Joerg reviewed Naturekind by Melissa Leach
Essential for our Age
4 stars
"Naturekind" is an essential book that, were it not a bit academic writing, should be one of these all-time famous nature writing book. It lays out the case how much of human-non-human (chicken, horses, bees, plants) interactions are true communication. Honestly, so many times I thought - well this is going a bit too far but the examples just hit the mark. I think the warm feeling of someone expressing what I intuitively feel just is why I consider this book a paradigm changer. I'll leave the academic detail to the linguists, but sometimes it felt like their concept of "structural biosemiotics" was (a) poorly explained and (b) applied a little too generously, but that doesn't take away from the message: That humans are part of nature and all its residents, and that we truly communicate across species in myriads of ways. I also enjoyed the focus on time and …
"Naturekind" is an essential book that, were it not a bit academic writing, should be one of these all-time famous nature writing book. It lays out the case how much of human-non-human (chicken, horses, bees, plants) interactions are true communication. Honestly, so many times I thought - well this is going a bit too far but the examples just hit the mark. I think the warm feeling of someone expressing what I intuitively feel just is why I consider this book a paradigm changer. I'll leave the academic detail to the linguists, but sometimes it felt like their concept of "structural biosemiotics" was (a) poorly explained and (b) applied a little too generously, but that doesn't take away from the message: That humans are part of nature and all its residents, and that we truly communicate across species in myriads of ways. I also enjoyed the focus on time and place context as the driver of meaning.