#13,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 250 words added to a popular scientific article on longtermism for Salongen. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 13,5, including 9,5 article writing days.

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.

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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.

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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.

#12,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with work done related to the article "Når gode råd er plagsomme" (When good advice is bothersome) which I co-write with Svein Tuastad. This included continuing conducting the media search and analysis related to the article´s climate policy case study.  This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 12,5, including 8,5 article writing days.

#11,5

Today I have had an article writing day, with work done related to the article "Når gode råd er plagsomme" (When good advice is bothersome) which I co-write with Svein Tuastad. This included continuing conducting the media search and analysis related to the article´s climate policy case study.

This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 11,5, including 7,5 article writing days.

Google Scholar: 1.537 citations; 2025 now fourth best year

According to my Google Scholar profile my research has attracted a total of 1.537 citations (+31 since December 31st 2025). This includes 165 citations in 2025 (+17 since December 31st) and 14 citations so far in 2026 (+14). 2025 now stands as my fourth best year in terms of number of citations, behind 2024 (226), 2022 (197) and 2023 (185) but ahead of 2021 (154). 

My h-index remains 21, and my i10-index 46.

Peer review

I have recently done a peer review for Law and humanities review.