This course explores the emergence and application of the concept of agency in objects, including animals, plants, and types of artistic output. The interchange between objects and subjects, or rather, that between living beings and their environments, has been regarded a fundamental issue in such various disciplines as anthropology, sociology, evolution theory, and semiotics. Recently, the issue has been gaining prominence due to the rise of cognitive science and catastrophic events in the environment. People are concerned to learn how objects can affect them in their everyday lives. Thus, this course examines notions of agency that Darwin, Uexkull, Peirce, Gell, and Latour have theorized, seeking to integrate their viewpoints on animal instinct and the functioning of an intelligent network that includes both humans and non-humans. In terms of philosophical import, such an approach serves to strengthen the link between biology and Peircean pragmatism that values objects as our social and psychic receptacles. In addition, this course may contribute to the conceptualization of a biosemiotic approach to aesthetics and art history. It provides aestheticians and art historians with the means of an adjustable network that serves to induce interpretations of art objects in view of reassembling the social ties between humans and non-human entities in a community.