To Alba
A chacun sa pente : à chacun aussi son but,
son ambition si l’on veut, son goût le plus
secret et son plus clair idéal. Le mien était
enfermé dans ce mot de beauté, si difficile
à définir en dépit de toutes les évidences
des sens et des yeux. Je me sentais
responsable de la beauté du monde.
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
Abstract
Sensory ecology is a discipline that focuses on how living creatures use information to survive, but not to live. By trans-defining the orthodox concept of sensory ecology, a serious heterodox question arises: how do organisms use their senses to live, i.e. to enjoy or suffer life? To respond to such a query the objective (time-independent) and emotional (non-rational) meaning of symbols must be revealed. Our program is distinct from both the neo-Darwinian and the classical ecological perspective because it does not focus on survival values of phenotypes and their functions, but asks for the aesthetic effect of biological structures and their symbolism. Our message recognizes that sensing apart from having a survival value also has a beauty value. Thus, we offer a provoking and inspiring new view on the sensory relations of ‘living things’ and their surroundings, where the innovating power of feelings have more weight than the privative power of reason.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Barbieri, M. (2009). A short history of biosemiotics. Biosemiotics, 2, 221–245.
Barra Ruatta, A. (1996). Antiecología: apuntes de una filosofía y paradigma ecológico. Buenos Aires: Espacio Editorial.
Cassirer, E. (1975). Esencia y efecto del concepto de símbolo. Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Castaneda, C. (2001). Viaje al Ixtlán. Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Croizat, L. (1961). Space, time, form: The biological synthesis. Caracas: Published by the author.
Dusembery, D. B. (1992). Sensory ecology: How organisms acquire and respond to information. New York: WH Freeman and Company.
Fisher, E. (1959). The necessity of art: A Marxist approach. London: Penguin Books.
García Bacca, J. D. (1984). Transfinitud e inmortalidad. Caracas: Edit. Juan David García Bacca.
Gatlin, L. L. (1972). Information theory and the living system. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hertz, H. (2003). Principles of mechanics: Presented in a new form. New York: Dover Publications.
Imanishi, K. (2011). El mundo de las cosas vivientes [Seibutsu no Sekai]. Caracas: Ediciones IVIC.
Kleisner, K. (2008). The semantic morphology of Adolf Portmann: A starting point for the biosemiotics of organic form? Biosemiotics, 1, 207–219.
Menninghaus, W. (2009). Biology à la mode: Charles Darwin’s aesthetics of “ornament”. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 31, 263–278.
Nietzsche, F. (2002). La gaya ciencia. Madrid: Editorial Edaf.
Otálora-Luna, F., Aldana, E., Viloria, A. (2017) Crítica a la teoría de la evolución pura: hacia la belleza estructural. Ludus Vitalis, 47. (in press).
Pattee, H. H. (2001). The physics of symbol: Bridging the epistemic cut. Biosystems, 60, 5–21.
Pattee, H. H. (2006). The physics of autonomous biological information. Biological Theory, 1, 224–226.
Pattee, H. H. (2015). Cell phenomenology: The first phenomenon. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 119, 461–468.
Portmann, A. (1969). Einführung in die vergleichende Morphologie der Wirbeltiere. Basel: Schwabe & Co.
Sánchez Vázquez, A. (1975). Estética y marxismo. Ciudad de México: Ediciones Era.
Sánchez Vázquez, A. (1980). Las ideas estéticas de Marx. Ciudad de México: Biblioteca Era Ensayo.
Santayana, G. (1896). The sense of beauty: Being the outlines of aesthetic theory. New York: Charles Scribners’s Sons.
Sartre, J. P. (1943). L’être et la néant: essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
Silva, L. (1975). El estilo literario de Marx. Ciudad de México: Siglo XXI Editores.
Silva, L. (2009). Anti-manual para uso de marxistas, marxólogos y marxianos. Caracas: Mote Ávila Editores Latinoamericana CA.
Silva, L. (2011). Teoría de la ideología/contracultura. Caracas: Fundación Editorial El Perro y La Rana.
Snow, C. P. (1993). The two cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Uexküll, V. J. (1926). Theoretical biology. New York: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & CO. LTD.
Wilde, O. (2011). El crítico artista. San Francisco: Wikisource - La Biblioteca Libre.
Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Acknowledgments
We wish to acknowledge Karen Knight and Lynda Erika Lilyestrom Luna who kindly performed language editing, as well as the two anonymous reviewers and Staffan Müller-Wille who improved the manuscript with their questions and comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Otálora-Luna, F., Aldana, E. The beauty of sensory ecology. HPLS 39, 20 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-017-0149-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-017-0149-y