Expanded Reason Awards - application

I have just submitted my chapter "A Biosemiotic Perspective on the Human Condition and the Environmental Crisis" to the Expanded Reason Awards, with a CV, an extended abstract, and a 3.000 word  "explanatory document" written for the occasion.

Google Scholar: 1.236 citations; i10-index 38, "how to solve environmental crisis" article now cited 10 times

According to my Google Scholar profile my research has to date attracted 1.236 citations (+16 since October 17th), including 165 citations in 2024 (+14 since October 17th). My h-index remains 20 whereas my i10-index is 38 (+1 since October 17th). 

An i10-index of 38 means that 38 of my scientific texts have been cited 10 times each or more. The latest to make it is "Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century" (2021),  which has been cited 3 times this year and 10 times altogether. 

Rountable discussion "The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis" at WCEH4 attended

Today I have taken part (digitally) in the roundtable "The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis", convened by Matteo Sartori & Julia Prakofjewa, on the last day of the 4th World Congress in Environmental History, which has been held in Oulu, Finland and online August 19-23rd. My brief introduction was related to my article “Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century”; I also took part in the discussion. Some 10 people attended physically and online altogether.

#3,5

Today I have had a book writing day devoted to work on my scientific monograph Captured: CCS and the fight for the soul of the environmental movement,  #2 this Autumn, with some 800 words written. So far this Autumn I have had 3,5 writing days including article writing days.

Chapter "A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis" published

My book chapter "A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis" has now been published, as part of the book Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era (eds. Lenart Škof, Sashinungla, Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir).

Reference:

Tønnessen, Morten 2024. A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis. Pp. 99–117 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. Published May 4th 2024.

#27

Today I have had an article writing day, writing day #27 this Spring, with work done on various writing projects, including:

Doing some searching and thinking about possible journal for the GDP review article I co-write with Jan Karlstrøm

Confirming that I will write a second chapter on the work of Henrik Steffens, and coming up with the work-title "Steffens´ early outlook reconsidered: Nature conceptions of the industrial-age Anthropocene", and composing/extracting some 200 words in the process

Looking through some suggestions concerning the article on Arne Næss and economics which I co-write with Jan Karlstrøm and Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Proof-reading my chapter "A Biosemiotic Perspective on the Human Condition and the Environmental Crisis" for the book Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era.

Choosing a work-title for the first follow-up to my article "Wasted GDP in the USA", namely "Wasted GDP in major economies: With time series data", and starting on a manuscript file

 See also:

Second Steffens chapter invited and planned for

My two contributions at The Fourth World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH4) scheduled in the conference program

While I do not have funding to attend The Fourth World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH4), “Transitions, transformations and transdisciplinarity: Histories beyond history”, to be held at University of Oulu, Finland August 19-23rd, physically, it turns out I can attend digitally. My two papers/presentations/participations have now been scheduled in the conference program. 

On Monday 19th of August, at 14:15-16:00, I will take part in the panel “Environmental biography as a methodological challenge” with my presentation "The study of past Umwelten".

On Friday 23rd of August I will take part in the roundtable “The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis” as a discussant, with my paper “Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century”.

For my abstracts for these two conference papers, see:

Two proposals for WCEH4 (Oulu, Finland, August 2024)

Publication date announced for book "Elemental-embodied thinking for a new era"

The book Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era, edited by Lenart Skof, Sashinungla, and Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir, where I contribute with the chapter "A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis", now has a new planned publication date, May 30th, according to Springer´s website for the book.

Abstract for IACS5 (Lund, Sweden): "The crisis of mechanistic science seen through the lens of the nature crisis"

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.

***

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.

Copenhagen biosemiotics presentation "A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition & the environmental crisis" available online in PDF format

My presentation "A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition & the environmental crisis" from the 23rd Gathering in biosemiotics, held in Copenhagen, Denmark in August earlier this year, has been made available in PDF format online, along with other conference presentations.

Paper "A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis" presented at "(Un)Common Worlds III" conference

Today I have presented my paper “A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis" digitally at the conference "(Un)Common Worlds III – Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes", which is organised at the University of Oulu (Finland) in collaboration with the University of Derby (UK) October 4–6th. Some 20 people attended on-site and online altogether. My presentation was given in the session “Worldlings, onto-epistemologies, and becomings”, chaired by Anna Vladimirova. The session also involved presentations by Wenrui Li and Ombre Tarragnat.

Environmental crisis paper to be presented at Fourth World Congress of Environmental History

I have been notofied that my paper “Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century” has been accepted for presentation at the Fourth World Congress of Environmental History, “Transitions, transformations and transdisciplinarity: Histories beyond history”, to be held at University of Oulu, Finland 19th-23rd of August 2024, as part of the roundtable “The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis”.

Two proposals for WCEH4 (Oulu, Finland, August 2024)

I have just submitted two proposals for the Fourth World Congress of Environmental History, to be held August 19-23rd in Oulu, Finland. 

For the panel "Animal Entanglements: new futures in multi-species pasts", I have proposed the abstract "The study of past Umwelten" based on my article by the same name.

Short abstract: I detail how past Umwelten can be studied by applying Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and informed by contemporary science, and outline some basic assumptions in studies of past, current and future Umwelten. I also consider methodological issues related to the study of past Umwelten in particular.

Long abstract:

This presentation is based on a published article, "The study of past Umwelten" (Discipline Filosophische XXXIII(1), 2023, special issue “Jakob Von Uexküll. Biological Theory, Subjectivity And Environment”, ed. Vallori Rasini, pp. 227–247). In the article I detail how past Umwelten can be studied by applying Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and informed by contemporary science. I argue that the methodological challenges raised by the lack of present organisms available for real-time observations and whole-body physiological studies can be partly overcome by making qualified assumptions drawn from relevant knowledge and reconstructing likely Umwelt relations. As groundwork for such studies, I outline some basic assumptions in studies of past, current and future Umwelten, consider methodological issues related to the study of past Umwelten in particular, and present a few empirical assumptions that are informative with regard to the study of past Umwelten in different historical periods. I also discuss the relevance of such studies for current conservation work, specifically contemporary discussions about de-extinction, and for economics conceived of as a branch of ecology in the fashion of ecological economics.

For the roundtable "The Human-Environmental Relationships in Critical Period of Crisis", I have proposed the abstract "Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century" based on my article by the same name.

Short abstract: Two great challenges face humanity in the 21st century: solving an escalating environmental crisis, while also safeguarding and further improving human living conditions. I present an ecosemiotic framework for the study of societal transformations, enveloping socio-ecological developments.

Long abstract:

My contribution will be based on my published article "Anticipating the societal transformation required to solve the environmental crisis in the 21st century" (see https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/sss/article/view/SSS.2021.49.1-2.02). Here I present a ecosemiotic perspective on socio-ecological developments historically and with a view to the future. Two great challenges face humanity in the 21st century: solving an escalating environmental crisis, while also safeguarding and further improving human living conditions. An ecosemiotic framework for the study of societal transformations is presented and political and other normative aspects of what I call transformative semiotics are discussed. This envelops socio-cultural and socio-ecological developments framed in terms of umwelt theory and Deep Ecology. In the long run, developments in human ecology as reflected in our changing relations to non-humans are expressed in the umwelt trajectory of humankind. The question of how the environmental crisis can best be solved is therefore tantamount to the question about what direction the human umwelt trajectory should take in this century. I outline different plausible umwelt scenarios for human ecology in the 21st century, focused on business-as-usual, ecomodernist and Deep Ecology scenarios. In a concluding discussion on technology and sustainability, the scenario development eventually includes a distinction between flexible and inflexible development paths.

“Reconstructing the nature conceptions of the industrial-age Anthropocene” presented at the conference "Henrik Steffens – The Prophet of the Anthropocene?"

Today I have presented my paper “Reconstructing the nature conceptions of the industrial-age Anthropocene” at the conference “Henrik Steffens – The Prophet of the Anthropocene?” at Museum of Archaeology in Stavanger, Norway. Some 25 people attended.

Book "Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era" now described and advertised online

The book Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era is now advertised online by Springer. It will include my chapter "A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis". Publication date is said to be November 26th.

Pre-orders are now possible e.g. via Amazon.

"A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition & the environmental crisis" presented in Copenhagen

Today I have presented my paper «A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition & the environmental crisis» at the 23rd Gathering in biosemiotics, which is held in Copenhagen, Denmark (July 31st - August 4th). Some 50-60 people attended.

Photo: Katarzyna Machtyl

Paper "A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis" accepted for presentation at (Un)Common Worlds III conference

I have been notified by the conference organizers that my paper "A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis" has been accepted for presentation at the conference (Un)Common Worlds III Human-Animal Studies Conference (to be held at University of Oulu, University and Derby and online October 4-6th).

Presentation scheduled for 23rd Gathering in Biosemiotics (Copenhagen)

My presentation «A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis» has been scheduled for presentation at the 2023 Gatherings in Biosemiotics 23, which is to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, at University of Copenhagen’s Social Sciences Faculty Library July 31st–August 4th, at Wednesday August 2nd at 16.30-17.00.

Abstract for "(Un)Common Worlds III – Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes": "A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis"

I have submitted the abstract below to the organizers of the conference "(Un)Common Worlds III – Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes" (University of Oulu and digitally, October 4-6th 2023).

***

A biosemiotic perspective on the environmental crisis 

Abstract 

Online presentation  

Morten Tønnessen 

***@uis.no  

Professor of philosophy, University of Stavanger, Norway   

ABSTRACT 

In this presentation I will present excerpts of the book chapter “A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis” (Tønnessen, forthcoming). The chapter presents a biosemiotic perspective on the basic situation for human beings and that of other organisms, with an emphasis on the subjective experience of sentient animals, and the sign use of all lifeforms. The human condition is portrayed as traditionally conceived, and then revisited in the new context of the current environmental crisis. In the political philosopher Hannah Arendt´s (1906–1975) book The Human Condition (Arendt 1958), she stresses that “[t]he earth is the very quintessence of the human condition”, and yet argues that “the “human artifice of the world separates human existence from all mere animal environment”. In her view, human reality is distinguished from the reality of any other living being on Earth, despite our shared ecological circumstances. A cornerstone of the chapter is an analysis of the materiality of the environmental crisis, and how the massive changes humans have caused in the physical environment can be understood in light of the semiotic agency of humans and animals. Experiential aspects of the environmental crisis are highlighted.   

REFERENCES 

Arendt, Hannah (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 

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). Springer.

«A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis» to be presented at 23rd Gathering in Biosemiotics, Copenhagen

I have been notified that my paper «A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis» has been accepted for oral presentation at the 23rd Gathering in Biosemiotics, which is to be held in Copenhagen July 31st – August 4th.