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The Explanatory Role of Umwelt in Evolutionary Theory: Introducing von Baer’s Reflections on Teleological Development

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Abstract

This paper argues that a central explanatory role for the concept of Umwelt in theoretical biology is to be found in developmental biology, in particular in the effort to understand development as a goal-directed and adaptive process that is controlled by the organism itself. I will reach this conclusion in two (interrelated) ways. The first is purely theoretical and relates to the current scenario in the philosophy of biology. Challenging neo-Darwinism requires a new understanding of the various components involved in natural selection processes. An important prerequisite is to understand developmental change in a teleological way. Here, the concept of Umwelt plays a crucial role: if organisms are responsible for generating adaptive variation in specific environments, we need a theory that explains the context-dependent nature of adaptively oriented processes. The Umwelt is thus a central element in determining the goal that an adaptive process pursues. The second path in my analysis also has a historical dimension. I will present Karl Ernst von Baer’s reflections on teleological development and his influence on Jacob von Uexküll’s thinking. I will present various ideas developed by Baer, such as the distinction between Ziel and Zweck and the use of musical metaphors, which can help to understand development teleologically and give Uexküll’s theory a central place in this framework.

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Notes

  1. This does not mean that all variations must arise for adaptive and functional reasons. Indeed, the idea of non-adaptively directed variation is also central to the developmental turn. Central developmental phenomena such as inherency (Newman, 2019) are based on structural and emergent properties that are independent of functional explanations. Thus, an adaptively directed explanation of developmental change is a prerequisite for understanding the (developmental and evolutionary) origin of some traits, but definitely not all.

  2. The order of living organisms concerns their unique, far-from-equilibrium and functional organization. These organizational properties, which are paradigmatic of living systems, are the main target of goal-directednees explanations in biology, just as in Baer’s account (see Section. Karl Ernst von Baer on Teleological Development).

  3. The expression “see” could be problematic insofar as it could suggest that real seeing is attributed to organisms, which is not the case. Here it is used in a metaphorical sense, in contrast to the metaphor of blindness. So “seeing development” has the same metaphorical character as being “blind to development”. This means that the organism is able to regulate its developmental trajectories depending on the context. Later in this article, we will see how this metaphorical expression can be replaced by an explanation of the directionality of development.

  4. It is important to note that Uexküll expressed a critique of evolutionism. Therefore, it is necessary to reconcile his critical view of evolution with our aim of using his theory of Umwelt in an evolutionary context. While this is a detailed and complex task that is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to note two points. First, Uexküll rejected the neo-Darwinian view of his time, but not the idea of evolution itself; rather, he provided his own ecological view. Secondly, his critical reflections on evolutionary theory do not prevent us from using his thoery of Umwelt for current purposes of evolutionary theory.

  5. This does not mean that my thesis entails an externalist position on goals (e.g. Babcock and Shea (2021)). The claim that goals can be directed toward external elements is consistent with an internalist position (e.g., intentional human behaviour (e.g., cooking) is usually directed toward the environmental context, even if it is intrinsically determined (e.g., hunger)). The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic teleology concerns the entity/process that (causally) determines the goals of a system A, rather than what A is directed towards (see Rama (forthcoming) for a discussion). Extrinsic teleology argues that external processes are the causal factors in the specification of goals. My thesis is an intenralist position: the organism defines its own goals, which are directed toward adaptive coupling with both the external world (Umwelt) and the internal world (Innwenwelt).

  6. The similarities between affordances and the concept of Umwelt are controversial (see Fultot & Turvey, 2019; Feiten, 2020; Heras-Escribano and DeJesus, 2018). While the concept of affordances emphasizes the unmediated nature of the relationship between organism and environment (affordances are not internal, representational constructs), the concept of Umwelt states that “the relationship that binds an organism to its environment is never immediate or automatic: between the reception of stimuli and the response of the organism, there is room for an activity of interpretation or elaboration of the stimuli themselves” (Brentari, 2018: 157). In this sense, the anti-representationalist spirit of affordances is not (necessarily) present in the concept of Umwelt. Be that as it may, this debate does not invalidate my point: that beyond the differences there are relevant commonalities that have been explored in the philosophy of biology.

  7. Zammito (2006) rightly argues that these positions were only defined after Kant, so the question of whether Kant was a naturalist or not is not entirely meaningful. However, this does not prevent us from analyzing his view from today’s perspective and seeing whether neo-Kantians are naturalists or not.

  8. There is an ongoing debate about the adequacy of Lenoir’s historical analysis. It seems that there are various differences between Kant’s teleological view and the view of other teleomechanicists. For example, Blumenbach–as well as von Baer– held a constitutive view of teleology instead of Kant’s regulative view (Zammito, 2012; Richards, 2000). So it is not clear why we should group them all under a similar theoretical and historical trend. While this historical analysis is important, it has no bearing on the analysis of this paper. Therefore, I will not go into detail about whether adopting a regulative view is a prerequisite for belonging to teleomechanicism.

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Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the useful comments and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers, which were taken into account in improving an early version of this article. I thank Sergio Balari for discussing the ideas presented here and for translating Baer’s papers used here into English. This work was supported by the National Agency of Investigation and Innovation (Uruguay) through grant PD_NAC_2023_1_176930 and by the Sectoral Commission for Scientific Investigation (Uruguay) through grant 22520220100257UD. I algo acknowledge funding from grant FFI2017-87699-P for project DALiV and funding from grant PID2019-104576GB-I00 for project Outonomy funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.

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National Agency of Investigation and Innovation (Uruguay) through grant PD_NAC_2023_1_176930 and the Sectoral Commission of Scientific Investigation (Uruguay) through grant 22520220100257UD.

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    Tiago Rama

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Rama, T. The Explanatory Role of Umwelt in Evolutionary Theory: Introducing von Baer’s Reflections on Teleological Development. Biosemiotics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-024-09569-8

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