351
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_40
Chapter 40
The Zoosemiotic Paradox of Aesop
40.1 The Holy Grail of Biosemiotics
Aesop is thought to have been born into slavery, in approximately 620 BC. He
would live for approximately 56 years. Most perceive his home to have been Greece,
though one thirteenth-century biography suggests that he was of African descent
and others believe him to be a Phrygian at the very end of the Phrygian Empire. The
zoology of Anatolia then, her musical traditions, and wild child origins of Cybele
would tend to support the Phrygian origins theory. Aesop (Αἴσωπος) had a great
gift, variously referenced by Herodotus, Plutarch, and Aristotle. From the first century CE, his mythic personality is assured, as flamboyantly enshrined as the Holy
Grail of biosemiotics. The search to discover the real Aesop takes on dramatic proportions because references to the real man are so fragmented. Notwithstanding
obscurity, his deeply observational traits deliver a wealth of biological data that
is—as an everyday metaphysic, or Farmer’s Almanac, is to the fanfare of country
life—understood as a great chain of being that every age group of every species
partakes in, with all its poignancies, good-humor, ill-humor, the sum total of interdependencies, mostly focusing on food, nests, and the right to exist.
Aesop’s biospheric hierarchies, whether involving an ant, a wolf, or a grasshopper, are culled from a coeval pantheist, spiritual and aesthetic hub, weighing heavily
on matters of jurisprudence, town halls, fundamental questions of morality among
humans, and mostly, the relations between other species.
Aesop’s genius and character are never in doubt. His thoughts are directly in tune
with a Mahavira, a St. Francis, Shelley, and George Orwell. Throughout the many
variations regarding his biography, there is a central ethical line that is conversant
with both satire and tragedy; with all those weighty matters more often given to a
Zadig, a Sanhedrin, a Diaspora of the Learned. Moments of finality and absolute
necessity that perforce need the right insight at the precise moment. And, perhaps,
incompletely attributed to him through the dissemination of “The Aesop Romance,”
his collation of tales and biographical adventures beginning in the first century and
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_40
Chapter 40
The Zoosemiotic Paradox of Aesop
40.1 The Holy Grail of Biosemiotics
Aesop is thought to have been born into slavery, in approximately 620 BC. He
would live for approximately 56 years. Most perceive his home to have been Greece,
though one thirteenth-century biography suggests that he was of African descent
and others believe him to be a Phrygian at the very end of the Phrygian Empire. The
zoology of Anatolia then, her musical traditions, and wild child origins of Cybele
would tend to support the Phrygian origins theory. Aesop (Αἴσωπος) had a great
gift, variously referenced by Herodotus, Plutarch, and Aristotle. From the first century CE, his mythic personality is assured, as flamboyantly enshrined as the Holy
Grail of biosemiotics. The search to discover the real Aesop takes on dramatic proportions because references to the real man are so fragmented. Notwithstanding
obscurity, his deeply observational traits deliver a wealth of biological data that
is—as an everyday metaphysic, or Farmer’s Almanac, is to the fanfare of country
life—understood as a great chain of being that every age group of every species
partakes in, with all its poignancies, good-humor, ill-humor, the sum total of interdependencies, mostly focusing on food, nests, and the right to exist.
Aesop’s biospheric hierarchies, whether involving an ant, a wolf, or a grasshopper, are culled from a coeval pantheist, spiritual and aesthetic hub, weighing heavily
on matters of jurisprudence, town halls, fundamental questions of morality among
humans, and mostly, the relations between other species.
Aesop’s genius and character are never in doubt. His thoughts are directly in tune
with a Mahavira, a St. Francis, Shelley, and George Orwell. Throughout the many
variations regarding his biography, there is a central ethical line that is conversant
with both satire and tragedy; with all those weighty matters more often given to a
Zadig, a Sanhedrin, a Diaspora of the Learned. Moments of finality and absolute
necessity that perforce need the right insight at the precise moment. And, perhaps,
incompletely attributed to him through the dissemination of “The Aesop Romance,”
his collation of tales and biographical adventures beginning in the first century and