nothing secretive about this bell but I hope to convince you that
it is possible to harbour two very dierent views about it.
The bell appears in two roles, it has an eectual side (Wirkseite) that
aects our senses and a perceptual side (Merkseite) that is impressed
on the bell by our perceptual centres in the brain and which consists of
human perceptual cues.
If we rst consider the perceptual side of the bell, we will see that it is
composed of three parts that have to be joined together according to a plan,
because together they have a function to perform namely `to ring'. Each
part of the bell performs a part of the function. The handle, the body of the
bell and the clapper each perform their part in a harmonious manner.
In the same way as the individual parts are in harmony with each other,
the properties of each part have to be in harmony to make the function of
the part possible. You cannot change the property of one part without
destroying the harmony. I cannot for instance change the hardness of
the clapper by making it of cardboard without destroying the function
of the whole.
All functions are dependent on the harmonious interaction of the indi-
vidual parts and their properties. This applies to all objects that are used
by humans. We speak of harmony because for each function the parts
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Walter de Gruyter
have to be in harmony in the same way as the instruments of an orches-
tra have to be in harmony in order to produce uniform sound. Just as the
sounds of the dierent instruments merge to produce a melody, the
properties merge to parts and the parts to the whole to produce a uniform
function.
This really reveals an incorrect expression, because the function is the
`spiritual band' that encircles the parts and the properties and which is
invisible as such. It is not necessary for the bell to be swung back and
forth and to produce a loud sound to be recognized by us as a bell. We
can see that it is made for ringing even if it does not move. We do not see
it with our sensual eyes but using our spiritual eyes we are able to add
the spiritual band that make parts of the bell into a bell, a thing that is
for making a sound (La uteding).
It is the function that is the essence of the object, that is why we
speak clearly and understandably only when we name the object accord-
ing to its performance, for instance we call a ladder a `climbing thing'
(Kletterding), a cup a `drinking thing' (Trinkding), a chair a `sitting thing'
(Sitzding) and so forth.
The parts of the chair are harmonized for the performance of sitting,
those of the cup for drinking and the parts of the ladder for climbing.
An African from a remote part of the country could not make sense
of a ladder, it was for him just `poles and holes'.
A performance is always an action with a purpose; action without pur-
pose does not reveal the function. A small boy can see the movement of
the hands on a pocket watch, but because he cannot tell the time from
the watch he misunderstands the performance of the watch and uses it as
a hammer to drive in nails.
Usable objects exist only for those who know their use. This clearly
reveals how the mode of existence of objects depend on the observing
subject. For the ignorant the wheels of a clock or the shafts of a machine
are just a jumble of iron parts.
Only when the parts and the properties of an object are clearly perceived
as parts of a function, does the mixture of parts become a meaningful
whole (aus dem Stu ckwerk ein Planwerk).
In this way each one of us can easily see the bell as an object with a
purpose, if we do not happen to be deaf. What is more dicult is to
take the next necessary step towards a deeper understanding that
there is no single bell, that each of us has a personal bell.
I therefore take a book, any book that you all know, and ask each one
of you to describe the properties of the book. It will immediately become
evident that each of you have a dierent description of the book with the
same title. It is therefore sensible to answer a person who asks us: `What
112 J. von Uexkull
kind of book is this?' with a question: `What do you know about this
book?' When she or he recounts the properties of the book, we will answer:
`That is the bookinyour Umwelt'. IneveryUmwelt there is adierent book.
And this also applies to the bell. There are as many bells as there are
Umwelten.
But what happens when we all leave the room and leave the bell
without any Umwelt? Will the bell be destroyed or just change its
appearance?
Let us not forget that the bell possesses two sides. We have so far only
concerned ourselves with the bell that was formed from our percep-
tional cues, this means that we have observed only one side of the bell,
the perceptional side.
Observed this way, the bell is `a sound producing thing', all its prop-
erties serve its function as maker of sound.
This does not apply when you observe the functional side of the bell
and leave out the human perceptional cues; a bell without a human
hearer cannot make a sound even if the wind would move it back
and forth. Sounds are only perceived by a human ear. Looking at the
functional side of the bell we can imagine that the bell will produce waves
in the air that spread out in all directions, but no sounds.
The perceptual side also gave us a clear representation of the bell,
its form and its colors. Of this there is no trace on the functional side.
The functional side can produce reected ethereal waves but they need
a human eye to make them into a picture.
In this way we can peel o each one of the properties of the bell from
the perceptional side and observe that every one of them is a perceptional
cue belonging to either the sense of smell or touch or taste.
In the process we have completely destroyed the spiritual band of the
bell, because without the function of ringing the bell has lost its meaning.
But the bell must possess something of its own even if it is outside our
sensory perception, because it does have inuence on its surroundings. In
fact it has long been customary to attribute substance and force to all
objects. These are pure concepts that do not correspond to any perception.
A further simplication reduced all substance to masses and the forces
that surround them. The inuence of masses on other masses are depen-
dent on their sizes and distances, as is evident in the law of leverage. In
this way all the qualities, that were in fact only cues of human perception,
have been removed and all material functions have been reduced to
quantities that permit exact calculation.
The inuence of masses on each other became the domain of pure
physics cleansed of all subjective impurities, and the science of the inuence
of substances on each other became the realm of chemistry.
Between science and humanities 113
Both sciences busied themselves with the functional side of things and
shoved the perceptual side away with scorn. Both acknowledged only
the law of cause and eect and denied the existence of design in nature.
This was not always so. There have been times when the goal of scientic
endeavor was to study the perceptual side of things. We can indeed x the
date of the change from the study of the perceptual side to the study of
the functional side with great accuracy. It lies between Kepler and Newton.
Astronomy was originally a science of the perceptual side; it was a
matter of nding the design behind the bewildering multitude of stars,
a design ordained by God that made it possible for them to move in perfect
harmony: on his search for the harmony Kepler found the laws governing
the planetary motions. Newton on the other hand we nd completely
immersed in the functional side of the starry sky, as he formulates the
laws of gravity.
Kepler was looking for a design Newton was looking for a cause for
the same phenomenon.
What had happened to cause this revolution? Something fundamentally
shattering had happened God had left the universe.
During the whole of the Middle Ages, God resided over an unshakeable
celestial vault, with the xed stars wielded to its surface, while the planets
moved freely in space. Above in Heaven was the kingdom of God where
He resided in unimaginable splendor, surrounded by saints and archangels.
Then Giordano Bruno broke the celestial vault and opened a view into
innite space, where the xed stars also hover in space like luminous
islands.
God, who until recently had been enthroned in Heaven, had become
invisible. He had left the universe as when we left the room with the bell
and closed the door behind us.
In the same way as we leave the bell behind us as a meaningless blob
of matter, he had left the stars, that had until then obeyed his will, as
accidental accumulations of mass, moving aimlessly around. The design
of the world had broken down. Looking for it had become meaningless.
Giordano Bruno had to atone for his blasphemous deed in the year 1600
when he was burned at the stake in Rome. But his deed could not be
undone. God himself had left the world.
The consequence of this was that scientists began to deal with the
world in the way a deaf person deals with a street organ. The turning of
the roller, the vibration of the tongues and the aerial waves, these things
he can establish but the tune stays hidden from him.
First, the starry sky became a meaningless mechanical thing that turned
around without accomplishing anything. As long as God was listening
to the music of the celestial spheres, the sky did have a purpose, a divine
114 J. von Uexkull
performance. Without reaching the ear of God it dissolved into nothing
and became a mechanical movement. The street organ only performs for
humans but even this is lost when the human ear does not hear. Then
the street organ becomes a meaningless accidental thing like the stars
in the sky.
It is only about things we have made ourselves for our own use, like
the bell, that we can be sure that they are not accidental. We know what
they are made for and how they are designed.
This way it became possible that not only the inorganic world, but also
the living things were declared products of accidental happenings. In the
Middle Ages everyone was convinced that God had created living things
for the use of Man. After God was gone, the living things were stripped
of any meaningful design completely ignoring the fact that life itself
is a performance that needs the most rened designs to arise and exist.
Ever since Darwin, the biologists were ardently trying to spirit away
the perceptual side of living things and only to pay attention to the
eectual side. Finally Man himself became an accidental product with
purely mechanical, aimlessly functioning physical processes.
The causal chain always started with matter, from which heaven and
earth, plants, animals and Man arise through random displacements.
In order to carry the enormous structure of this view of the world it
was necessary to be quite sure that matter itself did not obey any struc-
tural plan. In fact nobody doubted that matter could be divided into ever
smaller parts without a change in its properties, even the tiniest particle
of matter retains its material characteristics. Atoms were called indivisible
particles but that was just a matter of convenience.
Then came the great surprise. When the physicists approached the
magnitude of the wavelength of light, a new world was discovered: matter
had disappeared. Instead of small particles of matter they saw a wondrous
activity of elementary particles that had denite dimensions but were
not composed of matter. On the contrary, matter was composed of these
particles.
Chemists had after centuries of eort found some 90 elements that
made up all matter in the universe. These elements belonged to an ordered
system, that had some gaps in it that later were lled with previously
unknown elements.
Now the physicists discovered the tremendously important fact that
every atom had a positively charged nucleus that was surrounded by
negatively charged electrons. At the beginning of the system the element
hydrogen had one nucleus and one electron, the second element helium
had two electrons and so forth. The system exhibited an exemplary reg-
ularity. But the nuclei and the electrons were not matter. They were
Between science and humanities 115
mostly electrical charges moving with great speed. Sometimes they appear
nebulous, sometimes as bullets, sometimes as waves. And they could
change from one appearance to another. And the number of elementary
particles, electrons, protons and neutrons is increasing.
These archetypal particles are dicult to fathom because they can
change their character, and especially because they appear dierent
depending on the point of view of the observer. Rays of light can thus
be viewed as either waves or particles.
This world has another very strange property: It is possible to make
very exact predictions about what happens to a collection of a great
number of these particles. It is, however, quite impossible to predict the
behavior of a single particle. It is indeed quite possible that a particle that
is observed in a cloud chamber is not the same particle at the end of
its trajectory as it was at the beginning.
In spite of their variable character, the elementary particles have
retained their mode of action. There are quite denite laws in this pre-
material wonderland, the laws are utterly unmechanical, since mechanics
only applies to matter. Instead of laws of mechanics the laws are here
closer to the laws of musical harmonics. Thus the system of the elements
starts with a dyad, followed by a triad etc.
One can in any case speak of a domination of designs that brings the
elementary particles into harmony in the same way as a melody governs
its tones. There is no doubt about what these particles achieve. Their
task is to make up the matter of the universe, which we know is the
same on all the stars.
Until now the distribution of matter in the universe has been con-
sidered completely planless. But it is possible that we behave towards
Nature as a deaf person towards the bell. In the view of the deaf, the
sound waves emanate from the bell in a planless manner because they
radiate in all directions. Similarly we think the rays of the sun are radiat-
ing aimlessly in space. The plan of the bell becomes evident only when
a human ear can intercept the sound waves. In the same way the plan of
the sun becomes evident when a bundle of rays is caught by the earth,
where it creates and sustains life.
_
The water of rivers also exhibits distinct relations to the needs of
living creatures. At 4 degrees centigrade, water is heavier than at the
freezing point, hence it sinks to the bottom. This prevents lakes from
freezing solid.
As you can see, science is about to perform an about face and to move
from an exclusive treatment of the eectual side of things to pay more
attention to their perceptual side. This is most clearly apparent in biology
and especially in treatment of animals.
116 J. von Uexkull
This is also an area where people have played the role of a deaf man
and treated animals like aimlessly running machines, experiencing random
eects and sending out equally randomeects in all directions. Mechanical
or chemical forces of some sort pulled the animals to or away from a
stimulus point. This was called positive or negative tropism. Depending on
the type of stimulus the tropism was called light, sound, scent, etc. tropism.
In this way animals were transformed into randomly working
(planlosen) mechanisms pushed to and fro in a nature without a
plan, where no insight was possible.
This has changed in a fundamental manner. We do no longer ask the
animal `How does the outer world push you around?', we now ask it
`What do you perceive of the outer world, and what is your response?'
Now we get hundreds of answers, because all animals are disposed
for dierent things that each perceives and that it reacts upon. Every
animal is surrounded with dierent things, the dog is surrounded by
dog things and the dragony is surrounded by dragony things.
Every Umwelt has its own spatial and temporal dimensions. The
Umwelten intersect in many ways without disturbing each other. They do
not interact mechanically but are still connected according to a plan as
the notes of an oratorio are harmonically connected. It is thus musical and
not mechanical laws that we need to study if we want to nd out
about the laws of Life.
As the harmony of the sounds is only a part of the design of the
performance of an orchestra, which embraces also the forms and the
materials of the instruments, so the sensory perceptions and the intentional
impulses of the animals constitute only a part of the design, that is revealed
to us most clearly in the bodily forms and movements.
We therefore tend to give rst place to the design of the body and to
deduce the design of the sensory perceptions and impulses from the design
of the body. Thus most people tend to perceive the melodies that emanate
from a street organ as products of that street organ. In the same way
scientists will always tend to deduce human thoughts and feelings from
the structure of the brain.
But the harmony of the sequence of tones does not depend on the
build of the instrument. On the contrary, it is requirements of musical
harmony that dene the design of the instrument.
In the same way the performances of animals are not products of a
harmonic build of the body, it is the harmony of the performance that
determines that of the body.
In mammals the individual performances are centrally controlled, only
in such cases is it possible to imagine that the harmonic structure of the
central organ is the source of the harmony of the performances.
Between science and humanities 117
In mammals we can state: `When a dog runs, the animal moves its feet',
i.e., the harmony of the footsteps is centrally controlled. But in the case
of a starsh we say: `When a starsh moves, the legs move the animal'.
That is, the harmony of the movement is in the legs themselves. It is
like an orchestra that can play without a conductor.
The harmony of performances is most clearly visible in the colonies
of ants and honeybees. Here we have completely independent individuals
that keep up the life of the colony through the harmony of the
individual performances.
This is what life looks like from the perceptual side. To demonstrate
the dierence from the eectual view of the world we could say that we
have left the rumble of a mechanical workshop, with matter and forces
that interact randomly, accidentally achieving something more enduring.
Instead, we have now entered the grand theatre of Nature, where she,
like an inexpressibly ne lady, enjoys the spectacle that she has written
and the actors that she has created.
Only those with the necessary musical comprehension of the melodies
of life and with a deep regard for lady Nature, are accepted as listeners.
Lady Nature is no schoolmistress, boring us with rules and calcula-
tions. She oers us ever novel spectacles, from which we ourselves have to
deduce the rules. That is why we have to order the spectacles of Nature
in such way that the rules appear by themselves.
We start with the emergence of the animals from the ark of Noah, that
we know from childhood of every species a pair. This is the great rule
that we all have to learn at rst. All living things, animal and plants, with
few exceptions, appear in pairs; with a male and a female. Sometimes
the male and the female organs are in the same individual, as in most
plants, sometimes in dierent individuals, as we have seen them leave
the ark of Noah in pairs.
We see here the rst comprehensive musical laws of Nature (Weltgesetz).
All living beings have their origin in a duet. The malefemale duet is a
theme that is interwoven in a thousand variations into the orchestration
of the living world.
Often the duet is enlarged to a trio, when a third party is needed to bring
about the malefemale union. We know the role of insects in aiding the
pollination of owers.
The example of a small sh (Rhodeus) is especially striking. With the
Rhodeus the nuptial duet only starts when a bivalve joins as a procurer.
Only when the male feels the respiratory water of the bivalve does it
dress up in its wedding dress and entice the female to approach the bivalve.
The same stimulus in the respiratory water of the bivalve causes the female
to grow an egg spine and use it to attach the egg to the gills of the bivalve.
118 J. von Uexkull
This ingenious device (Komposition) provides the new generation
of Rhodeus shes with a secure residence close to a constant stream of
nourishment.
Three life cycles intersect here in a purposeful manner, composed
together like the parts of a trio. Hence we can here speak of a natural trio.
These exquisitely purposeful parts of a whole only reveal themselves
to a scientist who has learned to watch out for harmony in Nature.
_
The life cycles are at all events to be viewed as Umwelten, that each
animal subject (einzelne Tiersubjekt) has built for himself using its
sensory organs. The structure of the sensory organs is itself dependent
on the total building plan of the animal, whose Umwelt is composed in
harmony with other Umwelten.
To attain a solid ground for understanding these connections, it is
necessary to start from very simple Umwelten.
Here the tick rst comes to mind. The theme of life of the tick is simple.
For her eggs to mature she needs warm blood. Mammals all have warm
blood. To get warm blood the tick has to attack a mammal of any kind.
How does the tick recognize a mammal?
Mammals come in many sizes and colors. They make various sounds
and have various odors. The tick is blind and deaf, she is unable to perceive
odors, except one, and that is butyric acid. And that happens to be the only
odor that is common to all mammals, because it is a component of sweat.
In the Umwelt of the tick there are no `sight things' or `hear things' and
only one single `smell thing', that infallibly functions as an alarm signal,
causing the tick to fall o its perch. If it lands on the warm skin of
a mammal, the warmth is a second perceptual cue that releases the act
of sucking.
Of all the countless properties of mammals only those that are common
to all are chosen to be perceptible to the tick and to activate its vital
functions. Only a fool can talk of accidental coincidence. Clearly this
reveals the design of Nature (Komposition der Natur).
It is easy to understand that switching o all odors except one
will make the eect of that smell overwhelming to the subject. This is
evident in a very famous case. The odor from a female Saturnia pyri
(Nachtpfauenauge) attracts the male moths over distances of several
miles. The numerous odors that ll the air are non-existent to the
males. In a completely odorless space, where the smell of the female is
the only one perceived, its attraction becomes overwhelming.
This eect also applies to sounds. There are moths that can hear only
two tones. These tones correspond to the sound of the squeak of the
bat that is the main enemy of these moths. In the complete silence
of the Umwelt of the deaf the appearance of the only perceivable tone
Between science and humanities 119
must have the overwhelming eect as the only smell in an odorless
space. In this case it does not attract but, as it is emanating from an enemy,
it triggers rapid ight away from the danger.
When we are able to put together a theory of the music of life, these
simple examples will become the basis. They are like the etudes that a
beginner learns to play on the piano with one nger.
As only a few keys of the whole keyboard are used in the simple
etudes, the simple Umwelten contain only a few perceptual cues.
When we have convinced ourselves of these basic facts, we will go further
and try to explore ever richer Umwelten.
In the Umwelt of the honeybee already a number of cues appear. But
even here the richness in forms and colors of a owering meadow, that is
visible to the human eye, is very much simplied. For the honeybee there
are only two visual cues for open and closed forms, these are enough to
distinguish open owers from closed buds. Only four basic colors are
perceived: ultraviolet, blue, green and yellow, only the number of odors
perceived by the bee is considerable.
The number and nature of perceptual cues can to a certain extent be
predicted as soon as one knows the theme of the music (Lebensmusik) that
the Umwelt of the animal is playing.
The theme of the music for the honeybee is the collection of nectar
and pollen. To nd them the path that leads to them has to be marked
with perceptual cues. This explains the choice of properties of owers
that become form, color, smell and taste perceptions to the bees. A
honeybee meadow is something very dierent from a human meadow.
It is a honeybee composition made up of bee notes and is much easier
to comprehend than our human Umwelt compositions.
Every Umwelt of a normal animal is a faultless composition of nature
you only have to understand how to look for its theme and its notes.
It is much more dicult to nd the musical rules for the germination
in animals. All organisms (Lebewesen) begin their existence as unicellular
germs, from which thousand of forms evolve in manner completely
impenetrable to us.
There are simple examples that can serve as pointers: old horse dung
often becomes covered by a hairy deposit. Every hair is a full grown
fungus (Schleimpilz) with a fruit body on a narrow stem. The fruit body
contains a number of spore capsules, that are transported by the wind to
new places of nourishment.
As soon as it arrives, an amoeba emerges from the capsule and starts
to feed on the bacteria it nds. When there is a rich ora of bacteria, the
amoebae grow rapidly and start multiplying by division, until the whole
area is covered with a teeming multitude of amoebae. Every amoeba goes
120 J. von Uexkull
feeding without any concern for its neighbors, until the moment comes
when all the food is consumed. At that moment there is sudden change
in the behavior of the amoebae. They group into regular areas. In each
area the amoebae move towards a center. At the center, they climb on
each other and start to change into supporting cells that form the stem
of the hair. The last amoebae form the fruit bodies, and only a few
remain alive in the capsules ready for the next sowing.
We can interpret this course of events as a musical event, where the
amoebae are a great number of independent musicians, playing a sonata
in two movements. In the rst movement each musician plays the recur-
rent food tune, while in the second movement all the musicians suddenly
start playing a common building melody (Gestaltungsmelodie).
The tune is complete master of the individual musician (Die Melodie
beherrscht die einzelnen Musiker souvera n). The role played by each
amoeba in the building of the fungus depends only on the position that
the amoeba happens to be in when the second movement begins.
The dependence of the cellular musicians on the tune was already evident
from the sea urchin experiments by Driesch. Cutting the embryo of the
sea urchin in half reduced the number of cells to half but did not change
the building tune. This was continued by the other half. This applies to all
orchestras. When half the musicians leave, the other half of the orchestra
goes on playing the same tune.
Spemann reports an astonishing experiment. Inserting frog cells, that
normally evolve into frog brain, into the mouth area of a triton larva, the
insert obeys the mouth building tune of the triton larva. However, it does
not become a triton mouth but the mouth of a tadpole, true to its origin.
One could do a similar experiment with a string orchestra. When
replacing the violins with horns in a certain movement, the orchestra can
go on playing the same tune but with a very dierent tonal quality
(Tonfa rbung).
The results of studies of the building of forms (Gestaltbildung) are
interesting but of limited theoretical interest for the knowledge of the
problems of life. And this will not change even when we go deeper into
the process of form-building (Gestaltbildung). But we have in every case,
where an animal builds articles for its own use, a possibility of observing
the process of form-building rst hand.
We can follow the weaving of a spider's web as accurately as we can
follow the manufacture of an article for use by humans, say the shaping
and ring of a coee cup.
In both cases the building of the form is bound to strict rules, that we
can compare to tunes. But we still learn nothing about the basic laws
that govern the properties of these objects.
Between science and humanities 121
The composer, who combines two tunes into a duet knows that they
have to be in contrapuntal agreement, note by note.
Of this the potter, who res the coee cup, and the spider, weaving its
net, know nothing.
And still it is immediately certain to everyone of us that the coee
cup is contrapuntally matched both to the human hand and to the
coee. I can break up the properties of the coee cup point by point:
(1) into properties matched to the human hand, e.g., the ear, (2) into
properties matched to the coee, like the hollow shape, and (3) into
properties that are matched to both counterpoints.
Of this double dependence of the properties of the coee cup we learn
nothing by just observing its manufacture.
In the case of the spider's web it is easy to point out the properties that
are contrapuntal to the y. Here we have the strength of the threads that
have to withstand the collision of the y, and the thinness of the threads
to make them invisible to the y. The threads are of two kinds: smooth
radial ones that the spider uses as steps and sticky ones that are for catching
ies. The mesh of the net is also matched to the size of the y's body.
In the same way as with the spider's net one can analyze the
counterpoints in the nests of birds and the labyrinths of moles.
_
Nobody will be able to deny that males and females are composed in
counterpoint throughout nature.
In the case of the Rhodeus, the bivalve inuences the sh in a con-
trapuntal manner but it is not possible to state that the sh inuences the
build of the bivalve.
That the design of the tick is contrapuntal to the design of the mammals,
of this there can be no doubt.
With this insight we make a conscious turn in our manner of reecting
on nature and start paying attention to the perceptual side of things. The
tones of a piece of music are pure perceptual cues, without any material
eects. Under this assumption, musical theory has established the rules
for tonal harmony and melody.
In the same way we now regard the properties of things as pure
perceptual cues and ask ourselves if they obey rules similar to those of
music. This is in fact the case: all properties of living creatures we nd
connected to units according to a plan, and these units are contrapuntally
matched to the properties of other units.
In this way we get the impression of a comprehensive harmonic totality,
because the properties of lifeless things also intervene contrapuntally in the
design of living things.
The processes in the germ cells are not explainable from causal eects
of material factors but follow pathways prescribed by their own melody.
122 J. von Uexkull
We return to our bell. The contemplation of its eectual side with its
material character yields to a study of the perceptual side with plan and
properties.
Plan versus matter is the watchword of the new science of life.
Note
* From J. von Uexku ll (1937). Die neue Umweltlehre: Ein Bindeglied zwischen Natur-
und Kulturwissenschaften. Die Erziehung 13 (5), 185199. Translated by Go sta Brunow.
Between science and humanities 123