This blog uses the word "semiotics" a lot.  What does that mean?  What does this discipline that involves the "systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning" itself actually involve? 

Surprisingly enough, one of the Dominican students of St. Thomas Aquinas, John Poinsot (1589-1644), was an early theorist of this discipline that now joins the study of literature together with biology and thus, by extension, the study of Holy Scripture (and the Divine Liturgy) with natural processes.

For much of modern history, the two "Trees of Knowledge"-- Science & the Humanities-- have mistakenly been taken as distinct and unrelated as one deals with "objective" and externally falsifiable claims while the other deals with "subjective" and internally valued experiences.  Not so.   Both after all make sense of similar semiotic mechanisms in the communication of their respective truths.

Here, we give space to explore what this domain of knowledge can accomplish in elucidating God's multifaceted communication with Man both through the "Good Book" of Holy Scripture and the Book of Nature itself. 

 

The most important question of this blog more or less comprises the following: "why did God decide to reveal Himself in the ways that He did?  Why didn't He just speak directly to everyone if He could (given that He is God)?  What does it mean to "reveal" something and why do we do so little by little?  Why did He use the particular routes that He did at specific moments in particular places when He is the Master of the Universe and the Lord of Time?  When revealing Himself in this direct way, what are we to make of His particularity against His universality?"  More importantly, how have the great saintly intellects of the past approached such questions as to the foundation of revealed theology as distinct from philosophical speculation?  To put this knowledge into practice, how can we complicate the simplified distortions of God's personality in the evolution of so-called Deism of the Founding Fathers up through the contemporary phenomenon of Modern Therapeutic Deism? 

This focus of the blog tries to identify God's personality through the use of Literary Semiotics of the Bible (and Church History) alongside Biosemiotics of the natural world to flesh out the rather abstract arguments of Classical Theism as championed by Thomas Aquinas and others.

 

At times of great despair, uncertainty, spiritual dryness, and feeling of abandonment, such knowledge of the Divine Presence may prove useful to the Christian pilgrims on Earth!  This section of the blog is devoted to St. Patrick and his famous use of the Shamrock to teach the Heathen Irish about the Godhead.

On the Science of Signs and Signification:

 

Part Ia. A Lexicon of Thomistic Semiotics

Part Ib. A Semiotics Index of the Thomistic Corpus

Part II. The Isagogue of John of St. Thomas (for the Summa Theologiae)

Part III. Tractatus de Signis (by John of St. Thomas) [& Its Reception by Modern Semioticians]

Part IV. The Biblical Commentaries and Sermons of St. Thomas Aquinas

Part V. Patristic Commentaries on "Signs and Wonders" [More to Come]

Part VI. Research in Biosemiotics: Phytosemiotics & Zoosemiotics (or, Ethology)

Part VII. 'Signposts in a Strange Land' --- Meditations on Walker Percy's Literary and Scholarly Output

Appendix A: The "Religious-Turn" in Wittgenstein Studies

Appendix B: An Annotated Bibliography of Semiotic Literary Criticism

A Timeline:

Spring - Summer 2025:

Stage 1: A Close Reading of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae (Pars Prima) w/ Marginalia of Semiotic Terminology

Stage 2: An Annotated Commentary of John Poinsot's Isagogue [For Synthesis of Thomistic Philosophical Theology]

 

Fall - Winter 2025:

Stage 3: A Close Reading of John Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis [w/ Notes and Commentary]

 

Winter 2026:

Stage 4: A Compilation of Aquinas' Sermons and Biblical Commentaries w/ Semiotic References (w/ Inter-Textual Commentary)

 

Spring-Summer 2026 [Original Work]:

Stage 5a: Begin Annotated Bibliography of Semiotic Literary Criticism w/ a Focus on the interstices of Natural Theology and Foundational Theology (!)

Stage 5b: Begin Annotated Bibliography of Biosemiotics w/ a Focus on the interstices of Natural Theology and Foundational Theology (!)

Stage 6: A Critical Study of "Parson-Naturalists" of the English Reformed Tradition alongside the Jesuit Missionaries [Reflections on Nature & Grace, Faith & Reason, Religion & Science, etc.]

 

Ongoing Contributions:

A Compilation of Patristic Authorities on the Topic of "Signs and Wonders" and the Miraculous

Outlining Scientific Journals and Books on Biosemiotics, Phytosemiotics, and Zoosemiotics/Ethology

Book Reviews in Semiotic Literary Criticism

Annotated Bibliography of Cleric-Scientist Publications

A Necrology of Tertiaries and Oblates