The Umgebung
Sort of a Christmas Story
No one at the Christmas party seemed particularly interested when Bird brought up Jakob von Uexküll’s insight into the mind of the tick. The tick? people said to Bird, eyebrows raised, shoulders turning ever so slightly towards an exit. Are we talking ticks? I wouldn’t think a tick had much of a mind. Exactly! Bird said. As von Uexküll pointed out, the tick’s simple sensory apparatus recognizes only three aspects of the physical world: a sensitivity to sunlight which leads it to the top of a blade of grass; the smell of butyric acid from the sebaceous follicles of mammals, which tells it when to let go and fall; and the heat of blood which guides it through the hair to its dinner. In von Uexküll’s theory that’s the tick’s umwelt—it’s self-world—the specific way in which it is embedded in the umgebung, the otherwise unknowable reality which surrounds us all. Though surrounding isn’t quite accurate…
