Zoosemiotics is the study of animal forms of knowing
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Kalevi Kull
Kalevi Kull (b. 1952) is a professor at the University of Tartu 〈kalevi@ut.ee〉. His research interests include semiotics, biology, and mechanisms of diversification. His publications include “Semiotics is a theory of life” (2005); “Semiotic ecology” (2008); “Vegetative, animal, and cultural semiosis: The semiotic threshold zones” (2009); and “Adaptive evolution without natural selection” (2013).
Abstract
This article characterizes briefly the central aims of the semiotic study of animal life. Semiotic sciences in general can be defined as approaches to the study of various forms of knowing (as different from physical sciences, which study various things in the world), considering that knowing is possible only due to semiosis. The semiosphere is the sphere of knowing (knowing being always related to learning and acting). The basic types of knowing (as well as semiosis) include the vegetative, the animal, and the cultural. Zoosemiotics is focused on the animal type of knowing. Animal knowing is characterized by its use of iconic and indexical relations, whereas the extensive use of symbols is a prerequisite of specifically human (cultural, language-based) semiosis. However, the human organism also includes animal knowing as an inevitable part of its knowing. Knowledge cannot be credible if it is exclusively symbolic; it requires that iconic and indexical semiosis be involved.
About the author
Kalevi Kull (b. 1952) is a professor at the University of Tartu 〈kalevi@ut.ee〉. His research interests include semiotics, biology, and mechanisms of diversification. His publications include “Semiotics is a theory of life” (2005); “Semiotic ecology” (2008); “Vegetative, animal, and cultural semiosis: The semiotic threshold zones” (2009); and “Adaptive evolution without natural selection” (2013).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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- Dimensions of zoosemiotics
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- From sign to action: Studies in chimpanzee pictorial competence
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- Observation ↔ Text/e ↔ Culture
- Introduction
- Culture, power, dictionaries: What lexicography reveals about cultural objects
- La culture comme objet
- La mémoire et l'événement: Les autobiographies intellectuelles au Brésil
- Human voice: Its meaning and textuality outside the verbal and the musical
- Des parcours interprétatifs à la réception des textes médiévaux
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Articles in the same Issue
- Dimensions of zoosemiotics
- Frontmatter
- Dimensions of zoosemiotics: Introduction
- The semiome: From genetic to semiotic scaffolding
- Codes and coding: Sebeok's zoosemiotics and the dismantling of the fixed-code fallacy
- Zoosemiotics is the study of animal forms of knowing
- Zoo-aesthetics: A natural step after Darwin
- Curs, crabs, and cranky cows: Ethological and linguistic aspects of animal-based insults
- On zoosemiotics and bridging the value gap
- Umwelt or Umwelten? How should shared representation be understood given such diversity?
- Umwelt trajectories
- Training guide dogs of the blind with the “phantom man” method: Historic background and semiotic footing
- From sign to action: Studies in chimpanzee pictorial competence
- Patterns and dynamics of (bird) soundscapes: A biosemiotic interpretation
- Observation ↔ Text/e ↔ Culture
- Introduction
- Culture, power, dictionaries: What lexicography reveals about cultural objects
- La culture comme objet
- La mémoire et l'événement: Les autobiographies intellectuelles au Brésil
- Human voice: Its meaning and textuality outside the verbal and the musical
- Des parcours interprétatifs à la réception des textes médiévaux
- Semiotic of pretext, semiotics of pre-text
- From text to culture through corpus: Interactivity as an argumentative keyword of contemporary cyberculture
- Le texte comme fragment culturel: Trois scénarios d'observation
