Kalevi Kull (born 12 August 1952,

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 97,759 (as of 2024). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of Riga, Latvia. Tartu lies on the Emajõgi river, which connects the ...

) is a

biosemiotics Biosemiotics (from the Ancient Greek, Greek βίος ''bios'', "life" and σημειωτικός ''sēmeiōtikos'', "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics (especially Neurosemiotics) and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-makin ...

professor at the University of Tartu,

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

. He graduated from the University of Tartu in 1975. His earlier work dealt with ethology and field ecology. He has studied the mechanisms of species coexistence in species-rich communities and developed mathematical modelling in

ecophysiology Ecophysiology (from Greek , ''oikos'', "house(hold)"; , ''physis'', "nature, origin"; and , '' -logia''), environmental physiology or physiological ecology is a biological discipline that studies the response of an organism's physiology to envir ...

. Since 1975, he has been the main organiser of annual meetings of theoretical biology in Estonia. In 1992, he became a Professor of Ecophysiology in the University of Tartu. In 1997, he joined the Department of Semiotics, and became a Professor in Biosemiotics. From 2006 to 2018, he was the Head of the Department of Semiotics in the University of Tartu, Estonia. His field of interests include biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, general semiotics, theoretical biology, theory of evolution, history and philosophy of semiotics and life science. He was the president of the Estonian Naturalists' Society in 1991–1994. He is a founder of the Jakob von Uexküll Centre. He is the president of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies since 2015. Ecologist Olevi Kull was his younger brother.

Editorship

Kull is the co-editor of the journal ''

Sign Systems Studies ''Sign Systems Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal on semiotics edited at the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and published by the University of Tartu Press. It is the oldest periodical in the field. It was initially ...

'' and book series ''Semiotics, Communication and Cognition'' (

De Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

), ''Biosemiotics'' (

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

), ''Tartu Semiotics Library'', and ''Approaches to Culture Theory'' ( University of Tartu Press). He is a member of editorial board of the journals '' Semiotica'', ''

Biosemiotics Biosemiotics (from the Ancient Greek, Greek βίος ''bios'', "life" and σημειωτικός ''sēmeiōtikos'', "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics (especially Neurosemiotics) and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-makin ...

'', ''Ecokritike'', ''Punctum: International Journal of Semiotics'', and others.

Important concepts

*''Biosemiotic concept of species''. A species concept based on recognition window of organisms, which is responsible for intraspecific variability range and the minimum width of hiatus. *''Recognition window''. The range of mediated fitting (semiotic fitting), as based on the scope of indistinguishability. *''Semiotic fitting''. The agent’s capacity for making and preserving the local semiotic bonds, meaning the agent’s functional or communicational match with its surrounding. *''Emon''. A type of sign that is based on imitation (as different from symbol which is based on convention, or index which is based on association, or icon which is based on indistinguishability). *''Umweb''. Non-momentary or diachronic or distributed umwelt.

Selected publications

* Emmeche, Claus; Kull, Kalevi (eds.) (2011). ''Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs''. London: Imperial College Press. *Kull, Kalevi 2001. Jakob von Uexküll: An introduction. '' Semiotica'' 134(1/4): 1–59. *Kull, Kalevi; Deacon, Terrence; Emmeche, Claus; Hoffmeyer, Jesper; Stjernfelt, Frederik 2009. Theses on biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a theoretical biology. '' Biological Theory'' 4(2): 167–173. *Kull, Kalevi 2023. Choices by organisms: on the role of freedom in behaviour and evolution. '' Biological Journal of the Linnean Society'' 139(4): 555–562.

Festschrifts

* Maran, Timo; Lindström, Kati; Magnus, Riin; Tønnessen, Morten (eds.) 2012.
Semiotics in the Wild: Essays in Honour of Kalevi Kull on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday
'. Tartu: University of Tartu Press. *Favareau, Donald; Velmezova, Ekaterina (eds.) 2022.
Tunne loodust! Knowing Nature in the Languages of Biosemiotics
'. (Epistemologica et historiographica linguistica Lausannensia 4.) Lausanne: Université de Lausanne.

Eponymous species

In 2021, a Costa Rican braconid wasp species new to science, ''Hymenochaonia kalevikulli'' Sharkey & van Achterberg, was named for Dr. Kull.Sharkey, Michael J.; Janzen, Daniel H., Hallwachs, Winnie, ''et al''. 2021. Minimalist revision and description of 403 new species in 11 subfamilies of Costa Rican braconid parasitoid wasps, including host records for 219 species. ''ZooKeys'' 1013: 1–665 (p. 394–396).

References

External links

PublicationsAn interview, in ''Hortus Semioticus''
1952 births Living people Estonian semioticians 21st-century Estonian philosophers 20th-century Estonian philosophers Theoretical biologists Estonian biologists Academic staff of the University of Tartu Scientists from Tartu Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 5th Class {{Semiotician-stub