Umwelt

In the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok, umwelt (plural: umwelten; the German word Umwelt means "environment" or "surrounding world") is the "biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human animal." The term is usually translated as "self-centered world". Uexküll theorised that organisms can have different umwelten, even though they share the same environment.