This thesis contends that Nina Katchadourian's oeuvre can be read as subtly breaking down problematic assumptions about nature in Western thought. The second chapter draws on biosemiotics, which redefines life as semiosis, and trans-corporeality, which reconceptualizes the human body as inseparable from the environment, to show how Katchadourian's art routinely calls attention to non-human animal and material agencies. The third chapter demonstrates how Katchadourian's work implicitly reinforces Donna Haraway's idea of naturecultures, which contends that nature and culture are mutually implicated and inextricably intertwined, through a close reading of two of Katchadourian's pieces, Natural Crossdressing and Mended Spiderwebs #19 (Laundry Line). The final chapter compares the use of irony in two pieces that comment on Western animal classification--Chloe, by Katchadourian, and Scala Naturae, by Mark Dion--contending that Katchadourian's piece demonstrates what Bronislaw Szerszynski terms an "ironic ecology."

abstract: This dissertation is both creative and scholarly, engaging in the technique of "narrative scholarship," an increasingly accepted technique within the field of ecocriticism. The project is framed by my experiences with Spanish and Latino actors as well as activists involved with the 15-M movement in and around Madrid. It takes a "material ecocritical" approach, which is to say that it treats minds, spirits and language as necessarily "bodied" entities, and creates an absolute union between beings and the matter that constructs them as well as their habitat. I apply the lens of Jesper Hoffmeyer's Biosemiotics, which claims that life is at its most essential levels a communicative process. In other words, I will explore how "all matter is 'storied' matter," as well as how the "semiosphere," which is an important concept in biosmiotics, signaling a semiotic environment that predicts and defines all biological bodies/life, the human, the plant and the animal as beings who are made of and involved in semiotic activity, can serve as a basis for union amongst all bodies and provide a model of cooperation rooted in "storytelling." My project aims to embody what Wendy Wheeler describes as ecocriticism's, "syntheses between the sciences and the humanities" It is my strong opinion that creative writing has the power to offer the general public insight into the reasons why new research in biosemiotics is so important to the work that activists are doing to raise awareness of how humans can live responsibly on the only planet that is our home. This will help readers of creative writing and cultural studies scholars understand why they ought to embrace science, especially in literary and cultural studies, as a path to better understanding of the role of the humanities in an increasingly scientifically oriented world. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2016

The present PhD-thesis seeks new definitions of human subjectivity in an age of technoscience and a networked, globalized, Information Society. The perspective presented relates to Philosophy of Science, which includes the Human, the Natural, the Social and the Life Sciences. The project is directed at addressing, and aims to participate in, the further development of Philosophy of Science, or rather, the philosophy of knowing, which leaves a perspective broader than that of science. Methodologically, I combine readings of technoetic artworks, which I approach from a hermeneutical-semiotic perspective, with transdisciplinary research into existing theory concerning the human subject. These readings form my case studies. I keep a particular focus on holistic biophysics (Mae Wan Ho, James Oschman, Marko Bischof). Furthermore, Søren Brier's cybersemiotic theory of communication, cognition and consciousness, which combines a cybernetic-autopoietic and a Peircean semiotic perspective, plays a central role in the project. The project has three parts. Part one contextualizes the study within philosophy of science. It discusses relevant epistemologies, and places the case studies in an art categorical context. It further discusses the philosophical problems involved in writing an academic thesis in the form of a linear, argumentative, critical style, and how it affects the process of meaning making in a way that has consequences to my research. The second part consists of four case studies, each under an overall theme, which applies to the question of human subjectivity. Here I build the concept Extended Sentience, and the concept of an Ideal User. The Ideal User functions as a conceptual frame, which allows me to gradually add more elements to a theory of an altered human subject and knower. The third part presents new ontologies under three basic themes: Time and Relativity, The Life Cycles of Metaphors, and Logos Philosophy and Virtual Grids. These ontologies strongly affect ways of interpretation made in part one and two. Part Three allows more space to my subjective thought processes, which will take precedence over the literature applied. Thus, I, as a post-objective subject observer, will become more transparent. Finally, I will seek an overall conclusion to the project, which should clarify areas where it is evident that the human subject must be reconsidered at a pre-scientific level. It is my thesis that the foundation for human knowledge generation is changing drastically today, and that it has become crucial to reconsider a common understanding of what constitutes the human knower.

This study explores how Anglophone fiction from the mid-Victorian period to the outbreak of the First World War acted as an imaginative testing-ground for theories of the evolution of language. Debates about the past development and the future of language ranged beyond the scope of empirical data and into speculative narrative. Fiction offered to realize such narratives in detail, building imaginative worlds out of different theories of language evolution. In the process, it also often tested these theories, exposing their contradictions. The lack of clear boundaries between nature and culture in language studies of the period enabled fictions of language evolution to explore questions to which contemporary researchers have returned. To what extent is communication instinctive or conventional? How do social and biological factors interact in the production of meaning? The study traces two opposing tendencies of thought on language evolution, naming them language ‘progressivism’ and ‘vitalism’. Progressivism imagined speakers evolving away from involuntary, instinctive vocalizations to extert rational control over their discourse with mechanical precision. By contrast, language vitalism posited a mysterious, natural power in words which had weakened and fragmented with the rise of writing and industrial society. Certain genres of fiction lent themselves to exploration of these ideas, with utopian tales seeking to envision the end-goals of progressive theory. Representations of primitive language in imperial and prehistoric romances also promoted progressivism by depicting the instinctive, irrational speech from which ‘civilization’ was imagined as advancing away. Conversely, much historical and invasion fiction idealized a linguistic past when speech had expressed natural truth, and the authentic folk origins of its speakers. Both progressivism and vitalism were undermined through the late nineteenth century by developments in biology, which challenged claims of underlying stability in nature or purpose in change. Simultaneously, philologists increasingly argued that meaning was conventional, attacking models of semantic progress and degradation. In this context, a number of authors reconceptualized language in their fiction as a mixture of instinct and convention. These imaginative explorations of the borderlands between the social and biological in communication prefigured many of the concerns of twenty-first-century biosemiotics.

Multicomponent signals are complex stimuli directed to receptors of only single modality. Colourful ornaments of animals are multicomponent signals. In this thesis I present results of studies on the origin of coloration in turtles and squamate reptiles together with notes on relativistic view of the functionality of animal coloration. The results show that turtle coloration, which have been studied only marginally until now, is shaped by sexual selection. It is shown that turtles share mechanisms of coloration by vertical organization of different pigment cell types together with squamate reptiles. Turtles also produce colour by organization of collagen fibres which share trait with birds and mammals. Mechanisms of body coloration differ dramatically between closely related turtle species studied even though the individual constituting components are shared among these species. On the example of polymorphic lizards, it is shown that qualitative categorical difference between groups of individuals of the same population are maintained based on quantitative changes in pigment contents regulated by ancient loci shared by different species. The turtles and reptiles are valuable source of our knowledge on the evolution of multicomponent visual signalling due to their intriguing composition of skin....

We are living in the information age and this has had an effect on both science and theology. Our understanding of the fundamental role of information has increased significantly. One can even say that information has become an overarching metaphor in the world of science. This dissertation gives an overview of the impact of the information-based scientific world-view on the dialogue between science and theology. The study investigates the metaphorical use of information concepts to secure a better understanding of God's action in the world and the role that information plays in the processes of life. The focus is on the role of biological information, and its relation to divine action is investigated. The scientific importance of information and the possible impact of information concepts on the science and theology dialogue of the future are discussed. / Systematic Theology & Theological Ethics / M. Th.(Systematic Theology)

We are living in the information age and this has had an effect on both science and theology. Our understanding of the fundamental role of information has increased significantly. One can even say that information has become an overarching metaphor in the world of science. This dissertation gives an overview of the impact of the information-based scientific world-view on the dialogue between science and theology. The study investigates the metaphorical use of information concepts to secure a better understanding of God's action in the world and the role that information plays in the processes of life. The focus is on the role of biological information, and its relation to divine action is investigated. The scientific importance of information and the possible impact of information concepts on the science and theology dialogue of the future are discussed. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. Th.(Systematic Theology)

Cette thèse a pour objet la création d’un modèle théorique à destination de l’éthologie se présentant sous forme de grilles de lecture et de collection d’outils issus de la linguistique et de la sémiotique humaines. La finalité de ce modèle est de permettre l’étude zoosémiotique des émotions complexes au sein du règne animal. Il s’agit d’un travail pluridisciplinaire, interdisciplinaire et interthéoriciste, employant un corpus multimodal composé à la fois de textes théoriques linguistiques, d’études éthologiques et de supports multimédias, notamment des supports vidéo. Ce travail a été pensé dans un contexte d’absence de modèle théorique interdisciplinaire permettant l’étude de l’émotion animale, dans le but de permettre aux domaines des sciences du vivant et des sciences du langage de collaborer. Pour ce faire, il élabore tout d’abord un cadre théorique complet permettant une bonne entente des deux disciplines et revient sur tous les aspects essentiels (histoire, lexique, courant, idéologie, controverse). Par la suite, il présente le modèle théorique en explicitant sa construction et en donnant des exemples d’application. Dans la dernière partie la théorie est mise à l’épreuve par confrontation avec les données déjà existantes et approuvées par les éthologues. Cette partie permet de lister les forces et faiblesses du modèle, ainsi que les pistes de recherche, d’application et de réflexion qu’il ouvre au sujet de la sensibilité et de l’émotion animales. / This PhD thesis’ object is the creation of a theoretical model for ethology. It is made of a collection of linguistics and human semiotics tools, organized into reading grids. This model’s aim is to allow the zoosemiotic study of complex emotions in animal kingdom. It’s a pluridisciplinary, interdisciplinary and intertheorist work with a multimodal corpus – including theoretical linguistics texts, ethology studies and multimedia contents, like videos. This work was created in a context of lack of interdisciplinary theoretical model. It was conceived with the aim of allow collaboration between life sciences and language sciences. To do so, we start first by building a complete theoretical frame for a good understanding between both disciplines. It goes over every main aspects – history, lexicology, schools, ideology, argument. Then, the theoretical model is introduced by explicating its construction and giving application examples. In the last part of the thesis, the theoretical model is tested by confrontation with existing and approved by ethologists datas. This part allows us to present strengths and weakness of the model – as well as lines of thought, research and application it opens.

De l'ornement architectural à l'ornement liturgique, de l'ornement langagier à l'encadrement du tableau, de l'ornement musical au tatouage, les formes variés de l'ornement témoignent d'un champ d'application illimité qui couvre tous les domaines de l'art. Si chez Kant l'ornement offre un exemple typique de beauté libre, la philosophie et la théorie de l'art lui attribuent souvent un contenu moral ou symbolique l'associant tantôt à la convenance tantôt à la dégénérescence. En tant que forme primitive d'expression artistique il est rattaché aux arts premiers et à la production artisanale, aux antipodes de la véritable création artistique tout autant que du dessin industriel ou architectural. Sa dimension cosmique, d'autre part, fait que des artistes et des historiens le mettent au centre de leur conception de l'art, le considérant comme la manifestation principale du « vouloir artistique » ou une expression privilégiée de l'impulsion artistique vers l'abstraction. Si la spécificité de l'ornement consiste en son caractère accessoire qui lui assigne un statut ontologique particulier entre l'ergon et le parergon le rendant synonyme de « style », sa transversalité met en question les hiérarchies issues de la théorie de la mimesis et brouille les limites entre art et décoration, majeur et mineur, d'autant plus que les notions dérivées de l'« ornemental » ou du « décoratif » dépassent le domaine des arts appliqués et s'emploient pour designer la forme ou la fonction d’œuvres d'art. À ce titre l'étude des différents aspects de l'ornement et des réponses théoriques qu'il a suscitées, renouvelle la réflexion sur le statut de l'art et sa relation avec la vie. / From architectural decoration to liturgical ornament, from rhetorical ornament to painting frames, from musical ornament to tattoo, the various forms of ornament testify to an unlimited scope that covers all artistic and cultural fields. Despite its being considered, from a kantian point of view, as an example of free beauty, philosophy and theory of art often attribute a moral or symbolic content to ornament, associating it to either convenience or degeneracy. As a primitive form of artistic expression, ornament is related to tribal art and to craft rather than true artistic creation or modern design. Its cosmic dimension, however, leads some artists and historians regard it as the basis for their conception of art, as the chief manifestation of the “will to art”, or as a primary expression of the artistic impulse that leads to abstraction. Since its specific character consists in that of an accessory, ornament receives an intermediate ontological status between the ergon and the parergon. Its transversality challenges the hierarchy of art forms and genres which is based on the theories of mimesis, and blurs the boundaries between art and decoration, high and low, since the derived terms of "ornamental" or "decorative" apply not only to decorative arts but also to the style and the function of art works. The study of the different aspects of ornament and of the theoretical responses it raised, contributes to regarding our understanding of the status of art and its relation to life.

Pokorný, V., To think from psychedelic experiences. Transdisciplinary interpretation. Diseration Thesis, Departement of General Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University Prague, 2016 Abstract: The goal of this text is to think from and according to psychedelic experiences. To think from psychededic experiences means to introduce a transdisciplinary model of psychedelic domain. This model is based on autoethnographic, cognitive, phenomenological and psychopharmacological types of analysis. These analyses allow to demonstrate: 1) place of psychedelics in contemporary globalised czech society; 2) possible heuristic (theoretical and experiemental) value of psychedelic experience for understanding human situation. This text interprets psychedelic experience as a process of deteritorialization and reteritorialization that occurs on different, intertwinned levels of our experience, and, thus, it is a contribution to explication of a philosophical concept of intertwinning. Keywords: psychedelic experience, transdisciplinarity, autoethnography, cognitive anthropology, anthropology of experience, enactivism, phenomenology, embodiment, analogy, intertwinning