#3; book review "A primer on ecosemiotics and animal welfare" finished and submitted

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 1.200 words added to my book review of Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare by Xany Jansen van Vuuren for Biosemiotics in the process of finishing and submitting it. My review is titled "A primer on ecosemiotics and animal welfare". This brings the number of writing days this Autumn up to 3 including 2,5 article writing days.

#2

Today I have had half a book writing day, with some planning made for the production process for my forthcoming book with Bloomsbury Academic Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism. I also received copy-edited files and information about the production process from the book´s project manager at Integra Software Services, a company based in India which Bloomsbury Academic uses for producing my book. 

Moreover, I had half an article writing day, with some 400 words added to my book review of Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare for Biosemiotics. 

This brings the number of writing days this Autumn up to 2 including 1,5 article writing days and 0,5 book writing days.

Editorial board meeting of Biosemiotics attended in Sheffield

Today, during the fourth day of the 26th Gathering in biosemiotics, in Sheffield, UK, I attended the annual editorial board meeting of Biosemiotics.

My 10 most read Springer Nature articles; "Wasted GDP in the USA" read 20.000+ times

According to Springer Nature, these are my most accessed Springer articles (prior rank refers to March 2025 list; as does prior number of accesses):  

1 (2). Wasted GDP in the USA (Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2023) 20.228 (14.297) 

2 (1). The Ethics of Laying Hen Genetics (Mia Fernyhough et al., Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2019) 18.088 (14.986)  

3 (3). Umwelt Transitions: Uexküll and Environmental Change (Biosemiotics, 2009) 7.557 (6.175)    

4 (4). Phenomenology and Biosemiotics (Morten Tønnessen, Timo Maran & Alexei Sharov, Biosemiotics, 2018) 7.001 (5.675)    

5 (5). Jesper Hoffmeyer’s Biosemiotic Legacy (Morten Tønnessen, Alexei Sharov & Timo Maran, Biosemiotics, 2019) 4.890 (3.789)    

6 (6). Current Human Ecology in the Amazon and beyond: a Multi-Scale Ecosemiotic Approach (Biosemiotics, 2020) 4.782 (3.673)   

7 (7). Towards Synthesis of Biology and Semiotics (Alexei Sharov, Timo Maran & Morten Tønnessen, Biosemiotics, 2015) 3.891 (3.022)

8 (9). Comprehending the Semiosis of Evolution (Alexei Sharov, Timo Maran & Morten Tønnessen, Biosemiotics, 2016) 3.602 (2.892) 

9 (-) Introduction to the special issue "Umwelt theory and phenomenology" (Carlo Brentari & Morten Tønnessen, Biosemiotics, 2024) 3.589

10 (8). Biosemiotic Achievement Award for the Year 2020 (Claudio Julio Rodríguez Higuera & Morten Tønnessen, Biosemiotics, 2021) 3.383 (2.908) 

"Making the Umwelt Bubble of the Modern Synthesis Burst" (Biosemiotics, 2021), with its 3.112 accesses (2.552), is thus out of the list, while "The evolutionary origin(s) of the Umwelt" (Biosemiotics, 2022), with 3.344 accesses, did not quite make the top 10. Altogether Springer Nature lists 24 publications of mine with a total of ca. 94.700 accesses and some 281 registered citations. The top 10 accounts for 76.536 accesses.

See also:

My 10 most read Springer Nature articles; ca. 60.000 accesses in total (March 2025)

"My 10 most accessed articles with Springer Nature; ca. 44.000 accesses combined" (November 2023)

Google scholar: 1631 citations; i10-index of 47

According to my Google Scholar profile my research has to date attracted a total of 1.631 citations (+19 since May 28th). This includes 73 citations so far in 2026 (+9 since May 28th). My h-index remains 22 while my i10-index is now 47 (+1 since May 28th). My i10-index means that 47 of my texts have at least 10 citations each.

My latest articles/chapters to reach 10 citations are:

"Agency in biosemiotics and enactivism" (2016)

"Outline of an Uexküllian bio-ontology" (2001) - my very first scientific article

«Life in Earth – a new look at the nature of life» sheduled for presentation July 27th in Sheffield at GiB26

My paper «Life in Earth – a new look at the nature of life» has been scheduled for oral presentation at the 26th Gathering in biosemiotics, which is to be held July 27–31st at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, on Monday July 27th at 14.30–15.00 as part of the session «Ecological biosemiotics».

#37,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 1.500 words added to my article "Prospective lifeworld-oriented studies of contested climate pasts and futures", which I have now remaned "Prolegomena to lifeworld-oriented studies of contested climate pasts and futures". In terms of words written, this was the most productive writing day so far in 2026.

This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 37,5, including 24,5 article writing days.

#33; peer-review of CCS and climate book received

Today I´ve had what ended up as half an article writing day and half a book writing day, upon receiving, at last, the peer-review of my book manuscript Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism from Bloomsbury Academic. I have today reworked writing plans for May and June considering the revision work I will now start with. Moreover, I did a little work on my book review of Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare for Biosemiotics.

This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 33, including 23 article writing days and 10 book writing days.

#31

Today I´ve had what ended up as half an article writing day, with some rearrangement of writing day plans done, some 100 words added to my book review of Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare for Biosemiotics, and some 100 words added to my manuscript "Prospective lifeworld-oriented studies of contested climate pasts and futures" which is aimed for a special issue of Journal of Cognitive Historiography about "Cognition and Evolution in Historical and Social Research".

This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 31, including 22 article writing days. In April, I logged only 5,5 writing days (specifically, 4,5 article writing days and 1 book writing day), and 812 words written.

Peer-review for Biosemiotics

I have recently done a peer-review for Biosemiotics.

#28; four SNL encyclopedia entries updated

Today I´ve had half an article writing day, with work done related to my book review of Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare for Biosemiotics. Also, I took note that four Store Norske Leksikon encyclopedia entries I have previously suggested edits to have now been updated - specifically, this concerns the entries "Albert Schweitzer", "bærekraftig utvikling", "etikk", and "miljøbevegelsen". This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 28, including 19,5 article writing days.

#27,5

Today I´ve had half an article writing day, with work done related to my book review of Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare for Biosemiotics. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 27,5, including 19 article writing days.

#26,5

Today I´ve had what ended up as half an article writing day, with some work done on my book review of Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare for Biosemiotics and some initial work done on my climate change-themed article for a special issue of Journal of Cognitive Historiography, work-titled "Prospective lifeworld-oriented studies of contested climate pasts and futures". I also rearranged my writing plans for the next few weeks.

This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 26,5, including 18 article writing days.

Joining Scientific Committee of 2026 "Biennial Meeting of the Polish Association for CogSci"

I have accepted to join the Scientific Committe of the conference "Biennial Meeting of the Polish Association for CogSci", with the theme «Making Sense of Meaning-making», which is to be held in Lublin, Poland September 21–23rd.

Abstract for 26th Gathering in biosemiotics: "Life in Earth – a new look at the nature of life"

I have just composed and submitted the abstract below to the organizers of the 26th Gathering in Biosemiotics, which will be held in Sheffield, UK, July July 27-31st.

***

Life in Earth – a new look at the nature of life  

Morten Tønnessen  

The global survey of biomass by Bar-On, Phillips and Milo (2018) has shown that subterranean life occurs at far greater depths, and is more abundant, than previously assumed. Life in the marine deep subsurface, i.e., subterranean life under the oceans, is actually more abundant than life in the oceans (ibid., see also Ruff et al. 2024). The existence of microbial, fungal and animal subterranean lifeforms raises ethical and political questions about the consequences of human activities in the marine deep subsurface and other subterranean environments.

As Dunn (2021) narrates, human beings are biased towards the organisms that look the most like us and inhabit a similar environment, while we habitually ignore the majority of odd and unfamiliar lifeforms. We know relatively little about the life that dwells in deep-sea environments – and even less about life in the deep subsurface. As is well known, photosynthesis is the dominant source of oxygen for most organisms. However, recent research documenting the assembly of ‘dark oxygen’ in deep-sea environments in the Pacific Ocean has revealed that photosynthesis is not the only source of oxygen on Earth (Sweatman et al. 2024). A further source appears to be ‘geo-batteries’ related to seawater electrolysis in seafloor areas covered by polymetallic nodules, i.e. multimetallic lumps. This discovery might change our outlook on how life has developed, and particularly our understanding of life in deep-sea and seafloor environments.

Recent research has further established that subseafloor cavities beneath hydrothermal vents are inhabited not only by microbes and viruses, but also by animals such as tubeworms and mussels (Bright, Gollner et al. 2024). Three tubeworm species included in the study of Bright, Gollner et al. (2024) uniquely rely entirely on a bacterial symbiont, which in turn “live off the chemicals released by the vents” for nutrition (The Economist, 2024). These tubeworms living in a subsurface environment below the seabed do not rely on nutrition originating from the surface – and ultimately photosynthesis drawn from energy from the sun – but rather on nutrients originating from deep inside Earth. This recent discovery of animal habitats in the subseafloor “expands the known macrofaunal biosphere” to new depths that was entirely unknown until a couple of years ago (Bright, Gollner et al. 2024: 2).

Based on these recent scientific findings, I will briefly discuss these core questions: To the best of our current knowledge, what is the full range of liveable environments on Earth, and the full spectrum of lifeforms on Earth? How do these discoveries change our outlook on the lifeworlds and biosemiosis of animals and other organisms, and how can they inform our efforts to develop more representative lifeworld models in biosemiotics?  

REFERENCES 

Bar-On, Y. M., R. Phillips and R. Milo (2018). The biomass distribution on Earth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 115 (25): 6506–11. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1711842115. Includes Supplementary Information Appendix, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115#supplementary-materials. 

Bright, M., S. Gollner et al. (2024), ‘Animal life in the shallow subseafloor crust at deep-sea hydrothermal vents’, Nature Communications, 15: 8466. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52631-9 

Dunn, Rob (2021). A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us About the Destiny of the Human Species. Basic Books. 

The Economist (2024), ‘Life finds a way: Tubeworms live beneath the planetary crust around deep-sea vents’. Available online: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/10/16/tubeworms-live-beneath-the-planetary-crust-around-deep-sea-vents 

Ruff, S. E. et al. (2024), ‘A global comparison of surface and subsurface microbiomes reveals large-scale biodiversity gradients, and a marine-terrestrial divide’, Science Advances, 10 (51): eadq0645. 

Sweatman, A. K. et al. (2024), ‘Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor’, Nature Geoscience, 17: 737–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01480-8

Joint abstract for 26th Gathering in Biosemiotics: "Ecosemiotics and Environmental Philosophy"

Jonathan Beever and I have just composed and submitted the abstract below to the organisers of the 26th Gathering in Biosemiotics, which will be held in Sheffield, UK, July July 27-31st.

***

Ecosemiotics and Environmental Philosophy

This presentation examines ecosemiotics´ relation to environmental philosophy: how has it interwoven with other approaches, and how can it support the future of environmental philosophy? We argue that ecosemiotics’ fundamental relationality offers both strong parallels to and novel perspectives on environmental phenomenology, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and ethics, articulating how ecosemiotics can respond to contemporary debates in environmental philosophy. Ecosemiotics’ novel Peircean and Uexküllian representationalism acts as a thread running through environmental philosophical traditions. Researchers have advanced relational perspectives in environmental ethics deeply informed by ecosemiotics, like Beever and Tønnessen, who argue – for example – that accounts of intrinsic value in nature can be strengthened by appeals to biosemiotics accounts of life-worlds. Key figures in environmental philosophy have cited ecosemiotic figures directly, like Merleau-Ponty’s references to Uexküll that anticipate the emergence of ecophenomenology in environmental philosophy. Other contemporary figures have developed ecosemiotic positions in traditional environmental philosophical areas in order to offer novel and more robust articulations, like Tønnessen’s Uexküllian reading of phenomenology, that pursues Merleau-Ponty and the late Husserl along biosemiotic lines. In this presentation, we draw attention to these threads throughout enviornmental philosophy, and anticipate the possibility of a John Deely-esque project of weaving semiotic threads together in environmental philosophy to fundamentally reorient perceptions of the field and to resolve some old tensions (like around disputes on the metaphysics of deep ecology, concerns about deprioritizing human value, and under-evidenced claims about environmental capacities) with the introduction of an empirically-grounded science of signs and meaning-in-environments. Not only does such a project support ongoing research in environmental philosophy, it can furthermore reshape pedagogical approaches to the field, opening space for a re-telling of the history of environmental philosophy that is grounded in the study of signs. Our presentation will conclude with a foray into the possibility of semiosis of artificial agents and its implications for extensions in environmental philosophy beyond mere «natural» environments.

Online semiotics workshop for University of Oran1 – Algeria scheduled, then delayed

I was scheduled to present a paper titled «Semiotics, animals, environment – Umwelt theory in the tradition of the Tartu-Copenhagen school of biosemiotics» online for University of Oran1 – Algeria, on Thursday January 8th, but pending formal approval this workshop has now been indeterminately delayed.

Abstract submitted for NoSP 2026, "Phenomenology in the Anthropocene"

I have just composed and submitted the abstract below to the organisers of the 22nd annual conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NoSP), "Phenomenology in the Anthropocene", which is to be held at Tampere University, in Tampere, Finland, April 22–24, 2026.

***

What characterizes a more-than-human phenomenology suitable for the Anthropocene?   

To address this question, it is pertinent to start out with the observation that the Anthropocene discourse is at its core a discussion about humanity´s impact on the natural environment that emerged from geology. At the same time, the Anthropocene has also over the last several years been vividly discussed from the perspectives of social sciences and the humanities. There is a disconnect between how the Anthropocene has been discussed in a natural science setting, and how it is being discussed in social science and humanities settings, with third-person objective perspectives predominating in the first and subjective perspectives prevailing in the others.

In my view, to be suitable for the circumstances of the Anthropocene, a more-than-human phenomenology must meet the following criteria: 

* It must account for human lifeworlds as well as non-human lifeworlds  

* It must account for human phenomena and non-human phenomena within a consistent and comprehensive theoretical framework 

* It must be capable of explaining how human agency can lead to material changes in the natural world, and how these material changes affect living conditions 

* It must be capable of tackling the problem of human bias which appears e.g. in the form of anthropocentrism and zoocentrism, and which distorts our thinking about nature  

I will present a version of more-than-human phenomenology that draws on biosemiotics and Jakob von Uexküll´s Umwelt theory which I will argue meets the abovementioned criteria. The relevance of such a brand of phenomenology is supported by the fact that Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty both engaged with von Uexküll´s work in their discussions about animal lifeworlds. By outlining the main characteristics of a more-than-human phenomenology suitable for the Anthropocene, I simultaneously address key issues related to the nature, scope, and purpose of ecophenomenology.

Margrethe Voll Storaas´ ph.d. defence successfully completed; opposition given

The last couple of days I have been in Oslo, in relation to the ph.d. defence of Margrethe Voll Storaas at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, at the occasion of her ph.d. thesis "As Agent and Environment: A Biosemiotic Understanding of the Moving Body within Ecology and Technology through Case Studies in Sport". I acted as first opponent, along with second opponent Kathinka Evers (Uppsala University, Sweden), while Ørnulf Seippel was internal committee member. Margrethe started the day by giving the trial lecture "The ecology of the non-human body in the Anthropocene: Comparing the human and non-human body", on our indication. She completed the ph.d. defence successfully. The day ended on her doctoral dinner at the restaurant Park 29 in downtown Oslo.

Involvement in ph.d. assessment and defense of Margrethe Voll Storaas

Earlier this year I have taken part in the assessment of the ph.d. thesis of Margrethe Voll Storaas for the  Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (specifically their Department of Sport and Social Sciences), along with Ørnulf Seippel and Kathinka Evers. In a couple of weeks I will act as first opponent at her public ph.d. defense, which has been scheduled for October 17th (see announcement).

Programme:

10.15–11.00 Trial lecture on the topic “The ecology of the non-human body in the Anthropocene: Comparing the human and non-human body" 

13.00–16.00 Public defense of the thesis "As Agent and Environment: A Biosemiotic Understanding of the Moving Body within Ecology and Technology through Case Studies in Sport" followed by a discussion 

In addition to in person attendance, it will also be possible to watch the defense live on the YouTube channel of the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences.