Distinctly human Umwelt?

FLOYD MERRELL

Of time and space: Some preliminaries

Hermann Minkowski (1952) o€ered his now notorious mathematical rendition of Einstein's special theory of relativity in the form of a `block' universe, a rather uncomfortably Parmenidean formulation. Time, according to this view, loses its movement. It is `spatialized'. It plays no part in the presumed coming and going of our physical universe as we ordinarily perceive and conceive it. The universe, from the `block' view would be like an entire symphony heard in one timeless `crash'. There would be no linear Ð or nonlinear for that matter Ð string of events from past to future, for what might go by the name of `time' would be entirely isotropic, reversible. Olivier Costa de Beauregard puts it trenchantly:

In Newtonian kinematics the separation between past and future was objective, in the sense that it was determined by a single instant of universal time, the present. This is no longer true in relativistic kinematics: the separation of space-time at each point of space and instant of time is not a dichotomy but a trichotomy (past, future, elsewhere). (1981: 429)

In other words, there is no knife-edge present moving along the linear race of time from past to future. All possible happenings in the `block' are at once both past and future, in the present, in the `elsewhere', that lies beyond experience. This monolithic four-dimensional manifold is described by Hermann Weyl (1949: 116) as a universe which `simply is,it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line of my body, does a section of this world come to life as a ¯eeting image in space which continuously changes in time'. Con- sequently, the perceived universe is distinct, to a greater or lesser degree, for each individual along her `world-line'. Time is relative to each observer,

Semiotica 134±1/4 (2001), 229±262 0037±1998/01/0134±0229 # Walter de Gruyter 230 F. Merrell and change is dependent upon the mind-dependence of time. In Kurt GoÈ del's words:

Change becomes possible only through the lapse of time. The existence of an objective lapse of time, however, means (or at least, is equivalent to the fact) that reality consists of an in®nity of layers of `now' which come into existence successively. But, if simultaneity is something relative _ reality cannot be split into such layers in an objectively determined way. Each observer has his own set of `nows', and none of these various systems of layers can claim the prerogative of representing the objective lapse of time. (1949: 557)

However, Adolf GruÈ nbaum (1967: 55) takes pains to point out the obvious: Minkowski's becomingless universe is a view sub specie aeternitatis, which makes no reference to anyone's particular `now'. An event is becomingless in the sense that it occurs at a certain time, t,and within a static network of what we would ordinarily perceive to be both earlier and later. Hence becoming is tenselessly in a network of relations of timelike Ð from our perspective, at least Ð separation. Quite obviously, becoming is mind-dependent, following Minkowski's `block' universe and according to GruÈ nbaum's contention. This, in an indirect way, bears on Charles S. Peirce's rather strained notion of time. Charles Hartshorne (1970: 461) argues that Peirce's Secondness without Thirdness is capable of no more than symmetrical, reversible, `timeless time'. However, he goes on, Peirce at least hinted that time is the succession of genuine Seconds to Firsts that are actually relative rather than nonrelative. This presents the ambiguous condition of Firsts possessing the possibility both of being relative and nonrelative, depending upon the perspective. But if Seconds by themselves and without the mediation of Thirdness are directionless, they must depend on Firsts insofar as they are conceived to be relative rather than nonrelative in a more primordial sense. One might conclude that it is the Thridness of consciousness, mediating Secondness and Firstness, that constructs `time's arrow' and hence asymmetrical temporal movement. In other words, insofar as time is a pure continuum according to Peirce's synechism, it has neither direction nor metric, and if the principles are attached to a de®nition of time, it must be by way of the content of time: what Peirce calls the `law of mind' gives the direction and ¯ow of time from past to future. This `law' entails ideas a€ecting other ideas through relations of asymmetry, transitivity, and irre¯exivity. In such case, for two ideas, A and B, if the former is a€ectible by the latter, then it is later; if vice versa, then it comes before; if neither is a€ectible by the other, then they are simultaneous. Causality among ideas constitutes the basis for temporal direction (CP 6.127±6.131). But according to Peirce's general Distinctly human Umwelt? 231 metaphysical posture he terms `objective idealism', since matter is fossilized mind, and temporal order by way of mental processes establishes the direction of time for the physical world, then time must be mind- dependent. In this fashion, matter, as another form of mind, generates time, and since the individual mind Ð or minds Ð is in time, time is, paradoxically, in itself (see Murphey 1961: 187±188). If for Peirce, mind gives direction to the physical universe, Einstein's belief in an objective world and the `block' interpretation of special relativity, coupled with GoÈ del's idealistic interpretation of the `block', leads to the view that not only are all mechanical processes reversible, but in addition, the direction of time is purely mental. Or perhaps we could say that the direction of time is `semiotically' rather than `actually real'. It is mental in the broadest sense rather than purely physical, `mind-stu€' instead of `thing-stu€' (CP 6.554, 6.68€). This is all confusing, to say the least. Quite understandably, while Peirce did not exactly conceive space and time as continuous and absolute in the general Newtonian sense, he never envisaged them to compose an Einsteinian sort of four-dimensional continuum. Yet he approximated the concept of a space-time continuum in his suggestion that time is akin to a one-dimensional hyperbolic continuum in space. Time, in other words, moves toward some inde®nite end in the receding horizon, asymptotically, but never in my lifetime or yours or anyone else's, will it be able to complete its trajectory. In this manner time and space are not entirely independent of one another (CP 1.273, 6.575). The nature of time thus manifests similarities with the nature of space, but with a major distinction: time, unlike space, cannot be symmetrical, because an entity cannot possess two contradictory properties simulta- neously (CP 1.492±1.495, 1.501). That is to say, something cannot possess both x and non-x. However, it can, over time, ®rst possess x and later non-x. Phillip can be both drunk and sober, provided the two Phillip events are separated by a temporal interval. If `Phillip drunk' and `Phillip sober' are two di€erent `Phillip states' as static moments in the life of Phillip, then they are autonomous, static Seconds and as such they are also equally without time. However, if considering Phillip in the sense of a ¯uctuating and ¯owing organism de®nable solely through his interdependence and interrelations with all other aspects of the equally ¯uctuating and ¯owing physical world, then Phillip is Firstness as the possibility for the emergence of Phillip-events, Secondness as the actualization of a minute portion of those possible Phillip-events, and Thirdness in terms of those Phillip- events' interdependent interrelations with all other eventing in the world. Now, there is time, properly speaking. There is timeless discontinuity, for sure. There is also the continuity of becoming. There is the being of becoming and the becoming of being without the possibility of being 232 F. Merrell becoming ®xed, but rather, it is always in the process of ¯uctuating, ¯owing, movement (CP 1.494). Peirce's more `general logic', as well as his hypothesis of time, helps account for how an entity becomes. In contrast, that which never changes, cannot exist in time. This continuity-discontinuity problem is germane to the limitations of language. Natural language, when used as if each word carved a granitic referent out of the world, does a hachet job on Heraclitus's ¯ux and Peirce's philosophy of process. Language is also notoriously inadequate for describing the quantum world. Louis de Broglie (1953: 219), certainly not alone among twentieth-century scientists in this respect, writes that formal languages and natural languages are idealizations that are not up to the task of accounting for the world of ¯uctuating quantum-events. These idealizations:

Most likely become less applicable to reality as they become more complete, and hence, contrary to Descartes, nothing is more misleading than a clear and distinct idea, for if it is supposedly clear and distinct, it has no necessary bearing on reality, and if it supposedly has no bearing on reality, it is invariably subject to alterations. (1953: 219)

The point is well taken. Like the world's furniture, we and the whole of our signs are destined to ¯ow along the ongoing stream of semiosis without the possibility of halting our movement and hence our change or of tacking a sign down, contemplating it, analyzing it, knowing it as it is right here and now and as it has been and will be. This provokes knee-jerk reactions in even the most stalwart among us. We almost intuitively scream out for the comfort of having a few hooks for connecting signs to things, and for determining the proper joints with which to separate the world into objects, acts, and events. The limitations of language are one problem. Another problem is that by way of formal and natural languages, di€erent and even contradictory and incompatible interpretations of the world can be considered equally true and nothing but true. Is the Earth the center of the Universe or is it the Sun? Or is it neither the Earth nor the Sun, but rather, all astral bodies are in movement relative to one another. Or perhaps the Earth sits on the back of a Turtle. Con¯icting interpretations in di€erent times and places have throughout history created innumerable conundrums and con¯icts. Historian of science Gerald Holton (1973) calls the basic models of the world appropriated by science `themata'. For a case in point, Einstein and Niels Bohr locked horns for years over something far greater than either of them: a complete and harmonious account of the universe (see Miller 1978, 1986). The contrapuntal give-and-take between these two mental titans Distinctly human Umwelt? 233 was not simply a matter of theories and their respective mathematics. Rather, it involved the very nature of `reality' at its most basic. Einstein's world existed `out there'; Bohr's depended upon the observer's choice of modes of observation, which brought with it uncertain consequences. Einstein's ultimate `reality' was the `thema' of a space-time continuum; Bohr's came in discrete chunks. Einstein's intangible search for deter- minacy Ð `God does not play dice', he occasionally remarked Ð was countered by Bohr's adoption of Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and his own complementarity. The double-slit experiment in quantum physics uncannily patterns these two antagonistic views. The split beam of electrons after passing through the two slits, like the particle/wave duality itself, is `split-brained'. As a particle, the electron is discrete, a no-nonsense, hard-core realist'. It is left-brainy, so to speak. As a wave, it is right-brainy: smooth, continuous, holistic, a range of possibilia. The electron's hard-core manifestation generally follows classical mechanics, using variables appropriate for the notion of billiard balls: position, velocity, angular momentum, mass, time. Its soft-core manifestation uses continuous variables somewhat suitable for the e€ect of dropping a billiard ball into a pond of water: wavelength, phase, frequency, amplitude. The real mind-bender is that the schizo- phrenic `electron' does not stand alone. Both of its descriptions can be roughly applied to all `objects'. In other words, it appears that the universe may ultimately be a contradictory collusion of two incompatible `themata', with no resolution of the di€erences between them and no translatability between the languages used to describe them. This incompatibility may be paralleled by an incompatibility between modes of human conception and perception, whether linguistically determined in the Sapir-Whorf sense or the product of everyday language use. Idiosyncratic modes of perception and conception might play a greater role than is generally conceded. To cite a few examples, Peirce (CP 2.277) was prone to diagrammatic thinking. Karl Popper (1974: 182) confessed that he compulsively thought in schemata. Einstein once claimed he ®rst thought in pictures, thereafter translating his images into their equational form, while Heisenberg, Max Born, and others found concrete imagery disgusting (Hadamard 1945; Miller 1978). The list of such examples, one would expect, is virtually unlimited.

Time, space, and Umwelten

Of course, summary comparisons and contrasts such as the above are easily abused, and I will attempt to go no further. The point to be made is that, 234 F. Merrell when all is said and done, and `themata' and incompatibles notwithstand- ing, we must concede that ultimately we cannot but `see' the world through ®ltered goggles. To borrow German biologist Jakob von UexkuÈ ll's (1957) term, we are locked into our particular species-speci®c Umwelt. Within each organism, along the functional cycle or information-conveying loop, external signals enter and become internal signals, having been processed in the transition according to our particular capacities. Consequently, each organism, from the amoeba to Einstein, is limited not only to its unique Umwelt, but also to its experientially unique Innenwelt. If an amoeba could write its own physics down on paper, it would di€er radically from our physics. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953: 223e) once remarked that if a lion could speak we wouldn't understand a word he uttered. Notions of space and time would appear completely bizarre, perhaps entirely unintelligible, from one species's physics to another. It follows that the `world' of each species is ordinarily taken by that species to be a self-consistent and complete `world' by way of its particular Umwelt. It is for it simply the way things are. What lies outside its Umwelt simply does not exist. It might as well be in the `elsewhere' of relativity's `light cone', outside the perceivability of the species. Such are apparently the limitations of a given Umwelt. In view of Peirce's continuity of mind through time, and the classical mechanics/relativity/quantum theory con¯ict as brie¯y mentioned above, J. T. Fraser's (1979: 22±26; 1982: 30±31) formulation, inspired by UexkuÈ ll, is worthy of note. Fraser divides the various Umwelten into (1) atemporal (time cannot be recognized by the humans as such), (2) prototemporal (time and space are indistinguishable, but events and things are interchangeable Ð i.e., time is symmetrical), (3) eotemporal (time is pure succession; it ¯ows, but past-present-future cannot be clearly distinguished), (4) biotemporal (that of sentient organisms for whom time may either be an eternal present or asymmetrical and irreversible), and (5) nootemporal (beginnings and endings are recognized; self- consciousness and self-identity are possible). It hardly needs mentioning that bio-nootemporality and to a degree eotemporality are speci®cally characteristic of the human Umwelt. Eo-biotemporality belongs to nonhuman animal kingdoms. The empirical entities of classical physics belong to the reversible time of eotemporality. And at the most basic level, electrons and other kindred entities are con®ned to prototemporality,and photons to atemporality. Photons are in constant ¯ux. Their world is intrinsically chaotic and restless. However, from the photon's Umwelt, traveling at 300,000 meters/ second, the universe would be bleak and dark, an entirely static state of a€airs. It would be like Peirce's notion of pure Firstness containing Distinctly human Umwelt? 235 everything as possibility and nothing as actuality. At the prototemporal level of quantum events, in contrast, particles exist, though ¯eetingly. They are here as particles in one instant and gone as a wave function in the next instant. They resist the idea of permanence and continuity. Of necessity, quantum theoretical formulations generally divide the electron and its immediate cousins into their schizophrenic manifestations in order to make them somewhat intelligible for us from within our eo-bio-nootemporal framework, the wave-particle duality being the product of this split. This is ®ne insofar as it allows the physicist to get on with her equations and the high-school physics instructor to describe the world of prototemporality to her students. The electron can be either a particle or a wave but not both at the same instant. In this sense, the externally `real' is not the really `real' but the product of an Umwelt: it is a `semiotically real world'. And what would the nimble electron have to say about all this? Most likely little or nothing at all. It is unaware of instants and of linear time. As far as it is concerned from within its prototemporal world, it is both a particle and a wave in simultaneity, or it is neither a particle nor a wave, according to the mind of the contemplator. Mind, and mind-generated time, in the sense of Peirce, apparently enter the scene at higher levels. Like prototemporality, the most fundamental aspect of the universe of Peirce's Secondness is motion and change in time, classical linear chronometric time Ð as picked up by the roving, restless mind. However, these particulars, viewed from within our eo-bio- nootemporal Umwelt, are gathered up into a rather dense concoction of di€erences refabricated as sameness and even identities: tokens are `typized', individuals become universals, haecceities become quiddities. One must be aware, nonetheless, that in light of semiosis, rest and stasis are not primitive but evolutionary stopping points. They are the temporary repository of matter as e€ete mind, as habituated mind, for mind, in Peirce's cosmological framework, is primary. Let's take a turn back to the ®rst section of this essay in an attempt to integrate it further with the Umwelt idea.

One way or many ways?

Minkowski's mathematical formulation of relativity, as mentioned above, implies continuous movement of a given entity along its `world-line' within the space-time manifold. The same seems to apply prima facie to movement as change in position during a time interval in classical mechanics. A radical distinction between the classical and relativist views, however, consists in the latter's implication Ð as Whitehead insisted Ð that there 236 F. Merrell can be no timeless localization of atoms, molecules, or elementary particles. There are no substantive singularities in the space-time continuum. If such material entities existed, they would exhibit the property of being cut o€ from the remainder of the universe; they would be limited to particular spatial ambulatory prisons. But they are not. Rather, they are tantamount to the product of Peircean cuts (CP 6.512) that break the continuum of possibilities into signs and items of experience, or Spencer-Brownian (1979: 1±11) marks of distinction, that are arti®cially exercised by particular minds, from the human animal to nonhuman organisms, and in accord with particular Umwelten Ð those minds being themselves cuts or marks. From the quantum theoretical view, the Copenhagen interpretation stipulates Ð though there is controversy in this regard Ð a wave `collapse' (cut, mark) by an observer-instrument to produce a `particle', which can then be conceived as a discrete entity. In John Archibald Wheeler's (1980a, 1980b, 1984, 1990) radical interpreta- tion of the quantum world, remarkably in line with Peirce and Spencer- Brown, a choice is, so to speak, made. A question is then asked of the universe, and an answer is distinguished to yield what is taken as `stu€' in the space-time ®eld. However, according to the ®eld concept inherent in relativity theory as I understand it, what appears as discrete `stu€' is actually something like a `knot' in the continuum which is not an absolute singularity but is connected, hyperbolically or asymptotically as it were, with every other `knot' in the ®eld. That is to say, the `warp' in the ®eld's embrace of the `knot' curves hyperbolically without ever absolutely `cutting' itself `entirely' from the ®eld, much like the ripples of a pond that are a perturbation yet a reminder of the pond's continuity. Cuts or marks are, in this sense Ð and as Spencer-Brown takes pains to explain Ð arti®cial mutilations of the universe as an interconnected seamless fabric. Mendel Sachs (1988) presents an intriguing survey of the ongoing controversy surrounding the con¯icting relativistic and quantum theore- tical conceptions of the world. Throughout the ages, cosmologies have generally inclined toward one of two `themata': matter as discrete or as continuous. The most recent scienti®c revolution, in contrast, has not been able to shake its `schizophrenic' character. As implied by the above- mentioned Bohr-Einstein debates, relativity on the whole implies a continuum view of matter in terms of the ®eld concept, while quantum theory is essentially atomistic, yet of a di€erent sort from classical atomism. In another, rather cryptic, way of putting it, and in light of Fraser's categories, Einstein's view is still rooted in the continuity of eotemporality Ð though devoid of the observer/observed break inherent in classical mechanics (Fraser 1982: 93±94). The probabilistic character of the atomistic prototemporal world, in contrast, is an evolutionary step Distinctly human Umwelt? 237 between atemporal chaos and eotemporal determinism, the shimmering, scintillating vacillation of the prototemporal domain between particle/wave, this/that, having conjoined otherwise inconsistent antagonists (Fraser 1982: 69±70). `Yes', one might wish to query, `but what has this to do with the UexkuÈ ll's notion of Umwelt?' Of course. Pardon the lapse. I really must get on with my story.

What do Umwelten let us know?

Thure von UexkuÈ ll (1987: 248) points out that the theory of Jakob von UexkuÈ ll, his father, inverts the classical formula according to which the detached subject renders account of the object of nature, `reality out there', patiently waiting for the proper knower to seduce her and give her her appropriate window dressing. The `reality' of the Umwelt `to which all is subjected and from which everything is deduced, is not to be found ``outside'', in in®nite space, which has neither beginning nor end, and which is ®lled with a nebulous cloud of elementary particles; nor is it to be found ``inside'', within ourselves and the indistinct, distorted images of this external world created by our mind'. Rather, the `reality' of Umwelt-driven subjective-self-worlds consists of sense perception surrounding these worlds and all things, acts, and events to form something like `bubbles', `subjective Ð self-world bubbles', that are perpetually in the process of change. Ultimate `reality', nature herself, lies beyond and behind each and every Umwelt, each and every theory conceived by human minds, each and every world fabricated by human hands. Umwelten also lie behind the constructed worlds of ant colonies, beaver dams, burrows, nests, and other makings of nonhuman organisms. Umwelt worlds, the only `reality' available to us, are the product of mind acts and physical activity. The laws of nature are the laws the mind has constructed. In this respect, and as Thure von UexkuÈ ll (1982, 1989) seems to acknowledge, Jakob was quite in line with much nonclassical physics of the twentieth century, whose radically distinct perspective and metaphysical underpinnings are only recently catching on in the life sciences and especially the human or social sciences. I write this with Albert Einstein in mind Ð Einstein, instrumental in the creation of an entirely distinct scienti®c spirit but who remained with one foot caught in the classical tradition Ð who wrote that all scienti®c concepts, `even those which are closest to experience, are from the point of view of logic freely chosen conventions' (Einstein 1949: 13). In other words, concepts, hypotheses and theories are free creations of the mind, and if the mind 238 F. Merrell is in tune with the world in the Peircean sense, then the one collaborates with the other and vice versa. Einstein's observation ironically falls in line with one of his antagonists, Werner Heisenberg, among a host of physicists during the ®rst half of this century, who once wrote that: `The same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds' (Heisenberg 1971: 101). A little further into the left ®eld of pure speculation, we have the controversial words of physicist and astronomer James Jeans that: `The concepts which now prove to be fundamental to our understanding of nature _ seem to my mind to be structures of pure thought, _ the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine' (Jeans 1948: 166, 186). Putting this general sentiment into one bag, we have the notion that physical science `does not simply describe and explain nature; it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves', but rather, `it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning' (Heisenberg 1958: 81). In this regard, it is compelling to suggest, along with Immanuel Kant, that the possibility of experience is `that which gives objective reality to all our a priori cognitions' (Kant 1855: 118). Along comparable lines, Thure von UexkuÈ ll tells us that Jakob's Umwelt theory postulates `that the laws of the natural sciences are not laws of nature, but rules which we derive for our own objectives from our confrontation with natural phenomena', and that Umwelt theory `draws the line not between nature and man, but between animate and inanimate nature' (T. von UexkuÈ ll 1987: 151). Moreover, we read that `all living organisms, including cells, behave as subjects, responding only to signs and Ð for as long as they live Ð not to causal impulses' (T. von UexkuÈ ll 1987: 152). The upshot is that Umwelt theory is in the classical sense neither exactly subjective nor objective; it is neither exactly the product of idealism nor realism. Rather, it becomes somewhat akin to Peirce's `objective idealism', which, in Rescher and Brandom's trenchant words (1979), entails methodological `realism' in conjunction with ontological `idealism'. Now,Peirce's`objectiveidealism'isastrangeconcoctionindeed.Method- ological `realism' coupled with ontological `idealism' might remind one of Arthur Eddington's (1958a: xi±xix) writing desk as an uninterpreted complex of sensations (the positivist's `reality') and a rei®ed construct (a swarm of electrons). This distinction entails a transition from the per- ceived world at the edge of consciousness to the realm of mental constructs subject to human creative capacities and logical combinatorial principles. The one somehow, and hopefully, ®nally con®rms the other, and the other the one. A question, however, must be asked: `What would the ``real'' be without minds to construct it?' This problem combines methodology Distinctly human Umwelt? 239 and ontology. Kant, of course, rooted both of these branches in general metaphysics. Ontology must rely on faith, but not methodology, and methodology in the ®nal analysis relies on ontology, which is to say that over the long haul it relies on theory, itself ultimately based on faith (also Polanyi 1958). According to Peirce, `reality', that is, the myriad collection of all possible Umwelt-generated `semiotically real' worlds, re¯ects `mind- stu€'. Or perhaps better stated, the `real' is mind-stu€ (Eddington 1958a, 1958b). But since this `mind-stu€' is never static and never terminal, we must be satis®ed with the admission that `reality', insofar as we can know it and as we know it `semiotically' at any given space-time juncture, has many faces (in the light, Putnam 1987). These faces are changed, sometimes even without our consciously altering our `mind-stu€', and in spite of our concerted e€ort to arrest such change. As the early Wittgenstein (1961: 6.43) trenchantly put it, the happy man and the sad man live in two di€erent worlds. On the other hand, if this `mind-stu€' and the `laws of nature are ideas or resolutions in the mind of some vast consciousness', to requote Peirce, then we are placed in yet another pickle Ð of which Peirce was well aware. At the outset, the notion that our minuscule minds are actors on the world's stage appears to present no problem. Or does it? If we take Wheeler's quantum cosmology at face value, we as actor-participants bring the world-as-recorded-world into existence. In other words, the world as a whole lifts itself by its own bootstraps, ourselves as the world's observers included. This is tantamount to a Grand Interpreter saying what the world is as a Grand Interpretant, but in order that this be made possible, Inter- preter and Interpretant must be coterminous. They merge, one into the other, to compose the unthinkable Cosmic Sign. As such, they simply cannot be separated, though Manley Thompson (1952) takes pains arti®cially to separate them in his critique of Peirce. How de we reconcile the subjectivity-objectivity and idealism-realism problems, on the one hand, and on the other, Wheeler's self-organizing, participatory universe, with the Umwelt hypothesis? The very Umwelt idea involves perception, for sure. And the idea of perception involves a perceiver and that perceived, as well as presumably a knowing subject and the object known. The physical environment can only have an e€ect on the Umwelt-clad organism by way of o€ering it a combination of stimuli that are speci®c to the respective species of which that organism is a member. This is the subjective nature of signs insofar as they are perceived and interpreted signs. Umwelt theory calls for a perceptual organ or meaning-receiver, the subject that is subject to sensations, an e€ector organ, the subject that engenders and concept and an interpretation, and a receptor or perceptual sign, the meaning carrier, the object. This aspect 240 F. Merrell of Umwelt theory also falls in line with many of the forerunners of contemporary physics. It was Bohr himself who once suggested that: `All our ordinary verbal expressions bear the stamp of our customary forms of perception' (Bohr 1961: 19). And, as if Einstein for some strange reason happened to harmonize with Bohr, we have from him the notion that: `It is the theory which decides what we can observe' (Heisenberg 1971: 63). For a third voice in order to create a syncopated beat, Louis de Broglie writes: `May it not be universally true that the concepts produced by the human mind, when formulated in a slightly vague form, are roughly valid for Reality, but that when extreme precision is aimed at, they become ideal forms whose real content tends to vanish away?' (de Broglie 1939: 280). Concepts as (subjective, partly idealistic) free creations of the free-wheeling mind let us (somewhat objectively and realistically) see what we see. If what we see is no more than vague and even ambiguous conceptual and linguistic window-dressing, then it might march to the tune of the Big Band going by the name of `objective reality'. However, language is not up to the task; it is always a little out of step. Which is to say that if language is passed o€ as of perfectly honed clarity and precision, then in that case it will have taken its leave of the world to engender its own `ideal reality'. Putting this in terms of Peirce's `objective idealism', if methodological results are taken as rock-solid proof of the theory and the observations tied to that theory, then ontological `idealism' exercises its force; if methodology takes a back seat to the ontologically `real', that is indication that it has become loose and limber and hardly conducive to the rigors absolute clarity demands of it. `Yes, but once again, what has this to do with the Umwelt hypothesis? If anything at all?' Yes, I think I must try a more direct approach.

Umwelten let us know what we can know

Consider Figure 1 as a combination of UexkuÈ ll's Umwelt circle and Peirce's sign model. The subject picks up the (receptor) sign and perhaps (but not necessarily) its respective semiotic object by way of its perceptual organ.1 The e€ector organ then engenders an interpretant, that acts as mediator between the sign and its object, such mediation creating the same relation between itself and the sign and object that it mediated and created between them. The mediation in this manner brings the interpretant into relation with the sign, which now has become an e€ector sign and meaning carrier. Thus the sign is processed, an interpretant is engendered, and the loop is completed. The Distinctly human Umwelt? 241

Figure 1. A combination of UexkuÈll's Umwelt cycle and Peirce's sign model

mind, or subject as it were, is in this process itself an interpretant interpreting the sign, and as such it also enters the sign and brings it into relation with its object in the same way that the subject is related to both the sign and its object. There is no subject `here' imperiously interpret- ing a sign and an object `out there'. Rather, interpreter-interpretant, sign, object, and the sign-object's interpretant, are all involved, in-volved, wrapped within one another, in a self-emerging process. Thus the semiotic tripod in the center of Figure 1 depicts a genuine triadic relationship. Each component of the sign is related to the other components through the intersection in the same way that they are related to it. This is very much unlike the customary triangular model of the pseudo-triadic relationship. The semiotic triangle in the order of, for example, Ogden and Richards (1923) would be indicative merely of three binary relationships. Sign processes according to Figure 1, then, ¯ow through three steps that make up a spiraling process: (1) the e€ector produces signs through their interaction with the object, which signs act as (2) carriers, that (3) are taken in by the organism to engender an interpretant that is one with the selfsame organism as interpreter, and such organism in turn in-forms, merges itself with (1) the e€ector sign and its object acting as (2) carriers that embrace (3) the organism, and the organism in turn embraces them, to engender another interpretant, _ and so on. 242 F. Merrell

In light of this process, it can be stated that: Nothing is a receptor of an object that is not signi®able by way of a sign; nothing is a sign that is not interpretable by way of an e€ector signifying some object; nothing is an e€ector that does not interpret as an interpretant something by way of its signifying an object. The path is, of course, circular, mediative, triadic. The Saussurean sign consisting of signi®er and signi®ed, both of them mental as a sort of nominalistic mentalism or idealism, with hardly any consideration of the physical world, it is not compatible with Umwelt theory. Since the Peircean sign is genuinely triadic, in the form of a tripod the legs of which connect sign, semiotic object, and interpretant through the apex or conjunction of the imaginary lines, it is a matter of nothing but relations, and of relations between relations. As such, one might surmise that the Peircean sign is also incompatible with Umwelt theory. However, the tripod is never static. Rather, the three sign components are per- petually in interdependent, interrelated, interaction with one another such that none of the components, and their conjunction making up the genuine sign, are autonomous. They are always becoming something other than what they were becoming along the now meandering, now swirling, now breaking and rushing, stream of semiosis. Consequently, the tripod is more akin the three spokes of a wheel in perpetual motion such that the sign's object can become another sign with its own object and inter- pretant, and the interpretant can in its own turn become a sign that engenders its object and then another interpretant. Semiosic musical chairs, one might call it. Yet it is, I would suggest, quite in line with our present quantum theoretical concept of the universe.

Kantianism, without a sturdy leg to stand on

One immediately notes the Kantian ¯avor of Umwelt theory. Kant rejected naive realism, that of an objective observer capable of opening her wide, innocent eyes to see what there is in all its pristine simplicity. Likewise, as far as Umwelt theory goes, there is no neutral observer. Above all, there is no knowing time and space as if the observer were taking a gander at them from nowhere, as though they could be observed. Time and space are not objects that can be set apart from all other objects in order to examine them as they are in themselves. Rather, they are forms of our perception, and we cannot get outside of them, no matter how much we might wish to do so. We cannot imagine what the coming and going of our physical existence would be outside time and space. They totally encompass all the phenomena that come into our attention, whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. Moreover, the properties, Distinctly human Umwelt? 243 characteristics, and qualities of the items of our perception are the product of the selective, constructive, projective, activity of our sensory organs. Hence to know the world is to know the body's capacity for selection, construction, and projection, within time and space. And what, precisely is this Kantian time? What is this Kantian space? Why, linear, chronometric time and Euclidean linear, homogenous space. The time and space of classical physics. Newtonian time and space. Umwelt theory is Kantian insofar as it concedes that the physical world cannot go beyond certain boundaries of existence. The world is what it is according to the laws that de®ne it, and, given these laws, it cannot be anything other than what it is. At the same time, Umwelt theory is non- Kantian in that it admits to many and distinct realities. Each species, with its own Umwelt, lives in a di€erent world. Put all the species together and you have many Umwelt-driven worlds the concoction of which makes up a compound world. But this compound world is not The World, which would be the union of all possible worlds engendered by all possible biological species that have been, are, and might be in the future. The various distinct realities at a given time engendered by the collections of species existing at that time make up an open set that will continue to expand during the course of evolution. In this manner, the future always holds many Umwelt-worlds in store. Whatever is known by a given species is known according to the capacities of each individual knower within the species, and the collection of capacities of all the individuals making up the entire community. And what about the `laws' of the physical world? Their nature, as far as species are concerned, depends on the particular Umwelt of a given species. The richer the evolutionary development of the Umwelt and the development of the mind, the more complex the theory. But no theory can be the catch-all for all phenomena and all physical laws. `Ask any molecule', John A. Wheeler (1980a: 352) once wrote, `what it thinks of the second law of thermodynamics and it will laugh at the question'. If the Umwelt is a circumscribed portion of the physical world that is made meaningful by a community of organisms, then a molecule after a fashion is guided by its own Umwelt, assuming that, as Alfred North Whitehead (1925) puts it, all entities, from particle-wave events to humans, are `organisms'. At least that is how J. T. Fraser formulates the Umwelt idea. A molecule's world does not comprise the second law of thermodynamics according to which it is bu€eted about virtually at random; hence if it were able to articulate its existence, there is no reason to believe that it would not consider itself free to come and go as it pleases. The second law simply doesn't exist as far as it is concerned. Moreover, a two-dimensional spider web is a remarkable world the spider knows through its sensory 244 F. Merrell channels. Ask the spider if she needs another dimension of space, and she may consider the very idea entirely irrelevant. Try to teach a robin about the advantages of human binocular vision for the appreciation of three- dimensional visuality, and you'll likely be met with the response that we humans have much too limited a view to be e€ective worm hunters while at the same time keeping an eye out for predators. Try to explain linear time to the earthworm, and he has no need of it; his world is a staccato series perhaps somewhat like `Now this, _ now this, _ now this, _', as he inches along in silent darkness. In short, time and space are what they are depending on the conditions and the sensory channels of the beholder, whether from the level of a molecule Ð presumably without sensory mechanisms Ð the individual cell, an earthworm or a spider or a robin or a dog or cat or simian, or even a human animal. Our molecule's behavior is speci®ed by its space-time coordinates, that dictate its Umwelt, in Fraser's words a `prototemporal' Umwelt. Plants and individual cells are in Thure von UexkuÈ ll's words `solipsists', since they `are only able to distinguish ``self'' and ``nonself''. The signs which enable them to do this are iconic signs, i.e., perceptual signs for a decrease, operational signs for an increase of the similarity to ``self'' ' (T. von UexkuÈ ll 1986: 211). Nonhuman multicellular organisms with a nervous system, sense of distance, and locomotion, with the capacity to pick up perceptual cues giving them information about the movement of things and acts and events in space and time live in an iconic and indexical universe, in Fraser's `biotemporality'. In Peirce's conception, indexical signs contain, within themselves iconic signs, like an envelope containing a photograph. A pointing ®nger is an index of that to which it points. The ®nger is an icon that a€ords a picture of the indexical function, but that function could operate just as well if it were an arrow or a rod or stick or the drawing of an eye ®xated on the object of indication. So the iconic content of the indexical function is not necessary, though it is there as a tacit, silent, opaque partner in the semiotic process. A nonhuman relatively complex organism, however, is capable of processing signals as indices indicating something of a nature other than the nature of the sign. They are index processors in addition to their role in processing icons. We humans, proud humans, have entered with mind and heart and soul into the illusory sphere of symbolic signs. I write `illusory sphere', because symbols, signs capable of signifying objects, acts, and events in their absence, are excellent signs of deceit, subterfuge, and out and out lying. A dog can, according to the time of day, process his indexical signs and then lie down at the front door in anticipation of the signs Ð both iconic and indexical Ð that tell him his master is soon to appear. The canine friend anticipates the signs' appearance and the arrival of the Distinctly human Umwelt? 245 object of those signs, his master, because all that has occurred many times in the past. It is doubtful, however, whether the dog could create the idea of his master's nonappearance on a certain day. Creation of such an image presupposes the capacity to imagine something that has never happened as if it could happen. In other words, the imagination of a sign of the absence or negation of something, which is a prerequisite for lying. Language, and symbolic signs in general, use negativity and contradiction to a remarkable degree in creating the image or idea of something that is not as if it were. In Thure von UexkuÈ ll's (1986: 213) words, the `ability to form symbols means that the direct connection between perceiving and operating is interrupted'. The connection is now indirect. That is to say, pure iconicity knows of no relation between itself and something else. It is by and large Firstness. An index enjoys relation with that of which it makes of itself a sign, for sure. But the connection is natural, often causal, and necessary. It's principle function is that of Secondness. Without the weathervane the wind direction would lose its signifying speci®city. Without the mercury level in the thermometer or barometer, temperature and air pressure would be matters of subjectivity, of quality, of feelings, without any somewhat precise measure of quali®cation. Without lightning, there would be no easily perceptible indication of the thunder that is sure to follow. Without the cup, one could hardly refer to a cup of co€ee as simply a `cup'. Such is the way of indexical signs. Symbolicity is something else entirely. Symbolic interrelations bring Thirdness to a screaming pitch of functionality. Thirdness mediates between the Firstness of pure iconicity and the Secondness of pure indexicality, bringing them together in such a manner that the sign in and of itself needs no present other Ð its semiotic object. Nor does it need any direct relation Ð as a sign Ð with that with which it is related. Nor is there any demand for meaning Ð the interpretant Ð determined by any connection between the sign and that which it signi®es. Rather, the Thirdness of symbolicity creates the possibility that the relation between the sign and its object is not what would ordinarily be the case. The not bears witness to the indirect relation and the element of arbitrariness the symbol carries along in its satchel. A tree as a physical semiotic object (Secondness) or as a sign (Firstness) of something else, is not `tree'. The sound or marks on paper, `TREE', evoking the image and concept of a tree, could relate to a present tree, an absent tree, a Spruce, a Fir, a Maple, a Cottonwood, a Redwood, or one of any other class of trees, or it could relate to the entire class of trees. Moreover, if the English community so desired, tomorrow instead of `tree', we could say `blecht', `scharlch', `kisquaint', or any other combination of vowels and consonants, in our 246 F. Merrell discussion of what today goes by the name, `tree'. In so doing we could likely communicate quite well, thank you. So, in light of Figure 1, symbols can and often do bring about a break, within the mind of the subject, between the perceptual organ picking up cues from the object through sensation and perception, on the one hand, and on the other, the e€ector organ that engenders a concept and the meaning (interpretant) of the sign. This break opens the door to imagination, construction of something that is not what would ordinarily be, yet it might in some future moment become what is from some alternate perspective or other. The Umwelt of any organism is a `subjective universe' in the conception of the UexkuÈ lls. Their point is well taken. By means of this `subjective universe', change in behavior and when that behavior becomes habit of mind change of sign processing can ensue (see Boler 1964). The familiar story about macaques on a beach in Japan who learned to wash sweet potatoes that were discarded in the ocean waters in order to separate the sand from them and eat them without all the grit is a typical case. One enterprising individual within the macaque community brought about a break between perceptor and e€ector, sensation-perception and concept-meaning. She engendered an imaginary sense of some condition that was not the case as if it were. A new semiotic possibility emerged. She put it to the test. And, presto! A new `subjective universe' came into existence. Umwelten are not invariant with a given species, it would appear. All species, by biological evolution or by the development of the indi- vidual, by phylogenetic or ontogenetic change, can alter their `subjective universes'.2 We humans, in spite of the havoc we have caused nature, are masters at changing our `subjective universes'. This human changeability has been the focus of too many studies to enumerate. Allow me brief allusion to one scholar and his work: Jean Piaget. Piaget's `genetic epistemology' revolves around the central idea that our knowledge Ð principles of logic and mathematics, understanding of space, time, causality, shapes, and motion Ð grounded in our scienti®c knowledge, is of biological origins.3 As such, knowledge follows biological laws of evolution. Just as the individual organism and the species survive due to their ability to engage in an ongoing process of adaptation, so also, the survival value of a body of knowledge depends on its adaptability to new circumstances and the problem situations they bring with them. Adaptability implies change such that the organism, or knowledge as it were, brings itself into a state of maximal equilibrium with respect to the environment. This is a universal characteristic of the life of knowledge just as it is for the life of the organism. The child's capacity for assimilation of crucial aspects of her Distinctly human Umwelt? 247 environment and her accommodation to them is not functionally di€erent than that of a solitary amoeba. The di€erence is a matter of complexity. Or, in the above terms, the di€erence is a matter of a chie¯y symbol using animal in contrast to the animal largely limited to iconic and indexical signs. As the individual mind grows, so also the signs it uses. The individual and her/his signs grow and develop from iconic to indexical to symbolic, or from principally signs of Firstness to Secondness to Thirdness. The more the growth and development, the more the ability to adapt to new and di€erent circumstances. The more the ability to adapt, the greater the capacity for greater change. And the greater the capacity for the change, the more adept the organism becomes at re-establishing the desired equilibrium with its environment by means of its self-regulating activity. The basic hypothesis is that cognition is the outgrowth and re¯ection of organic processes. There are certain problems with Piaget's and all kindred theories. The goal is toward equilibrium, minimal con¯ict, reduced tension. The mech- anism for bringing this about is homeostasis. The laws of equilibriation are mechanical in nature, in spite of Piaget's contention that his epistemo- logy is genetic. The model, I would suggest, should actually be more Prigoginean, after the Nobel Prize laureate of 1977 in chemistry, Ilya Prigogine (1980; Prigogine and Stengers 1984; also Merrell 1995, 1996, 1997). The watchword should be morphogenesis rather than homeostasis. Morphogenesis implies positive moves bringing about change even when change is not simply a reactionary shift when desequilibria comes about. Homeostasis plays on Secondness, action and reaction in order to re-establish a happy medium, a balance. Morphogenesis involves an active, even curious and inquisitive, questioning of the environment in such a manner that the environment responds to situations that would not otherwise have arisen. As a consequence, new situations emerge, that call for active, `dialogic' give-and-take between the mind and its environment. Both mind and world are in this sense placed on the same level. The mind poses questions to the world and the world responds in a way that it would never have thought of responding had those sorts of questions never been posed. And the world's creative responses to the mind's inquiry create in the mind new questions, new problem situations. When the process reaches this level, it is just that: process. There's no going back to the original mechanical state that is largely of the nature of Secondness. Piaget's problem, it appears, is the Kantian problem. Both Piaget and Kant posit a mechanical model of time and space and causality and of the mind as if this model were the only one. In other words, they assume that something in the order of UexkuÈ ll's Umwelt is mechanical in nature, setting the limits of perception and conception, and that the `subjective universe' engendered 248 F. Merrell by way of the Umwelt is mechanical in nature (Wilden 1972). Piaget, like Kant, believes `the forms that appear in rational classi®cations to be externalisations of the mind's cognitive structures: the mind discovers its own patterns in the world around it. If, in addition, these structures are themselves biological, as Piaget believes, then the conclusion that all ``natural'' hierarchies are variants of the same biological emboõÃtement relation seems inescapable' (Rotman 1977: 118). The mind's penchant for coming in tune with nature is, it would appear, a viable concept. Pierce himself propagated the idea through his theory of abduction by way of which the mind understands nature, of which the mind is a part, and as such the mind gains an understanding of itself (Davis 1972; Fann 1970).

Still, the illusive Umwelt

Notwithstanding the problems with Piaget, Ernst von Glasersfeld (1979a, 1979b, 1984) draws inspiration from the Piagetian model in developing his program of `radical constructivism'. He propagates the ideas that (1) cognition is a process of subjective construction of the world rather than discovery of what is there, and (2) the Kantian notion that there can be no rational access to the world as it is prior to and independent of experience. Yet, Glasersfeld writes that in spite of Kant's bombshell, metaphysical realism continues to persist, and the bottom line still has it in many quarters that `reality' is discoverable by way of faithful representations, images, and replicas. This notion, however, implies an in®nite regress tactic that has generally been conveniently stu€ed in the closet by hopeful searchers of that Grand Lady, Ultimate Truth. That is to say, in the Peircean sense, if the world is there, prior to its knower's knowledge of it, then the knower's representation, image, or replica of it, to be known and judged valid, can be so known and judged solely in terms of some other representation, image, or replica serving as a standard of comparison, and that in terms of others, and so on. There is no end of the line. There is simply no preordained and determinable correspondence between signs and a predetermined and determinable `objective reality' that can be directly and immediately experienced and known in the absolute, totalizing sense (Glasersfeld 1974: 30±31). According to Peirce, everything can in principle be known, though only in the theoretical long run, that is in®nite in extension. The verdict, in this light, is that Kant is right regarding real practice, but he is somewhat o€ the track where ideal principles are concerned. In the ®nal analysis, there is no fool-proof method for understanding the world through language in the logical positivist sense, nor is there any Distinctly human Umwelt? 249 one-and-only-one method for understanding language itself, except from within the interacting whole of theories, conceptual schemes, and the `language games' contained within them.4 Glasersfeld says much the same, though he enters from the other side of the stage to do so. A hypothetical framework or model and the language in which it is garbed, he asserts, maps one possible way of perceiving and conceiving a commonsensical (that is, semiotically `real') world. According to Hans Reichenbach's (1956: 24±37) brand of `convention- alism' Ð somewhat commensurate with constructivism of the Glasersfeld sort Ð our visualization of space is neither necessarily Euclidean nor non-Euclidean. It is no more than a particular extract from the three- dimensional space and one-dimensional time manifold. Visualization takes on Euclidean characteristics according to established conventions, which are normative, historical, and cultural. Upon constructing visual images, according to this conception, we bring to bear on the process some ante- cedent `logic', grounded in certain culture-dependent rules of congruence determining the conditions of equal and unequal, straight and curved, homogeneous and heterogeneous, spatial metrics. These rules direct per- ception, as it were, from outside, and as a result of choice. To be speci®c, our history, culture, and education have compelled us to adopt Euclidean rules. As a consequence, they have become so deeply embedded in our psyche that Kant erroneously declared Euclidean geometry to be our only possible mode of visualizing objects in space. In fact, our Cartesian- Newtonian corpuscular-kinetic heritage is in part still with us, whether we like it or not (Capek 1961; Comfort 1984; Skolimowski 1986). However, Reichenbach tells us that perception Ð guided by a particular Umwelt we must imagine Ð has no natural capacity to respond to nature with a speci®c geometry other than in a partly to wholly illusory manner. In fact, the geometry of a perceptual ®eld can be whatever one makes of it by applying a suitable mathematical transformation to one's conven- tional Euclidean metric, thus altering the physics of one's world appro- priately. We are free to choose virtually any rule of congruence for physical space we like, and if it happens to be non-Euclidean, it will allow us to perceive our world with a corresponding non-Euclidean geometry. With such a revised slant on things, a new `art' of visualization can then be assimilated, and we will consequently see the world through di€erent eyes. The upshot is, Reichenbach tells us, that we possess the intuitive capacity to discard our Euclidean maps and adapt ourselves to one of an inde®nite number of non-Euclidean constructs, in the process changing our visual imagination of pictorial objects. This capacity, he claims, has been exercised e€ectively by mathematicians, especially in the budding ®eld of topology. 250 F. Merrell

However, one might wish to protest, Reichenbach's positivist-empiricist view is problematic insofar as it fails adequately to account for our Umwelt-based limitations, given the neurophysiological channels avail- able to us. Logic and mathematics alone are not sucient for training and governing perception and conception. There is a natural compulsion automatically to see pictorial forms according to Umwelt-determined restrictions and cultural conventional inculcations. If it were merely a matter of mathematics, then there seems to be no reason why our brains would not be strictly Boolean-brained digital computers, or why com- puters could not be programmed to perceive objects in the same way we do, commensurate with the dreams of arti®cial intelligence researchers. Still, in light of Reichenbach's view, it might well be that our Umwelt is to some extent pliable, allowing us an inde®nite number of alternate Umwelt- worlds. Let's take a look at a pair of alternate perceptions and conceptions of space.

Euclidean versus hyperbolic space

Given certain parameters of choice we enjoy Ð and despite Umwelt- bound circumscriptions Ð Patrick Heelan (1983: 163±164) argues, in reference to various empirical studies, that a non-Euclidean (hyperbolic) power of visualization naturally antedates Euclidean perception and is independent of the perceiver's deliberate act of selection in the Reichenbach sense. In this light, Piaget demonstrated quite convincingly that children recognize topological and non-Euclidean properties before they learn to recognize Euclidean properties (Piaget and Inhelder 1956: 147). Heelan, however, takes a step further regarding human perception, postulating that independently of logic, mathematics, and any instru- mental measuring technique, `human perception naturally (i.e., easily) reads the optical clues so as to assume Ð at least episodically Ð the form of hyperbolic [non-Euclidean] geometry. Such a geometrical form is not then conventional for intuition in Reichenbach's sense: it is not the product of deliberate and conventional choice, since it does not rely on a ``universal force ®eld'', nor does it depend on the constructibility of an instrumented measurement process to provide hyperbolic congruences' (1983: 163). According to Heelan, ordinary folks, artists, and entire communities have at times perceived their world spatially in ways that are dicult to describe in our conventional Euclidean oriented modes of accounting for objects in space without resorting to languages and images of Distinctly human Umwelt? 251 illusion and distortion. The mode of perception and depiction deviating from customary pathways highlighted by Heelan is hyperbolic and non- Euclidean. Though experience of our physical environment generally appears to be displayed before us in an in®nite Euclidean space, from time to time it has been seen in terms of ®nite hyperbolic spatial trajectories. Heelan's evidence for this thesis, during di€erent times and in di€erent places found in all walks of life, he claims, falls into three categories: (1) everyday phenomena, such as dynamic ¯ows of space along highways, or in the open sea or sky, (2) common visual illusions, typical of Mavrits Escher's work, and (3) pictorial spaces depicted by ancient architecture and both ancient and modern painting (1983: 27±36). Distortions created by hyperbolic vision are the result of qualitative di€erences in the way objects appear when close to and directly in front of the viewer and when far away and to one side, in the way curvatures appear when near and when far from the horizon of perception, and in the distorted apparent sizes of objects in optical illusions. Hyperbolic per- ception, in particular, gives the image of objects in space curving toward a vague focal area instead of their location in Euclidean space consisting of straight lines converging to an in®nitesimal point in the in®nite distance. In Heelan's example, it is the di€erence between viewing a Euclideanly proportioned Renaissance painting following Alberti's linear perspective accompanied by binocular vision, on the one hand, and on the other, viewing Vincent van Gogh's painting of his room, where walls, table, chair, and bed curve inward toward an elusive focal zone giving a distorted image.5 This hyperbolic vision immediately appears unnatural, even bizarre. It goes against the grain of our conventional Euclidean world Ð though it was engendered by the same human Umwelt, we must assume. However, according to Heelan, this apparently `primitive' hyperbolic view is actually the most natural, in contrast to our radically constructivist, secondary, non-Euclidean perspective. Heelan goes on to write that although Reichenbach erred in assigning the plasticity of our perceptual mode strictly to logic and mathematics Ð for they are mere adjuncts, not the main characters in the play Ð he was correct in postulating the idea of plasticity. Our entrenched Euclidean perceptual mode owes its dues not to geometrical models de®ned by logic and mathematics but to the technological advances brought about by Euclidean-based science that, on the stage of human activity, gradually reformed the structure of our perception, thus deconstructing and reconstructing the sca€olding, the props, and the angles, vectors, distances, trajectories, and relations before us. In short, it is likely that our Euclidean construction of space actually plays second ®ddle to the leading role of non-Euclidean perception. This 252 F. Merrell is a far cry from Piaget's Cartesian-Newtonian push-pull mechanical world his children learn to manipulate. It might appear that what we might take to be our human Umwelt-generated world is not the only possible world, but rather, our Umwelt is itself plastic: it a€ords us the possibility for an unknown array of perceptions and conceptions of time and space.

Whose world are we talking about?

For example, Wolfgang Yourgrau (1966), backed up independently by physicist David Bohm (1965) and Heelan Ð all of them drawing support from certain facets of Piaget (1953; Piaget and Inhelder 1956) Ð argues that (1) Euclidean space was not really inherent to the Greek mind-set or pre-Greek common sense, though we would like to believe it was, and (2) the world of children presents an excellent laboratory for the study of space perception of the most basic sort. Inspired by the work of Ge za Re ve sz (1957), Yourgrau ®rst points out that topologically there is no fundamental distinction between circles, ellipses, and polygons, or between cubes and spheres: if the spaces are equivalent they are not identical in every respect but merely homeomorphically the same. Such topological relations, Yourgrau writes, are grasped by children at a much earlier stage and more easily than Euclidean shapes. There is considerable plausibility to this hypothesis. F. M. Cornford (1936) writes convincingly that the common sense space of the ancient Greeks was spherical and ®nite, like the Being of Permenides Ð and much in the order of Nicholas de Cusa's God, or Blaise Pascal's fearful sphere. Consecrated by Aristotle, this heterogeneous, ®nite, but unbounded space became the space of Western thought up to the scienti®c revolution, when in®nite, homogeneous Euclidean space and the void of the atomists became virtually axiomatic. Actually, there are quite compelling reasons to perceive and conceive time and space as absolute along Euclidean lines. The very laws of classical mechanics bear this out. The ®rst law, chie¯y the product of Galileo's thought, involves the simplest and apparently the most common-sensical phenomenon imaginable: linear movement of a body along a straight line with con- stant velocity. It was a revolutionary new view of nature, diametrically opposed to the Aristotelian notion that rest is the natural state of all bodies. More revolutionary yet, the medium required for this linear motion was absolute space. The best example is found in Euclid's ®fth axiom of parallel lines. This is a quite commonsensical notion for us these days, even though it is apparently contradicted by the eyes following the virtually in®nite stretch of a pair of railroad tracks. The tracks seem Distinctly human Umwelt? 253 to converge to a point in the distance. But this is illusory. They never converge but continue on in parallel fashion forever. The Euclidean universe played havoc with commonsense perception in Greek culture at that time (Szamosi 1986: 112±144). Yet, now, properly inoculated with a massive dose of the abstract in our twentieth century cultural milieu, we would like to think there is a smooth, natural continuity between our perceptual and representational relationships. We tend to believe the physical world corresponds to Euclidean dictates, and since that is the world we (think we) see, it is undoubtedly the way things are, clearly and simply. Now so, however, if we follow the above words on conventionalist constructivism. According to this view, as well as that of Yourgrau Ð also Hanson (1958, 1969) Ð what we see is what we have been trained to see and want to see. And to rub salt in our wounded con®dence that we are capable of knowing our world if we would just open our wide, innocent eyes and look, whatever world we happen to perceive and conceive could always have been otherwise. It could have been another construct entirely. In this regard, Yourgrau writes that our more `primitive', haptic sense of things, proper to the hands-on, felt world of children, is a pre-Euclidean world quite close to the post-Euclidean Einsteinian world of Riemannian geometry. However, having been inculcated in Euclidean geometry, like Piaget's children when they learn to get things right, our haptic perception falls by the wayside and our world becomes Euclidean through and through. Certain mathematicians, most notably Henri Poincare (1952: 21±31) shortly after the turn of this century, pointed out that our adult spatial notions are not immanent in our biopsychological makeup, and that our experience does not necessarily prove space is three-dimensional. Space's being so perceived has merely been a convenience to which we have become so accustomed that we tend to believe it is true without a shadow of a doubt. Alternative geometries developed in the nineteenth century by J. Bolyai, W. K. Cli€ord, K. Gauss, N. Lobachevsky, and B. Riemann e€ectively bear out this contention (Richards 1979).6 The oftimes pre- sumed a priori nature of Euclidean perception was also challenged by the experimental word of Helmholtz ( 1876), among others. Maurice Merleau- Ponty (1962: 203±205) and assorted phenomenologists during the present century have commented on the homogeneous nature of classical space in contrast to the heterogeneity of visual space. In fact, the Einsteinian world of relativity slaps our supposedly commonsense notions of both space and time in the face, though it remains quite commensurate with the world of the `prelogical' child. It takes us back to the very ®nite but unbounded sphere of the pre-Socratics. In Wolfgang Yourgrau's summary, `the observation of little children's behavior patterns suggests 254 F. Merrell that the ``india-rubber'' world of the topologist and of Einstein, though highly abstract to the uninitiated, and the haptic perception of the child are much closer to one another than haptic perception is to Euclidean shapes and spaces with their rigid properties. We say that the child recognizes objects haptically at an early age. But once the level of representation is reached, the aid of speech is invoked and thereby all doors opened to Euclidean commitment' (1966: 500). Following Yourgrau, Heelan, and others, that the linear perspective vision is a historical invention, it is quite plausible to conclude that in creating it we have designed and invented ourselves and our world. That is, our world has become an extension of our mind, of ourselves, and at the same time it has brought about a transformation of ourselves, the con- sequences of which have culminated in a progressively mechanistic, technologized, even electronic Ð in our age of information Ð view. In contrast to the world we have relentlessly fabricated and to ourselves as having in the process become fashioned, Heelan observes that his `hermeneutical model' of visualization presupposes that `visual space can take on any one of a family of geometries depending on the hermeneutical context of foreground and background, that is, of object and containing space' (Heelan 1983: 53).

Do Umwelten allow for multiple perspectives?

The specter of absolutism versus relativism, objectivity and subjectivity, or, in Richard Bernstein's (1983) condensed version of the age-old dualism, objectivism and relativism, continues to raise its ugly head at the most inopportune moments. The new wave of enthusiasm over Nietzsche raises the possibility that his so-called `perspectivism' might o€er a way out of the grand Western dichotomy. Nietzsche dismisses both poles of the dilemma as equally childish. Perspectivism can tolerate neither objectivism nor absolutism. Unlike strong relativism and subjectivism, it cannot get far without adopting some standard at both the individual and the com- munity level. However, without entering the emotion-clad arena of per- spectivism according to which my brutalizing people of a di€erent ethnicity is O.K. by me, even if you disagree, allow me to consider perspectives strictly in terms of distinct and even con¯icting modes of sensing and perceiving the world. Ideally, Nietzsche himself considered perspectivism: not as `contemplation without interest' (which is a nonsensical absurdity), but as the ability to control one's Pro and Con and to dispose of them, so that one knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and a€ective interpretations in the service of knowledge _ Distinctly human Umwelt? 255

There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective `knowing'; and the more a€ects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, di€erent eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our `concept' of this thing, our `objectivity' be. (Nietzsche 1968: 3, 12)

Perspectivism is a concept of concepts with fuzzy boundaries. In the ®rst place, the term depends for its coherence on visual analogies: perspective (per~throughzspective~to look, to look through, as by means of an optical instrument). This `ocularcentrism' is unfortunate. To say with Nietzsche that there is only `perspective seeing' and only `perspective knowing' is redundant, besides its ignoring all other forms of semiotic sensing. However, we could interpret the analogy di€erently. We could take perspectivism as a matter of feeling and sensing and becoming aware of signs of sound and smell and taste and touch, in addition to signs of sight. At any rate, `perspective' is the word we most commonly use. So I'll stick to it, with the necessary appended corollaries in mind, and trust that whatever readers I may still have will do the same. In the second place, perspectivism entails the capacity to `employ a variety of perspectives' and their accompanying interpretations. This is not tantamount to an `anything goes' game. Rather, it involves an active search for perspectives and their respective interpretations as alternatives to what has been by and large accepted according to the conventions that rule. It involves, in a word, searching for what is not ordinarily the case. In Nietzsche's words: `Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? and even ignorance?' (Nietzsche 1973: 1) Is this no more than a new shu‚e step in the perspectivist's dance? No. It is a search for answers to new questions posed to which standard answers are inadequate. It is entry into the uncharted wilderness where uncertainty lurks behind every bush. It is admission of ignorance. Gregory Bateson (1972) once observed that animal species, unlike we humans, harbor few doubts. They most often know what to do and do it, with little undue hesitation. Consequently, they ask relatively few new questions, rarely reveal their ignorance to themselves and their neighbors, and hardly ever falsify or refute their reigning state of knowledge. They simply know, positively and with hardly any doubt. We are a helpless stuttering, stammering species in comparison. That is the down side. The up side is that we have a remarkable capacity for change of mind and heart and soul. Nietzsche once again, distinguished between di€erent orders of human perception and thought:

What distinguishes the higher human beings from the lower is that the former see and hear immeasurably more, and see and hear thoughtfully _ . We who think and feel at the same time are those who really continually fashion something 256 F. Merrell that had not been there before, the whole eternally growing world of valuations, colors, accents, perspectives, scales, armations and negations. (Nietzsche 1974: 301)

Once again: Why not untruth? In order to get away from mind-stu€ and get in tune with body-stu€, with feelings, with sentiment. The task is to get a feel for other ways of sensing the world and oneself and others. To gain the ability to embrace multiple senses of the world and oneself and others. Karl Popper's (1972) notorious falsi®cationist philosophy is apropos here. Popper argued vehemently over the years that a theory's validity has little to do with its origin or its veri®cation but with its survival value. And its survival value is ultimately zilch, for if it is a legitimate theory it will sooner or later be falsi®ed, and the sooner the better. As far as Popper was concerned, there is no rational method for creating new ideas, and any and all ideas will eventually be negated. So we have irrationalism in the beginning and falsity in the end. Where is the logic in all this? There is none, if we are looking for classical logical principles, that is. There are many `styles of reasoning' (Hacking 1985), many possible methods the combination of which forces one to conclude that there is no carved- in-granite method (Feyerabend 1975), many possible `logics', including Peirce's `vagueness' and `fuzzy logic' (Kosko 1993; Merrell 1995, 1997, 1998; Zadeh 1965, 1975). Rather than identity and contradiction, there is sameness and di€erence (Heidegger 1953; White 1985). Arguments are developed by analogy, loose similarities, vague interconnections, fuzzy boundaries, Wittgensteinian `family resemblances', or in Nietzsche's notorious phrase, `metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms'. The structures we erect turn out to rest on a bed of quicksand. That's because their logic is ground on illogical pre-logic. At the heart of this pre- logic, we ®nd `She€er's stroke', GoÈ del's proof, the LoÈ wenheim-Skolem theorem, Turing's program, Heisenberg uncertainty, Bohr complemen- tarity, and the square root of minus 1, that ®nds its way into relativity and quantum theory and chaos theory and fractals and computer eng- ineering (Merrell 1997). All these forms of `pre-logic' spell our limitations. That, once again, is the downside. The upside is that they allow for our incessantly comingp up with something new. Speaking of 1, Francisco Varela (1979) in biological cybernetics argues, and Howard Pattee in biological physics (1979) speculates, that at the core of life there is undecidability, much of the sort we ®nd in the familiar `Liar Paradox' and in Bertrand Russell's `Paradox of Logical Types' (also Hofstadter 1979, from a di€erent point of view). This provides food for thought. If it is indeed the case, then are not Umwelten and Distinctly human Umwelt? 257 most particularly the human Umwelt the providers of opportunities for multiple perspectives and hence many ways of perceiving and conceiving the world? This would seem to imply that in terms of human notions of value, a human community must set its values down in concrete prop- ositions. These propositions should include statements regarding good and bad, right and wrong, the individual's relationship with the community, acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and so on. But what if an unforeseen set of circumstances emerges. Now, this codi®ed set of rules and regulations dictating one's conduct fails to answer the question: `What should I do?' In order to know what to do, given the circumstances at a given moment, one must have developed some a priori moral standard. But how is it possible to uphold the standard, except by the set of values? And how is it possible to justify the set of values except by some a priori standard? This is the dilemma of analytic thinking. It is also the dilemma, I would respectfully suggest, of putting all our physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology eggs in one basket. In so doing, we risk the Kantian assumption that whatever is taken to be the nature of our world here and now is the world our Umwelt has allowed us, and hence this world is destined to remain just as it is. However, is the human Umwelt indeed invariant? If not, to what extent is it pliable? How much freedom does it allow us regarding our perception and con- ception of time and space and causality and many other things within human societies past, present, and into the unknown future? What, ulti- mately, are our limitations and constraints, and what are our parameters of freedom? Umwelt research will enlighten us with respect to these questions, I would suspect. Final answers, however, are in all probability too much to expect.

Notes

1. I write `not necessarily', since the sign can function in the absence of its object, that object being implied by the sign and thereby evoked in the mind. 2. For the di€erence between `development' and `evolution', a topic of relevence whose full discussion is not permitted here due to limited time and space, see Salthe (1993). 3. See in this regard Rotman (1977), Piaget (1953, 1968, 1971a, 1971b, 1977). 4. For various arguments along these lines from philosophy of science, see Feyerabend (1975, 1987); Hanson (1958, 1969); Hesse (1980); Kuhn (1970); Polanyi (1958). 5. For studies of van Gogh and other artists in a comparable vein, see Gombrich (1960); Ivins (1973); LeShan and Margenau (1982); Lowe (1982); Panofsky (1960); Romanyshyn (1989); Shlain (1991); Szamosi (1986); Vitz and Gilmcher (1984); Waddington (1970). 6. In this respect, see Wittgenstein (1953, 1956) on the philosophy of mathematics, also Bloor (1983, 1991, 1997) on the possibility of di€erent mathematics for di€erent cultures. 258 F. Merrell

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Floyd Merrell (b. 1937) is Professor of Semiotics, Literary Theory, and Spanish American Literature at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana [email protected]. His research interests include semiotics, literary theory, and Latin American cultures and literatures. His major publications include Signs Grow: Semiosis and Life Processes (1996), Simplicity and Complexity: Pondering Literature, Science and Art (1998), Sensing Semiosis (1998), and Tasking Textuality (2000).