Umwelt

An English interpretation of Umwelt through synonymous diagram.

Kant writes, “Space is merely the form of all appearances of the outward senses, i.e., the subjective conditioning of sensibility, by which alone intuition of the outside world is possible for us.” (Uexküll qtd in Sebeok 194)

Kant’s view of space and time is that an organism cannot, through sense perception, be immediately aware of things as they really are because objects are altered by the very act of being apprehended. “The world of real objects is knowable only through reason, and solely by this act of symbolic cognition can some true propositions – thoughts about words, thoughts about thoughts, , in brief, signs about signs – be apprehended.”(Sebeok 194)