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This is the GNOXIC nexus
where one little current of gnosis crosses many streams of semiosis
here in the backwoods of Manitoulin Island, Canada.
Mail: gnox -at- gnusystems (dot) ca.
Technical note: All gnoxic pages are designed to display white text on a black background. Why? Because it's much easier on the eyes. See below for more.
Most recently updated
as of 15 December 2011:
Turning Words, currently under revision, is a book about reading, especially what i call whole-body reading, as a quest for both public and personal truth. When your whole bodymind is engaged with a text or sign (in any medium), so that your life is ‘turned’ or transformed by that engagement, i call that sign/text a ‘scripture.’ But that kind of reading touches a depth which is also implicit in ordinary communication and language, in the continuous 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 what you read or say, or do? (Or does it all mean you?)
The first half or so of the book can be read online at this site, and i welcome any feedback i can get from readers. On the role of the reader, allow me to quote Charles Peirce:
The writer of a book can do nothing but set down the items of his thought. For the living thought, itself, in its entirety, the reader has to dig into his own soul. I think I have done my part, as well as I can. I am sorry to have left the reader an irksome chore before him. But he will find it worth the doing.I wish i were as confident as Peirce that the reader will find the effort of reading this work worth making. But then i'm not so sure that it will be an irksome chore either. Anyway, the contents page for chapters now online is here. Sources are cited parenthetically in the standard way, with some abbreviations – a key to these is given in the reference list.EP2:124
For a list of writers and sources 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.
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. If you'll pardon the pun, the x is crucial: 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.
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)
Ox is also the meaning of aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And since it is silent (like the first letter of gnox), i will refrain from mentioning the Kabbalistic significance of this fact.
Why is this text white on black?
I've often spent several hours at a time reading from a computer screen, which is apt to give me a headache if i am forced to read text on a white background. Black ink on white paper is perfectly natural and sensible for printed books, because the contrast makes the text stand out in the light reflected from the page. But computer screens generate their own light and shine it at the reader. What should be shining at the reader is the text, not the background! Taking the color scheme appropriate for printed books and habitually transferring it to computers, while ignoring the obvious difference between these media, is an example of what typically happens when old conventions collide with common sense: the user loses. So i try to save my reader's eyesight by using CSS to make my pages white on black. If you really prefer the reverse, you can probably change the settings in your browser to make them display dark text on a bright background.
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