Skip to main content
Log in

Review of Glen Mazis, Humans, Animals, Machines: Blurring boundaries

Albany, State University of New York Press, 273 pp. ISBN: 978-0-7914-7555-3 (hardcover), 978-0-7914-7556-0 (pbk)

  • Book Review
  • Published:
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Put briefly, for von Uexküll, a living organism's environment, understood to be constituted by the interplay of the organism's actions and perceptions, is organized as a closed unity, and thus strictly demarcated from the specific environment of other organisms.

  2. Von Uexküll calls this the functional cycle or Funktionskreis constituted by the interaction of the animal organism and its environment. As he states in his classic work Theoretische Biologie: “Jedes Tier ist ein Subjekt, das dank seiner ihm eigentümlichen Bauart aus den allgemeinen Wirkungen der Außenwelt bestimmte Reize auswählt, auf die es in bestimmter Weise antwortet. Diese Antworten bestehen wiederum in bestimmten Wirkungen auf die Außenwelt, und diese beeinflussen ihrerseits die Reize. Dadurch entsteht ein geschlossener Kreislauf, den man den Funktionskreis des Tieres nennen kann” (von Uexküll 1973, 150).

References

  • Husserl, E. (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. Second book: Studies in the phenomenology of constitution (R. Rojcewicz & A. Schuwer, Trans.). Dordrecht; Boston; London: Kluwer. (Original Work published 1952).

    Google Scholar 

  • Merleau-Ponty, M. (1942). La structure du comportement. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

    Google Scholar 

  • von Uexküll, J. (1973). Theoretische Biologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Original Work published 1920).

    Google Scholar 

  • Waldenfels, B. (1980). Perception and structure in Merleau-Ponty. Research in Phenomenology, 10(1): 21–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter Woelert.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Woelert, P. Review of Glen Mazis, Humans, Animals, Machines: Blurring boundaries. Phenom Cogn Sci 8, 603–606 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9145-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9145-3

Navigation