Day 21: Umwelt

I recently heard a review of a book called Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science by a science writer named Carol Kaesuk Yoon. I haven’t actually read the book, and I probably never will because I’ve been burned by these book reviews too many times before, particularly with nonfiction.  They make it sound so interesting, but it’s still nonfiction, and 99% of the time that means non-story enough that I give up on it. Yes, I know nonfiction would make me smarter and give me more interesting things to bring to a conversation, but I’ve decided that a good book review will check that box just as well.

Naming Nature covers the concept of umwelt.  Umwelt is a German word that translates literally as “the world around.”  Umwelt (in which the “w” is pronounced like a “v” because German is just cool like that) means “the world as it is experienced by a particular organism.”  The interview I heard gave this definition of umwelt: “the environment as it’s perceived by various animals according to their sensory abilities and cognitive powers.”  

Umwelt names the reality that we experience the same environment in different ways.  A honeybee takes things in through its compound eyes, a bat through its pinging sonar, a dog through its keen sniffer.  They can all be in the same place, but they have unique umwelten because of what they have to work with. 

The umwelt theory also gives credence to the connection between the mind and the environment because the mind is how we interpret what we take in through our honeycomb or our sonar or whatever.  So that means that not only does each species have a particular umwelt, but also each particular organism does, too.  We cannot separate our interpretation of our environment from our own history. 

The umwelt theory is, of course, much more complicated than this, but I didn’t read the book, so I can’t say too much more without Wikipedia.  I don’t really know what umwelt even has to do with hope except this:  umwelt seems to be on the opposite side of the fence from hope because it is grounded so very much in the present, in experiencing this very moment through our general lens and through our particular experience.  Umwelt appeals to me … but not enough to read the whole book.