51 pages • 1 hour read
Ed YongAn Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
Yong begins and ends his book with Uexkull’s representation of the umwelt as a house with windows looking out onto a garden. What other metaphors would be helpful in visualizing this theory? Is this metaphor purely visual, or are other senses invoked? Are there other senses that would be helpful in understanding Uexkull’s theory?
The book is focused on humans’ approaches to other animals’ umwelten. How does thinking about yourself as a human existing within one specific umwelt among millions of other animals’ umwelten affect your conception of what it means to be human?
Is Yong’s use of the pronoun “it” in reference to animals appropriate? If different pronouns should be used, what would they be? Are these available within language? How can the theory of the umwelt help you to explore this question?
Much of the knowledge accumulated over thousands of years regarding animals’ umwelten was obtained cruelly, as Yong acknowledges. Should that past knowledge still be referenced? Why or why not? How does the theory of the umwelt shape your approach, as well as Yong’s, to current animal experimentation?
Yong almost never discusses the umwelten of animals that people eat. Do you think readers would respond differently to the book if he had included these animals? Discuss the ways that Yong’s selection of animals shapes your response to his work.
What is the relevance of the umwelt to current movements for animal justice and/or animal rights? Find examples of the incorporation of these ideas in activists’ materials; if you cannot find examples, adapt the messaging of an animal rights’ group’s materials to reflect this idea.
Yong insists in his final chapter that sensory pollution must be reduced, as it is an assault on animals’ umwelten. Yet many of the measures currently being taken to mitigate climate change, such as transitioning to LED lights, will increase sensory pollution. Can climate change and sensory pollution be addressed simultaneously? Discuss concrete measures and fresh frameworks for thinking about corrective steps.
Which umwelt did you find the most interesting? Why? Which was the most difficult for you to understand?
How did you think about animals’ lives and research on animals before reading this book? How have Yong and Uexkull changed your approach to this topic?
Consider Nagel’s discussion of what it is like to be a bat. Do you agree that people can never truly imagine that because they do not share the bats’ umwelt? Do you think that the experience of being alive as an animal is something we humans and animals share, despite not having the same umwelt?
