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?  And how can it aid us in the reading of religious texts (whether of Scripture or other Magisterial documents)?

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 countless other subjects; and thus, by extension, the study of Holy Scripture (and the Divine Liturgy) with natural processes.  The prospect of semiotics is that it can create a common interpretive basis for both the arts and the sciences as equally natural systems (one "human", the other "physical", etc.).  Reapplied to God's Revelation, it can aid us in understanding what makes the Bible genuinely inspired.

For much of modern history, the "Two Cultures" (as proposed by Professor Snow in 1959)-- Science & the Humanities-- have mistakenly been taken as distinct and unrelated as one deals with "objective" and externally falsifiable claims of the "real world" while the other deals with "subjective" and internally valued experiences of people.  Not so.   Both after all make sense of similar semiotic mechanisms in the communication of their respective truths.  And that is highly underexplored at a times when materialism and sentimentalism are running amuck in the tag team moral degradation of modern society.  And what a pair! 

***Within the modern theological history of Catholicism, this battle also plays out between those placing a high premium on traditional form and external observances for reason of authenticity ("Traditionalism") and those who deeply care about "experience" vis-a-vis Ressourcement as the basis of meaningful and, again, authentic engagement with the Living God.  Both sides care about the authenticity of this connection.  But taking a step back from these controversies, what all is involved in the communicated acts between the "handing on" of tradition on the one end and its reception on the other as twin polar extremes at a time when many seem to focus only on one side of the pole?  How does this dialectic actually work given everything else we know about the inner life of signs and how they are (generally) used?  When we understand how the processes actually function, can they aid us in understanding how we should proceed? ***

Here, we give space to explore what this unique domain of knowledge--- semiotics--- can accomplish in elucidating God's multifaceted communication with Man both through the "Good Book" of Holy Scripture and the Book of Nature itself.  Building on this insight, we can then take on the many difficulties involved in crises of interpretation and authority.

Such a discipline when employed for Christian purposes allows us to investigate really intimidating questions: "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 are we to make of God's silence in the face not only of evils but confusion and ecclesiastical uncertainty?  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?, etc."  More importantly, can the knowledge of how sign systems work, aid the sorting out of what we are to make of Divine Revelation and ultimately the Will of God? 

It is most likely that we have to proceed cautiously through the reformulation of our questions rather than the offering of strong answers given the tendentious and speculative nature of semiotic theory.

Semiotics which is invested in the second order study of communication as a means of how signs work can greatly aid at the very least in asking better theological questions.

This focus of the blog tries to identify God's personality, intellectuality, and will 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.  How can the Divine Architect of the Universe--- the Universal Logos and Second Person of the Eternal Trinity--- be considered alongside the Jesus of Nazareth of the Gospels who is one and the same Person? 

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. 

I consider this part of the blog "successful" if it makes you a little less Cartesian at the end of the day.

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