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This is the   GNOXIC   nexus
where gnosis crosses with the stream of semiosis.
This inquiry into the nature of meaning emanates from the backwoods of Manitoulin Island, Canada.
Mail: gnox -at- xplornet (dot) com.

Most recently updated
as of 3 February 2010:

• The open-access online journal Entropy has just published a paper of mine entitled Rehabilitating Information. I also have a webpage version here on my site – the same text, but using the format i prefer rather than the one required by the Entropy editors. This paper represents part of my continuing study of C.S. Peirce, with a focus on his semiotic (triadic) concept of information.
• I've just read through (and slightly revised) the first 7 chapters of my work in progress (Turning Words) – in preparation for revising Chapter 8, which will take some work because my thoughts on the subject have changed quite a bit since the first draft. But the fact that i saw very little need for changes to the first 7 chapters is a sign that they are pretty much in final form.
• The gnusystems home page includes resource listings and links related to the transition to a more sustainable and resilient human presence on earth, especially as it applies to Manitoulin Island.
• Personal meditations that don't fit into the projects above get posted to my other blog, intimologies – but i haven't found much time for it in recent months.
• My Sourcenet page is an organized, indexed and annotated listing of the most important resources which have contributed to Turning Words. There's also a
• reference list of all the sources for gnoxic work(s) in progress.

• Besides my Peirce pages, some other pages here are devoted to other writers whom i have found especially worthy of concentrated study:
  • Eihei Dogen: GenjoKoan (1233) — 8 different translations interlinked here for systematic comparison (for commentary see the original print sources listed here)
  • Eugene Gendlin: Thinking Beyond Patterns: Body, Language and Situations (1992)
  • Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, final edition (1892) (This corrects some formatting and proofreading errors in the text version which i provided to Project Gutenberg several years ago.)

• SeedNet is a skeleton key to the meanings of life—several hundred gnomic pearls gleaned from various sources, grouped by topic and hyperlinked among themselves to reveal other connections. This was substantially completed in 2001 but is still upgraded from time to time. Its comprehensive index gives a quick overview of topics involved in the gnoxic inquiry.

Turning Words, currently under revision, is a book about reading, especially what i call whole-body reading. When your whole bodymind is engaged with a text or sign (in any medium), and your life transformed by that engagement, i call that sign/text a ‘scripture.’ But that kind of deep reading is involved with ordinary communication and language (which we often take for granted), grounded in the everyday reading of the world that we call perception, and even more deeply grounded in life itself. Turning Words explores that grounding in common experience, drawing upon the conceptual resources of Peircean semiotics, philosophy, biology, psychology and so on. It also incorporates ancient scriptures, such as the sayings of Heraclitus and of Jesus (especially as given in the Gospel of Thomas). Throughout this inquiry, the central question is: How do you mean? Some chapters (and a list of the others) are now online here. Sources are cited parenthetically in the standard way, with some abbreviations – a key to these is given in the reference list.

For a list of the major authors with whom i have crossed paths in this inquiry, see the SourceNet page, which is organized and indexed by topic, but indexed by author as well. Since i've drawn ideas and quotations from many sources in SeedNet and my book (Turning Words), i wanted to make it possible for readers to get more information about those sources, but without inserting footnotes that would be distracting. My solution is to insert links to this page instead of footnotes or other paraphernalia, so the reader is free to either follow the links or ignore them. Some entries include passages quoted from that source.

Book reviews

• Review of Søren Brier (2008), Cybersemiotics (Vol. 16 No. 1, January 2009)

• Review of Evan Thompson (2007), Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (December 2007)

• Review of Christof Koch (2004), The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach (Vol. 11 no. 5/6, 2004)

• Methods, maps and transformations: review article on Velmans (2000), Investigating Phenomenal Consciousness (Vol. 9 No. 2, 2002)

• Review of Terrace and Metcalfe (ed. 2005), The Missing Link in Cognition: Origins of Self-Reflective Consciousness (Vol. 13, No. 9, 2006)

• Review of Paul Bloom (2004), Descartes' Baby (an abridged version of this was published in JCS Volume 11 no. 9, September 2004)
  • also a related (but unpublished) essay on science, religion and explanation, including comments on Pascal Boyer (2001), Religion Explained

• Review of Schacter and Scarry (ed. 2002), Memory, Brain and Belief (Vol. 10 no. 3, 2003)

• Review of Damasio, Harrington, Kagan, McEwen, Moss and Shaikh (ed. 2000), Unity of Knowledge: The Convergence of Natural and Human Science (Vol. 9 no. 8, 2002)

• Review of Manfred Spitzer (1999), The Mind Within the Net (Vol. 8 no. 4, 2001)

• Review of Jerome Kagan (2002), Surprise, Uncertainty and Mental Structures (Vol. 10 no. 3, 2003)

• Review of Seán Ó Nualláin (2002), The Search for Mind: A New Foundation for Cognitive Science (Vol. 11 no. 2, 2004)

Why gnoxic?

Gary Fuhrman has been using the handle gnox on the Net since the late 1980s. The name refers in part to gnosis (Greek γνωσις), which originally meant inquiry, knowledge, recognition or acquaintance, but in more recent usage represents the intuitive, mystical, private or esoteric side of ‘knowing’ in contrast to the more public and scientific side. Gnoxic studies aim in part to show that ‘gnosis’ and science are in fact two sides of the same coign, so to speak. The x is crucial, if you'll pardon the pun: it symbolizes the crossing of paths at the heart of genuine dialogue. It's also a reminder that inquiry, or dialog (see Chapter 2 of Turning Words) is always exploratory. (Thus it was fitting indeed that the gnoxic site moved to Xplornet in the spring of 2007.)

Since 2000, Gary has also been half of a partnership with Pam Jackson called gnusystems. ‘Gary Gnu’ was a character in an old TV show for kids, and gnu became a family nickname for the domestic side of gnox—which is a reversal of sorts, since the gnu (also called wildebeest) is a kind of wild ox.

This ox also appears in Buddhist scripture, for instance in the third chapter of the Lotus Sutra and the famous series of ‘oxherding pictures’ published in several popular anthologies of Zen literature. Gnoxic studies entail finding and taming such an ox, but also releasing the wild truth dwelling within the domestic realm of words and other symbols. The instructions given by Dogen to a couple of newly appointed officials at his monastery are appropriate here:

Becoming oxen you need to pull the plow and the till; becoming horses you need to bite the reins and wear a saddle. Putting on fur, crowned with horns, swinging the tail, and shaking the head, kick over the barrier and enter straight through the dragon gate. Without seeking to become sages, be people who are capable of your duties. Without valuing personal spiritual development, be the host within the guest.

— Dogen, Eihei Koroku 2.139 (Leighton and Okumura 2004, 168)

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