As of the end of year 2023, my research has according to Google Scholar - cf. my profile - attracted 1.010 citations, including 142 in 2023. This compares to 865 citations at the end of 2022, after which a further 145 citations have been registered by Google Scholar, and with 615 citations at the end of 2021. My h-index remains 18 (meaning that 18 of my publications have attracted at least 18 citations each), like a year ago, and +4 since the end of 2021, while my i10-index (meaning the number of publications that has attracted at least 10 citations each) has increased from 33 to 36 over the last year, and +12 since the end of 2021.
With 142 citations, 2023 is my third best year in terms of number of citations, after 2022 with 183 citations and 2021 with 148 citations.
On my profile, Google Scholar lists 128 publications (+4 since December 29th 2022 and +28 since December 26th 2021; this in not an accurate count), with 52 of them not cited and 76 cited at least one time each.
In 2023 I have logged 4.546 pages of academic reading with authors identified, distributed among 442 different authors. While not quite back at old heights, this is a significant step up from the lackluster reading of the last few years when I was in leadership positions (2019-2022), and was frustrated by not having time to read. In the good old days early in my academic career, however, I read close to 10.000 pages a year. As a Professor, I would absolutely like to have more time to read than I have had the last year.
These were the most read authors in 2023.
After a little more writing today, these are the updated, corrected totals for Autumn 2023 and the year 2023 as a whole: Altogether I logged 12.040 words written this Autumn. With a further 23.377 words written in Spring, this brings this year´s total up to 35.417 words.
Altogether I have logged 236.053 words written over the last 5 years (2019-2023).
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This year has been a special year for me in that I returned to a scientific position on Friday January 6th after 2 years as Head of department (after having been Vice-Dean of Research the 2 previous years, resulting in 4 years in academic leadership 2019-2023). For the first time in years, by Summer, I no longer held any leadership positions. In the course of the year I was replaced as steering group leader of Cognitive lab at University of Stavanger, and stepped down as President of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS), returning to the position as Secretary of NASS. An unhappy consequence of my resignation as Head of department was that my Scientific assistant Jan Karlstrøm´s position was terminated earlier than initially planned, but our collaboration on two scientific articles will continue until completion. In Spring, I had some time for academic updating, which in effect mostly amounted to getting to the bottom of my email inbox over the course of several weeks, and a visit to Oxford University.
At the Department of social studies, I have been involved with teaching in collaboration with Christian Wedler in a course on law and ethics in Spring, and Ex.phil. in the Autumn (all teaching by me, grading by me in collaboration with Rune Falch from University of Bergen). Both courses are part of the department´s bachelor in psychology. In the Autumn I also gave a couple of lectures in the university´s new course on sustainability and green transition, coordinated by Andra Riandita at the UIS Business School.
I have supervised Joakim Jiri Haaland in his ph.d. studies and co-supervised Jacob Tom in his, with Jacob going through with his midterm evaluation in September. I have had some extra research time for working on my book project Captured: CCS and the fight for the soul of the environmental movement, have taken part in the national editorial board of the new Stavanger-based festival on philosophy and science "Wonderful World", which was first held in June this year, and have hosted Lenart Škof, Professor of philosophy and religious studies at Alma Mater Europaea in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on an Erasmus exchange in December. Meanwhile, I took up the responsibility as guest editor, along with Carlo Brentari at University of Trento, for a special issue of Biosemiotics on the topic of "Umwelt theory and phenomenology", which will be published next Summer. I also co-wrote two consultative statements issued by Norway´s Council for animal ethics, and was in the Summer of 2023 reappointed as a member of the council for 4 more years.
In 2023, my paper "Existential universals: Biosemiosis and existential semiosis" was reprinted as a chapter in the anthology Transcending Signs – Essays in Existential Semiotics edited by Eero Tarasti and published by De Gruyter (Berlin). My article "The study of past Umwelten" was published in a special issue of Discipline Filosophische (Italy) edited by Vallori Rasini, and my chapter "Umwelt theory for practitioners: Semiotic guidelines for application in a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology" was published in the book set Open Semiotics, edited by Amir Biglari and published by L’Harmattan (Paris). My introductory chapter "Nosology and Semiotics" appeared in the book Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices, which was edited by Carlo Guido Musso & Adrian Covic and published by Springer Nature, and I co-authored the short communication "Biosemiotic Achievement Award for the Year 2022", published in Biosemiotics, with Ludmila Lackova & Ahti-Veikko Juhani Pietarinen. Finally, my article "Wasted GDP in the USA" was published in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications.
Among my personal achievements this year, I have given a scientific lecture for the UNDP´s Human Development Reports Office in March, seen my article "Wasted GDP in the USA" be mentioned in about 1500 tweets, and reached 1.000 citations by the count of Google Scholar. I further gave a keynote speech at the conference "Contemporary Umwelt Analysis: Applications for Culture and Ecological Relations" in Tartu, Estonia, in April - which also resulted in an extended interview with Martin Avila and me by Thorolf van Walsum - and was an invited speaker at the research colloquium «After Nagel: Science and the phenomenology of animals subjects” held in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in March, at the “Henrik Steffens – The Prophet of the Anthropocene?” conference held in Stavanger in September, and at Dyreetikkonferansen (the Norwegian animal ethics conference) 2023, held in Oslo in December. Also, an interview by Norway´s national broadcaster NRK with Erica von Essen and me on the ethics of wolf hunting was featured in NRK TV´s daily news program Dagsrevyen as well as the popular weekly comedy show Nytt på Nytt.
In 2023, I have engaged in new collaborations, which include commencing article work with my department colleague and legal scholar Maren Sagvaag Retland, with Thomas Hylland Eriksen, based at the University of Oslo, with Martin Drenthen at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and with Søren Nors Nielsen at Aalborg University, Denmark. Of larger research consortia, I am thankful to have been included in the astrobiology-themed book project Mars and the Earthlings, with initial contact made via David Dunér in Lund, Sweden, and in the "Live better" research consortium led by Kuba Krys, based at Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. In the latter, I am currently gaining experience with international quantitative surveys.
I have done what I mention in this post within a work year that has been shorter than usual for me - around 2.500 work hours, compared with around 3,000 work hours in previous years. This has allowed me to basically have weekends and evenings off from academic work, making for a healthier balance in my life.
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Today I have had what ended up as half a writing day. The total for Autumn 2023 is then 35 writing days, with all whole and half days added up.
Altogether I logged 11.986 words written this Autumn. With a further 23.377 words written in Spring, this brings this year´s total up to 35.363 words. This compares to 42.112 words in 2019, 84.739 words in 2020, 41.178 words in 2021, and 32.607 words in 2022. At some 35.000 words, this year´s total is only slightly higher than last year´s total.
The figure below shows my "most written texts" this Autumn, in number of words.
Over the last few days I have graded 42 exam papers in Ex.phil. at University of Stavanger´s Department of social studies (bachelor in psychology), along with an external examiner.
Today I have had half a writing day, #34,5 this Autumn, devoted to the article "Hva Arne Næss kan lære oss om økonomifagets tverrfaglighet", which I co-write with Jan Karlstrøm and Thomas Hylland Eriksen, adding some 150 words to the text in the process.
Today I have had half a writing day, #34 this Autumn, with some 200 words added to our article on Arne Næss and his views on economics and my book project Captured.
Today I was interviewed on NRK P2´s radio program Ekko, along with Andreas Haga, with Rikke Eckoff as program manager, on why we treat animals so differently. I was presented as Professor of philosophy at University of Stavanger, and a member of Norway´s Council for animal ethics. The section, which was recorded live, lasts for some 20 minutes.
Over the last three days I have altogether conducted half a writing day, with some work done on my contribution to Encyclopedia of Ecology, updates received concerning the book Mars and the Earthlings and, indirectly, my book project Captured. Today I finally finished editing the article "Kan velferd og miljø måles i forlengelsen av BNP" (Can welfare and environment be measured in extension of GDP?), which I have co-written with Jan Karlstrøm, and which I just submitted to the Norwegian academic journal Samfunnsøkonomen.
The number of completed writing days this Autumn is now 33,5.
I have just composed and submitted the abstract below for my plenary talk at the 5th conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS5), to be held in Lund, Sweden in August 2024.
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The crisis of mechanistic science seen through the lens of the nature crisis
Morten Tønnessen
Edmund Husserl (1954, 1970) famously thematized science´ forgetting of the lifeworld. In a somewhat similar way, Jakob von Uexküll (1956 [1940]) decried the ´meaning-blind´ biology of his time. Drawing on the fact that the experience of animals is constrained by the sensory and behavioral repertoire of each organism and takes place within the context of species-specific configurations of time and space (von Uexküll 1928), the Umwelt theory he developed was programmatically framed as subjective biology. While he applied the Umwelt perspective to humans as well, particularly in von Uexküll 1956 [1934], unfortunately, human Umwelten remained undertheorized in his work. Hannah Arendt, however, discussed the human condition and observed a crisis within the natural sciences play out as an inability to be relatable to normal speech and thought (Arendt 1958). Although she saw the significance of our evolving global perspective and power, which is today often conceptualized in terms of the Anthropocene (Steffen et al. 2011), Arendt failed to acknowledge the decisive difference our anthropocentric bias makes in matters of ontology and epistemology alike. From the perspective of Umwelt phenomenology, today´s environmental crisis can be conceived of as an ontological crisis (Tønnessen 2003) involving the extinction and marginalization of myriads of lifeworlds. As is well established, the environmental crisis is characterized by extensive anthropogenic environmental change. This can be conceptualized in terms of Umwelt transitions (Tønnessen 2009). The ongoing nature crisis is most blatantly observable in rapidly escalating climate change, and the well-documented marginalization of wild terrestrial mammals, which now account for only 4% of terrestrial mammalian biomass (Bar-On et al. 2018). Arguably, the last decades´ scientific neglect, theoretically and methodologically, of the agency, subjectivity, and worth of living beings has contributed to this intensifying and deepening nature crisis. With its objectivistic, mechanistic perspective on the natural world, the scientific enterprise has in practice facilitated and helped justify a real-life objectification, de-souling, exploitation, and commodification of living beings as mere means and resources. It is high time to replace this outdated and harmful outlook with a philosophically based scientific framework more fit for the 21st century. One way forward entails acknowledging the semiotic agency of all that lives (Sharov & Tønnessen 2023), and start planning for the socio-ecological and economic transformations that will be required to solve the environmental crisis in the next few decades (Tønnessen 2021). This will have to involve a serious rethinking of the human condition (Tønnessen, forthcoming).
REFERENCES
Arendt, Hannah 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Bar-On, Yinon M., Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo 2018. The biomass distribution on Earth. PNAS 115(25) (2018): 6506–6511. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1711842115. Includes Supplementary Information Appendix.
Husserl, Edmund 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die Tranzendentale Phänomenologie (Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke 6). Edited by Walter Biemel. Extended version, with appendices. Haag: Martin Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translation of (and selection from) Husserl 1954 by David Carr. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Sharov, Alexei and Morten Tønnessen 2021: Semiotic Agency: Science beyond Mechanism (Biosemiotics 25). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89484-9
Steffen, Will, Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen, and John McNeill. The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011): 842–867. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0327
Tønnessen, Morten 2003. Umwelt Ethics. Sign Systems Studies 31 (1): 281–299. https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2003.31.1.13
Tønnessen, Morten 2009. Umwelt Transitions: Uexküll and Environmental Change. Biosemiotics 2 (1): 47–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-008-9036-y
Tønnessen, Morten 2021. Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century. Sign Systems Studies 49 (1/2): 12–62. https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2021.49.1-2.02
Tønnessen, Morten, forthcoming. A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis. In Lenart Škof, Sashinungla, Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir (eds.), Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 42). Springer.
Uexküll, Jakob von 1928. Theoretische Biologie. 2nd edition. Berlin: J. Springer.
Uexküll, Jakob von 1956 [1934/1940]. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans – with A Theory of Meaning (Posthumanities 12). Transl. Joseph D. O¨Neil. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
According to my Google Scholar profile, my research has by now attracted 1.008 citations (+8 since December 5th), including 141 in 2023 (+6 since December 5th).
Yesterday I was notified by the Faculty of Social Sciences that my research leave application for the academic year 2024-25, which I would have used to finish my book project Captured: CCS and the fight for the soul of the environmental movement, has been declined.
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Our chronicle on behalf of Norway´s Council for animal ethics "Brennende etiske temaer knyttet til dyrevelferd i Norge" (literally: Burning ethical themes related to animal welfare in Norway) is today included in the print version of the Norwegian daily Nationen.
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Chronicle on animal welfare challenges in Norway published in Nationen online
Yesterday, on Wednesday December 13th, I moderated Lenart Skof´s The Greenhouse Research talk “From Forgetting of Air to (post-)Anthropocene: Sketches for Respiratory Paradigm Shift in Environmental Humanities» at the University of Stavanger. Around 10 people attended.
I am hosting an Erasmus exchange by Lenart Skof this week.
Today the chronicle "Brennende etiske temaer knyttet til dyrevelferd i Norge", which I co-wrote with Cecilie Mejdell, Knut Bøe and Kristian Ellingsen-Dalskau, has been published online in the Norwegian daily Nationen.
My article "Wasted GDP in the USA" appears to have been included in the Humanities & Social Sciences Communications Collection "Towards a wellbeing economy", which has submission deadline December 31st and is edited by Milena Büchs, Theocharis Kromydas, Hiroaki Matsuura, Prajal Pradhan & Claudimar Pereira da Veiga. For now, 8 articles are included in the collection.
I am featured, along with Cecilie Mejdell, in Dyreprat´s Instagram videos "Did you know?", which presents the fundamental features of animal welfare and animal ethics, on behalf of Norway´s Council for animal ethics. The making of the videos were coordinated by Erica Hogstad Fjæran).
Today I have had the 33rd writing day this Autumn, with some 1.100 words added to our GDP review article and a couple of thousand words deleted, and the article finished.
According to Google Scholar - cf. my profile - I have now been cited 1000 times (+10 since November 17th). This includes 135 citations so far in 2023 (+9 since November 17th), and altogether 699 citations since 2018. My i10-index remains 36 and my h-index 18. As shown below, the accumulated citations of my work have increased by a factor of 10 since 2016, and doubled since the winter of 2021.
Updated Google Scholar history (cf. my March 2023 post):
My first Google Scholar citation occurred in 2002.
By April 2013 I had 38 citations, and a verified Google Scholar profile.
I passed 100 citations in the winter of 2016.
I passed 200 citations in the summer of 2017.
I passed 300 citations in the summer of 2018.
I passed 400 citations in the autumn of 2019.
I passed 500 citations in the spring of 2021.
I passed 600 citations in the autumn of 2021.
I passed 700 citations in the winter of 2022.
I passed 800 citations in the autumn of 2022.
I passed 900 citations in the spring of 2023.
I passed 1000 citations in the autumn of 2023.
Today I have had half a writing day, with some 200 words added to our GDP review article. The accumulated number of writing days so far this Autumn is now 32.
My proposed paper "Applied Umwelt theory – in the context of descriptive phenomenology and phenomenological triangulation" has been accepted for inclusion in the special issue “Contemporary applications of umwelt theory” of Sign Systems Studies. A full manuscript is due March 1st.
