Chapter "Nosology and semiotics" available for reading via Google Books

My introductory chapter "Nosology and semiotics" is available in full for reading in Google Books, as part of the book Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices.

Book chapter "Nosology and Semiotics" published

The book Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices, with my introductory chapter "Nosology and Semiotics", was published online yesterday.

Reference:

Tønnessen, Morten 2023. Nosology and Semiotics. In Carlo Guido Musso & Adrian Covic (eds.), Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices, pp. 1–24. Cham: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36789-2_1 

Cover of book "Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices"

This is the cover of the book Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices (forthcoming on Springer, edited by Carlos Guido Musso), which includes my text "Nosology and Semiotics" as its first chapter:

See also:

Book featuring "Nosology and Semiotics" chapter now advertised online

#52,5

Today I have had half a writing day - during my summer vacation - with some 300 words added to my text on experiential and behavioural challenges for the book Mars and the Earthlings, and my chapter "Nosology and semiotics" proof-read. This is writing day #52,5 this year.

Paper "Nosology and semiotics" presented at NASS XIII

On Thursday June 8th I presented my paper "Nosology and semiotics" at the 13th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS) in Helsinki (June 7-9th), as part of the session "Medicine". Some 14 people attended.

Abstract "Nosology and semiotics" submitted to NASS XIII organizers and approved

On December 23rd 2023 I submitted the abstract below to the organizers of NASS XIII. I was notified Debruary 7th that the abstract had been approved.

Abstract for NASS XIII, Feeling – Skill – Knowledge, Helsinki, Finland, 7–9 June 2023   

Author: Tønnessen, Morten 

Affiliation: Department of social studies, University of Stavanger, Norway 

Email address: ***@uis.no 

Title of the paper: Nosology and Semiotics   

ABSTRACT 

Semiotic concepts such as ‘sign’ and ‘symptom’ have been applied in medicine ever since ancient Greece. Medicine relates to biological phenomena. On this background, a biosemiotic perspective on medicine may be relevant and informative. Semiotic perspectives are perhaps particularly pertinent in Nosology, the theory or study of diseases, or more specifically “the scientific study and classification of diseases and disorders, both mental and physical” (APA dictionary of psychology 2021), especially regarding the recognition of diseases. Nosology is related to the concept of diagnosis and the practice of diagnostics, where making a diagnosis often, and historically, typically, entails recognizing a disease or condition by its signs and symptoms.  This presentation draws on a forthcoming book chapter (Tønnessen, forthcoming), “Nosology and Semiotics”, which provides an overview of key works in semiotics on the study of medicine in general and nosology in particular. It presents a biosemiotic perspective on human health, starting with the ‘Umwelt’, the organism´s subjectively experienced lifeworld, and ending with ‘endosemiosis’, the sign processes that are internal to the body and relate to somatic phenomena. The chapter contributes to biosemiotic medicine by commenting on how such an approach can be understood as process-based medicine, the way in which it can bridge human and animal health studies, and how it can be understood as involving a conception of the human being as a system of interrelated sign systems. It concludes by making remarks on how organ crosstalk – “the complex and mutual biological communication between distant organs mediated by signaling factors” (Armutcu 2019) – can be understood within a biosemiotic framework.  

REFERENCES 

— APA dictionary of psychology (2021). Nosology. American Psychological Association. https://dictionary.apa.org/nosology  

— Armutcu, F. (2019). Organ crosstalk: The potent roles of inflammation and fibrotic changes in the course of organ interactions. Inflammation Res. 68: 825–839. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00011-019-01271-7  

— Tønnessen, forthcoming. Nosology and Semiotics. Chapter in Carlo Guido Musso & Adrian Covic (eds.), Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices. Springer Nature.   

KEYWORDS Endosemiosis, Umwelt, biosemiotic medicine, One Health, nosology   

BIONOTE  Morten Tønnessen (born 1976) is Professor of philosophy at University of Stavanger, Norway. He obtained his ph.d. at University of Tartu´s Department of semiotics in 2011, with the thesis “Umwelt Transition and Uexküllian Phenomenology. An Ecosemiotic Analysis of Norwegian Wolf Management”. Tønnessen was an Editor-in-Chief of Biosemiotics 2013–2020. He was the Secretary of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS) 2011–2017 and has been the President of NASS in the period 2017–2023. He is co-author, with Alexei Sharov, of the monograph Semiotic Agency: Science beyond Mechanism (Springer Nature 2021). 

4 abstracts submitted for 15th world congress of semiotics

I have just submitted the following 4 abstracts - all based on chapters, of which one has been published and three are forthcoming - for the 15th world congress of semiotics, which is to be held in Thessaloniki, Greece, August 30th to September 3rd:

Semiotics in ethology and zoology 

Morten Tønnessen 

Contribution to the panel “Semiotics in the disciplines: progress and priorities”  

KEYWORDS: zoosemiotics, ethology, zoology, Umwelt theory  

ABSTRACT 

Today, zoosemiotics is arguably the theoretically and empirically soundest approach to “taking the animal´s perspective”. The chapter on which this presentation is based (Tønnessen, forthcoming) presents semiotic studies in ethology and zoology, starting with foundational work and contemporary developments and proceeding to relevant methodologies and prospective future studies. The conception of zoosemiotics as a field of study has evolved considerably since Thomas Sebeok coined the term in 1963, and currently signifies a far more comprehensive field than what Sebeok’s original definition of zoosemiotics as “the scientific study of signalling behaviour in and across animal species” indicates (1963: 465). Given the contemporary notion of zoosemiotics, the semiotic study of animals cannot simply be understood as a synthesis between semiotics and ethology; it furthermore engages and intersects with ecology, cultural studies and other fields of study where animals appear in one form or another. In modern science, the agency and subjectivity of animals has tended to be neglected. More research is needed on how humans relate to animals, and more research is needed on how animals relate to humans, including by making further connections between semiotic studies of animals and phenomenology.    

REFERENCES 

Sebeok, T. A. (1963). Review. Language, 39: 448–466. 

Tønnessen, Morten, forthcoming. Semiotics in ethology and zoology. In: Bloomsbury Semiotics (4 volumes, ed. Jamin Pelkey), volume 2, Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences (ed. Stéphanie Walsh Matthews). Bloomsbury Academic. 

***

Nosology and semiotics*  

Morten Tønnessen 

Professor of philosophy 

Department of social studies 

University of Stavanger Stavanger 

Norway

ABSTRACT 

Semiotic concepts such as ‘sign’ and ‘symptom’ have been applied in medicine ever since ancient Greece. On this background, a semiotic perspective on nosology may be relevant and informative, particularly regarding the recognition of diseases. This chapter provides an overview of key works in semiotics on the study of medicine in general and nosology in particular. It presents a biosemiotic perspective on human health, starting with the ‘Umwelt’, the organism´s subjectively experienced lifeworld, and ending with ‘endosemiosis’, the sign processes that are internal to the body and relate to somatic phenomena. The chapter contributes to biosemiotic medicine by commenting on how such an approach can be understood as process-based medicine, the way in which it can bridge human and animal health studies, and how it can be understood as involving a conception of the human being as a system of interrelated sign systems. It concludes by making remarks on how organ crosstalk can be understood within a biosemiotic framework.  

* This presentation builds on Tønnessen, forthcoming.  

KEYWORDS Biosemiotics, endosemiosis, biosemiotic medicine, One Health, nosology  

REFERENCE 

Tønnessen, Morten, forthcoming. Nosology and semiotics. In: Carlo Guido Musso & Adrian Covic (eds.), Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices. Springer Nature.

***

Phenomenology and semiotics  

Morten Tønnessen 

Professor of philosophy 

Department of social studies 

University of Stavanger Stavanger 

Norway  

In the chapter on which this presentation is built (Sharov & Tønnessen 2021), we discuss the phenomenological tradition within philosophy with emphasis on representative phenomenological positions on subjectivity, sentience, consciousness and self-consciousness, and make the argument that giving phenomenology a biosemiotic grounding will make it more comprehensive. Even though both Husserl and Heidegger, two classics of phenomenology, acknowledged that animals have subjective lifeworlds, their respective phenomenologies were clearly anthropocentric. The same goes for most mainstream versions of contemporary phenomenology. Heidegger states this anthropocentric bias plainly when, after referring to the Umwelt theory of Jakob von Uexküll, he claims that animals are “poor in world”. The Umwelt theory offers an alternative, more pluralistic framework for phenomenology – a phenomenology beyond the human, with a biosemiotic basis. Von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory was discussed by Merleau-Ponty and has further inspired several contemporary philosophers within and beyond phenomenology. In the chapter we also discuss the relation between semiotics and phenomenology, including Peirce’s ideas and recent calls for a naturalized phenomenology. While modern phenomenology was from its inception programmatically presented as anti-naturalism, leading contemporary phenomenologists favour realignment between phenomenology and naturalism. With its roots in sign theory and biology, biosemiotics can contribute further to this endeavour, and be an important piece in the puzzle when realigning phenomenological studies of subjective experience and behaviour with natural science.  

KEYWORDS Phenomenology, lifeworld, biosemiotics, Umwelt theory, naturalized phenomenology  

REFERENCE 

Sharov A., Tønnessen M. (2021). Phenomenology. In: Semiotic Agency (Biosemiotics, vol 25). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89484-9_9

***

Umwelt theory for practitioners: Semiotic guidelines for application in a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology  

Morten Tønnessen, 

Professor of philosophy, Department of social studies, University of Stavanger, Norway  

Contribution to the panel “Biosemiotics, Umwelt, and the lifeworld”   

ABSTRACT  

The chapter on which this presentation is based (Tønnessen, forthcoming) outlines a scientific method for conducting qualitative studies of human and animal lifeworlds by introducing a semiotically informed descriptive phenomenology that goes beyond the human. Descriptive phenomenology denotes a scientific method for describing lived experience based on phenomenological philosophy. Despite the fact that classics such as Husserl and Heidegger acknowledged the existence of animal lifeworlds, descriptive phenomenology in its current forms is typically only applicable to the study of human lifeworlds. Using the semiotically framed Umwelt theory of Jakob von Uexküll as foundation allows for the development of a novel version of descriptive phenomenology that is non-anthropocentric and pluralistic. A depiction of the theoretical basis for a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology is followed by a depiction of its methodological basis. The chapter concludes with a number of semiotic guidelines for practical application of Umwelt theory organized by relevant professions and settings of study. These include veterinarians and ethologists (in both wildlife and captive settings), zookeepers, anthropologists and social scientists. The guidelines are meant to facilitate studies of human-animal relations and interaction from an Umwelt perspective. This requires the use of interviews with experts and/or practitioners in combination with interaction with and participatory observation of animals.  

KEYWORDS Umwelt theory, applied Umwelt theory, descriptive phenomenology, animal phenomenology, human–animal phenomenology  

REFERENCE 

Tønnessen, forthcoming. Umwelt theory for practitioners: Semiotic guidelines for application in a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology. In Amir Biglari (ed), Open Semiotics. Paris: L’Harmattan.

#28,5

Today I have had an article writing day devoted to my chapter "Nosology and semiotics", with some 600 words written. Among other things I drafted a detailed disposition/table of contents for the chapter. Number of writing days this Autumn is up to 28,5.

#26,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 300 words added to my book chapter "Nosology and semiotics". The number of writing days so far this Autumn is 26,5.

#23,5

Today I have had half a writing day devoted to some work on my book chapter "Nosology and semiotics", with some 100 words written. I have also made some inquiries on two finished book chapter manuscripts and a reprint and gotten updates on expected publication time for these three books, which all now seem to be scheduled for publication in 2022.

Total number of writing days so far this Autumn is up to 23,5.

#23

Today I have had half an article writing day devoted to my book chapter "Nosology and semiotics", with some literature search done, some formatting done, and the rudimentary start of a table of contents. 

Total number of writing days so far is up to 23.

#5

Today I have had an article writing day, primarily devoted to my "Nosology and semiotics" chapter and related work, and my article with Joakim Jiri Haaland on friluftsliv in the context of child protection services. Number of writing days this Autumn is up to 5.

#31

Today I have had an article writing day devoted to proof-reading my article “Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century”, making initial planning for my book chapter “Nosology and semiotics” (cf. previous post), and marking what needs updating in my three wasted growth articles.

Total number of writing days is up to 31 since New Year. Of these, 5,5 were in April, with -137 words written net this month (i.e., I deleted more text than I composed).