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In the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok, ''umwelt'' (plural: umwelten; from the German ''Umwelt'' meaning "environment" or "surroundings") is the "biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human (non-human ) animal". The term is usually translated as "self-centered world". Uexküll theorised that organisms can have different umwelten, even though they share the same environment. The subject of ''umwelt'' and Uexküll's work is described by Dorion Sagan in an introduction to a collection of translations. ==Discussion== Each functional component of an ''umwelt'' has a meaning and so represents the organism's model of the world. These functional components correspond approximately to perceptual features,〔Treisman & Gelade, 1980, 98-99〕 as described by Anne Treisman. It is also the semiotic world of the organism, including all the meaningful aspects of the world for any particular organism, i.e. it can be water, food, shelter, potential threats, or points of reference for navigation. An organism creates and reshapes its own ''umwelt'' when it interacts with the world. This is termed a 'functional circle'. The ''umwelt'' theory states that the mind and the world are inseparable, because it is the mind that interprets the world for the organism. Consequently, the ''umwelten'' of different organisms differ, which follows from the individuality and uniqueness of the history of every single organism. When two ''umwelten'' interact, this creates a semiosphere. As a term, ''umwelt'' also unites all the semiotic processes of an organism into a whole. Internally, an organism is the sum of its parts operating in functional circles and, to survive, all the parts must work together co-operatively. This is termed the "collective ''umwelt''" which models the organism as a centralised system from the cellular level upward. This requires the semiosis of any one part to be continuously connected to any other semiosis operating within the same organism. If anything disrupts this process, the organism will not operate efficiently. But, when semiosis operates, the organism exhibits goal-oriented or intentional behaviour. Uexküll's writings show a specific interest in the various worlds that he believed to exist ('conceptually') from the point of view of the ''umwelt'' of different creatures such as ticks, sea urchins, amoebae, jellyfish and sea worms. The biosemiotic turn in Jakob von Uexküll's analysis occurs in his discussion of the animal's relationship with its environment. The ''umwelt'' is for him an environment-world which is, according to Agamben, ''"constituted by a more or less broad series of elements () 'carriers of significance' or 'marks' which are the only things that interest the animal"''. Agamben goes on to paraphrase one example from Uexküll's discussion of a tick, saying,
Thus, for the tick, the ''umwelt'' is reduced to only three (biosemiotic) carriers of significance: (1) The odor of butyric acid, which emanates from the sebaceous follicles of all mammals, (2) The temperature of 37 degrees celsius (corresponding to the blood of all mammals), (3) The hairy topography of mammals. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Umwelt」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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