In his "Instinctive Behavior" Jakob Uexkull attempts to question and understand relationships within Umwelts. The name Umwelt, or the perceived environment for each organism, implies a necessity for the subject to outwardly relate. Relationship to the Umwelt creates automatic meaning for the subject, as its existence depends on its having an environment to place itself in relation to. Uexkull explains subject-to-Umwelt relation in the smallest cellar level through the notion of the body working by "perceptual or receptor signs and impulses or effector signs which are specific to it" (9). As an organism's own body is working by the processes of "cooperation of tiny cells" through perceptual and receptor cues, the organism also uses these cues to relate to external objects within its Umwelt. This external, and perhaps at times limited, individual relationship to the world is what interests me.
Receptor and effector signs provide a simple and determined way of general interaction. However, this process brings about the fear of being restricted; mechanized impulses and mechanized responses not only guide human action, but limit it. Uexkull provides the example of an infant's visual Umwelt slowly expanding yet eventually ending in order to show the minimal flexibility in human visual perception:
"Through the muscular movements, we recognize the things in our environment as being near or far within a radius of ten meters. Outside this orbit, objects at first become only larger or smaller. The infant's visual space ends here with a farthest plane that encompasses his entire world. Only gradually, step by step, do we learn to push back the most distant plane with the aid of distance signs, until, at a distance of 6 to 8 km., it sets a limit to the adult's visual space, too, and the horizon begins" (26).
Even at maximal visual range, an adult human can only see a plane "6 to 8 km" away. Relating this only to the size of the surface areas of 510,064,472 km2 and 6,078,747,774,547 km2 of the Earth and Sun, provided by Nasa, humans can numerically see their relative lack of visual range. Through technological advances in humans' extension of inward mechanical receptor and effectors working, humans have created external mechanical innovations. The satellites that go into space expand not our own Umwelt, but our understanding of the size of an individual Umwelt in relation to the whole. It is evident that humans are aware of the relatively small size of their perceived world. Additionally, what does it mean that the infant's visual sphere naturally gets larger with age? It appears humans have a natural drive to expand their Umwelt until the biological limit and then to use technology to go as far as possible.
Human understanding of the Umwelt's limits are essential. It may seem paradoxical as Theodor Adorno writes, "Awareness of a defect--of the limits of knowledge--becomes a virtues, so as to make the defect more bearable". Human beings are closer to the truth of their existence when aware of their cognitive captivity. This "cognitive captivity" I relate to Uexkull through the realization of the limits in a human's Umwelt by the predetermined scientific explanations which guide everyday perceptual and receptor cues.
No comments:
Post a Comment