[Photograph courtesy of Lee Anne Roquemore, Petal & Vine Photography, Lakeland, FL]

The concept of semiotics was introduced to me during my MA in Philosophy studies at the University of Kentucky (1975-77) with James H. Fetzer. At that time Jim was working through galley proofs of his major work for D. Reidel - Scientific Knowledge: Causation, Explanation, and Corroboration (Kluwer, 1981). The galleys were distributed to several of his faculty colleagues and students for review and discussion. Much of the epistemology and philosophy of mind in that book is based on Charles Sanders Peirce's theory of semiotics. 

During those years at UK Jim became my mentor and we became friends. His work remains an intellectual touchstone and keystone for me to this day. Peirce's theory of signs (i.e., semiotics) and Fetzer's philosophy of science formed not only the main focus of my PhD studies at the University of Georgia (1984-86, ABD), but the very conceptual and intellectual framework of my adult life and worldview thus far. 

Having spent 38 of the last 40 years as an information technology professional at IBM, Oracle, Wycliffe Bible Translators, World Vision, and elsewhere in the industry, the time has come again to return to academia to pick up where I left off in 1986. A crucial crossroads whereby I became a disciple, follower, and friend of Christ (1992) casts all of this in an entirely new light, of course, leading me to continue the journey in orthogonal parallax, with a more dynamic focus and perspective, yielding far more profound implications for my life's purpose, destiny, and legacy. 

On November 24, 2015 I was accepted into the Doctor of Ministry (DMin) program at George Fox Evangelical Seminary, specifically as a member of  Dr. Leonard Sweet's Semiotics and Future Studies cohort beginning in the fall term of 2016. During the preceding spring and summer terms I enrolled in preparatory courses in biblical theology, exegesis and hermeneutics, church history, and contemporary theology, officially starting on January 11, 2016. Those 12 semester hours of Master of Divinity (MDiv) leveling studies were needed to better equip me for seminary studies in general. 

My dissertation, “The End Signs! Are We Getting the Message?” was officially approved on February 18, 2019 and I received the DMin in Semiotics and Future Studies in a graduation ceremony at Portland Seminary on May 9, 2019. The full story is mainly autobiographical, dating back to formative years in secondary school in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. It tells how a tapestry of academic, professional, and personal experience has been woven over more than half a century to produce - at last! - a nearly finished life story. The purpose, mission, destiny, and legacy of that story is finally clearly seen, and it is essentially about semiotics, or more precisely, how my own life on the path of a semiotician is turning out in its final season. This blog is an invitation to any and all others who may care to join me on the last leg of this journey.

Life, Reality, and Semiosis

Semiotics (or semiology) is the study of signs. Semiosis refers to the processing of signs by humans in particular and in nature more generally. The importance of signs is best expressed by Peirce himself, in what Thomas Sebeok describes as his “bedazzling sentence:”