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A Biosemiotic Perspective on the Human Condition and the Environmental Crisis

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Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era

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Abstract

This 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. A cornerstone of the text 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 other living beings. Experiential aspects of the environmental crisis are highlighted. The aim of the text is to improve our understanding of our species´ place in the natural world, our historical role in causing a global crisis for life, and how we can move forward towards a more sustainable future.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Maria Antonietta Zoroddu, Jan Aaseth, Guido Crisponi, Serenella Medici, Massimiliano Peana, and Valeria Marina Nurchid, “The Essential Metals for Humans: A brief Overview,” Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry 195 (2019): 120.

  2. 2.

    Roger-Maurice Bonnet and Lodewijk Woltjer, Surviving 1000 Centuries: Can We Do It? (Berlin-Heidelberg-New York/Chichester, UK: Springer/Praxis Publishing, 2008), 226, 242.

  3. 3.

    Erich Fromm, “The Present Human Condition,” The American Scholar 25, no. 1 (1955): 29–35.

  4. 4.

    Neil Roughley, “Human Nature,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2014.

  5. 5.

    Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 9–10.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., 10.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., 5.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., 6.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 5.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 7.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., 10.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 2.

  13. 13.

    Fromm, “The Present Human Condition,” 29.

  14. 14.

    Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., 4.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., 2.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 3.

  18. 18.

    Whether or not astrobiology with its hunch that “there must be somebody out there” can alleviate our longing for community with other intelligent beings like ourselves remains open to discussion. We feel superior among the species of Earth. If we, upon discovering more intelligent beings than ourselves elsewhere, were to acknowledge ontological inferiority rather than ontological superiority, it is conceivable that we might start experiencing a humbler type of loneliness.

  19. 19.

    Shaun Gallagher, “A Critique of Existential Loneliness,” Topoi (2023).

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    Krithika Srinivasan and Rajesh Kasturirangan, “Political Ecology, Development, and Human Exceptionalism,” Geoforum 75 (2016): 126.

  22. 22.

    Ibid.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 127.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 126.

  25. 25.

    Alexei Sharov and Morten Tønnessen, Semiotic Agency: Science beyond Mechanism (Cham: Springer Nature, 2021).

  26. 26.

    Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–1958).

  27. 27.

    David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous. Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).

  28. 28.

    Ilona M. Otto, Marc Wiedermann, Roger Cremades, Jonathan F. Donges, Cornelia Auer, and Wolfgang Lucht, “Human Agency in the Anthropocene,” Ecological Economics (2020): 106463.

  29. 29.

    Norman R. Pace, “The Universal Nature of Biochemistry,” PNAS 98, no. 3 (2001): 805.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.

  31. 31.

    Ibid.

  32. 32.

    “The most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust,” World Atlas, accessed May 28, 2023. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-abundant-elements-in-the-earth-s-crust.html

  33. 33.

    Zoroddu et al., “The Essential Metals for Humans: A Brief Overview,” 127.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 121.

  35. 35.

    Ibid.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., 121, 124.

  37. 37.

    Will Steffen et al., “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011): 842–867.

  38. 38.

    Jan Zalasiewicz et al., “Scale and Diversity of the physical Technosphere: A geological Perspective,” The Anthropocene Review 4, no. 1 (2016): 3.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 3–4.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 11.

  41. 41.

    Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo, “The Biomass Distribution on Earth,” PNAS 115, no. 25 (2018): 6506–6511.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., Supplementary Information Appendix, 88 (Fig. S5).

  43. 43.

    Ibid.

  44. 44.

    Matthew G. Burgess and Steven D. Gaines, “The Scale of Life and its Lessons for Humanity,” PNAS 115 no. 25 (2018): 6328.

  45. 45.

    Ibid.

  46. 46.

    Ibid.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 6329.

  48. 48.

    Helmut et al. Haberl, “Quantifying and Mapping the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production in Earth’s Terrestrial Ecosystems,” PNAS 104, no. 31 (2007): 12944.

  49. 49.

    Evan C. Fricke et al., “The Effects of Defaunation on Plants’ Capacity to Track Climate Change,” Science 375 no. 6577 (2022): 210.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., 212, 213.

  51. 51.

    Morten Tønnessen, “The Global Species,” New formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics 69 (2010): 98.

  52. 52.

    Ibid.

  53. 53.

    Juan Carlos Mendoza-Collazos, Agency and Artefacts: A Cognitive Semiotic Exploration of Design (Lund: Lund University, 2022): 24.

  54. 54.

    Jesper Hoffmeyer, “Why do we need a Semiotic Understanding of Life?”, in Beyond Mechanism. Putting Life Back into Biology, ed. B.G. Henning and A.C. Scarfe Janham (Boulder, New York, Toronto, Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2013), 157.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., 158.

  56. 56.

    Jesper Hoffmeyer, “Semiotic Scaffolding of Living Systems,” in Introduction to Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis, ed. Marcello Barbieri (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 152.

  57. 57.

    Ibid.

  58. 58.

    Jesper Hoffmeyer, “Semiotic Individuation and Ernst Cassirer’s Challenge”, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 119 (2015): 610.

  59. 59.

    Ibid.

  60. 60.

    Jakob von Uexküll, Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (2nd ed.) (Berlin: Verlag von Julius Springer, 1921).

  61. 61.

    Morten Tønnessen, “Umwelt Transitions: Uexküll and Environmental Change,” Biosemiotics 2, no. 1 (2009): 47–64.

  62. 62.

    Morten Tønnessen, “Umwelt Trajectories,” Semiotica 198 (2014): 159–180.

  63. 63.

    Will Steffen et al., “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives.”

  64. 64.

    Bar-On et al., “The Biomass Distribution on Earth.”

  65. 65.

    Ibid.

  66. 66.

    Burgess and Gaines, “The Scale of Life and its Lessons for Humanity,” 6328.

  67. 67.

    Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Human Condition in the Anthropocene,” in The Tanner Lectures in Human Values, Vol. 35, ed. Mark Matheson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016), 180.

  68. 68.

    Ibid.

  69. 69.

    Arendt, The Human Condition, 3.

  70. 70.

    Anna Yeatman, “The Human Condition in the Anthropocene,” in Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene, ed. Katherine Gibson, Deborah Bird Rose, and Ruth Fincher (Brooklyn, NY: Punctum books, 2015), 124.

  71. 71.

    Masatake Shinohara, “Rethinking the Human Condition in the Ecological Collapse,” The New Centennial Review 20, no. 2 (2020): 179.

  72. 72.

    Ibid., 180.

  73. 73.

    Ibid., 195.

  74. 74.

    John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” in Essays in Persuasion (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1963).

  75. 75.

    Ibid.

  76. 76.

    Ibid.

  77. 77.

    Robert Chernomas, “Keynes on Post-Scarcity Society,” Journal of Economic Issues 18, no. 4 (1984): 1009.

  78. 78.

    Nina Eisenmenger et al., “The Sustainable Development Goals prioritize Economic Growth over Sustainable Resource Use: A Critical Reflection on the SDGs from a Socio-Ecological Perspective,” Sustainability Science 15 (2020): 1101–1110.

  79. 79.

    Haberl et al., “Quantifying and Mapping the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production in Earth’s Terrestrial Ecosystems,” 12946.

  80. 80.

    Herman E. Daly, “On Economics as a Life Science,” Journal of Political Economy 76, no. 3 (1968): 392.

  81. 81.

    Ibid., 401.

  82. 82.

    Ibid., 403.

  83. 83.

    Morten Tønnessen, “The True Value of ‘Doing Well’ Economically,” in Innovation and the Arts: The Value of Humanities Studies for Business, ed. Piero Formica and John Edmondson (Bingley: Emerald Publishing, 2020): 91–109.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Studies, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway

    Morten Tønnessen

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  1. Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies, Science and Research Centre of Koper, Koper, Slovenia

    Lenart Škof

  2. Department of Philosophy, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

    Sashinungla

  3. Department of Philosophy, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir

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Tønnessen, M. (2024). A Biosemiotic Perspective on the Human Condition and the Environmental Crisis. In: Škof, L., Sashinungla, Thorgeirsdottir, S. (eds) Elemental-Embodied Thinking for a New Era. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42119-8_7

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