︎



…Umwelt (OOM-velt) is a German word that literally means…‘the world around’. [It] signifies the perceived world, the world sensed by an animal, a view idiosyncratic to each species, fueled by its particular sensory and cognitive powers and limited by its deficits. But not only dogs and bees have umwelts, all animals do, even humans. We might call it reality, but it is indeed an umwelt, an idiosyncratic sensory picture of the living world around us.

            – Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Naming Nature: The Clash Between Nature and Science