Conclusion

Psychology is increasing its focus on interdisciplinary scholarship. Not only are people looking to different areas of psychology to incorporate into their research (e.g., sociocultural psychology; cognitive-behavioral therapy); they are incorporating their research with that from different disciplines (e.g., evolution, biology, anthropology) (Sokol & Strout, 2007). This interdisciplinary focus allows scholars to see the larger picture when contextualizing human affect, cognition, and behavior into the environments they inhabit. Scholars are in many cases becoming less specialized and more general in their theories.

I have no doubt that Uexküll would have embraced this interdisciplinary scholarship wholly. His Umwelt research paradigm was designed to unite the natural and subjective worlds, allowing scientists to consider the environments of species both within and across the lifespan. In this volume, the authors have approached their specialties through the lens of Umwelt research in order to situate humans and other species into the environments they inhabit. We have traced the ways that organisms make sense of their environments from spiders to humans; from individual affective worlds to intricate cultures; from the cellular to the organismic levels.