“We must [...] imagine all the animals that animate Nature around us, be they beetles, butterflies, gnats, or dragonflies who populate a meadow, as having a soap bubble around them, closed on all sides, which closes off their visual space and in which everything visible for the subject is also enclosed. Each bubble shelters other places, and in each are also found the directional planes of effective space, which gives a solid scaffolding to space. The birds that flutter about, the squirrels hopping from branch to branch, or the cows grazing in the meadow, all remain permanently enclosed in the bubble that encloses their space.”
Jakob von Uexküll A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans
Translated by Joseph D. O'Neill
Introduction by Dorion Sagan
Afterword by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
University of Minnesota Press
F.I.U. Library
(p. 69)
“Thorough experiments have shown that the smallest step we can execute, as measured by the index finger of the outstretched arm, is approximately two centimeters in length. As one can see, these steps constitute no precise measurement of the space in which it is executed. Anyone can convince himself of this imprecision if he attempts, with closed eyes, to make his forefingers meet. He would see that this generally fails and that the fingertips miss each other by a distance of up to two centimeters.”
Jakob von Uexküll A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans
Translated by Joseph D. O'Neill
Introduction by Dorion Sagan
Afterword by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
University of Minnesota Press
F.I.U. Library
(pp. 54/55)
