New Testament text critics are fueled by a search for origins. But in the absence of an autograph, questions of origins are complicated at best. The fruit of that search for origins has resulted in the creation of hypothetical, eclectic texts—texts which have left us translating and interpreting the Bible in a form that no community in human history has before. Far from being failed projects, however, these eclectic versions aptly represent the problem of the One and the many, a problem not easily solved: When faced with hermeneutic duties, can we effectively speak of New Testament texts without speaking of their thousands of various and actual instantiations in the world? The answer, of course, is both yes and no; but the timid no has typically taken a back seat to the boisterous yes. This thesis develops a new literary historical hermeneutic based on the Categories of C. S. Peirce, a philosophical approach that will demonstrate the need for both an ideal (the yes) and a concrete (the no) approach to New Testament criticism. After this need has been demonstrated, the Gospel of John will then be under examination, both in its ideal and in one of its more concrete forms: P66, a second century Greek papyrus manuscript of the Gospel. The nature of the interpretive communities that have made use of the Gospel will also be considered.

This practiced-based thesis examines how a new Visual Communication methodology helps interaction designers to improve their future designs. This is achieved by engaging in creating visual interpretations from a lived experience that they need to design for, to reveal the phenomenological essence of what users have actually experienced, rather than what they say they have. This new Visual Phenomenological Methodology (VPM) places interaction designers into a specific communicational situation, in order to understand the phenomena of users’ lived experience ‘through their eyes.’ Thus immersed, interaction designers montage visual interpretations of what users saw/felt/did in the lived experience. The VPM facilitates interaction designers into designer-interpreters, who can interpret sensory data into a behavioural story of what its like to be the user in a lived experience. This thesis has developed the VPM across three peer reviewed, practice-based projects, using a synthesis of the pragmatic semiotics of Peirce, Hermeneutic Phenomenology, and visual communication techniques. Following the Frascaran view that the design discipline of Visual Communication (graphic design and illustration) is a positive facilitator of behavioural change, the VPM employs this hermeneutic-semiosis synthesis to facilitate interaction designers to develop a deeper and emergent understanding of the hidden motivations behind user behaviour. Through a contextual review into Visual Communication, Interaction Design, Phenomenology and Semiosis, this thesis develops the VPM from a theoretical concept, to a set of designer-friendly method cards that interaction designers can employ during their ideation phase. Throughout its development the VPM and its method cards were workshopped and peer reviewed by interaction designers. This thesis, over the following seven chapters, demonstrates how the VPM successfully provided Visual Communication design with a fresh way to re-influence Interaction Design, as a new contribution to knowledge.

This dissertation provides a critical and constructive interpretation of “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God” [NA], the sole primarily theological essay written by the logician, scientist, and philosopher C. S. Peirce (1839-1914). Despite recent scholarly attention, NA has confused its readers from its publication in 1908 until today. This dissertation interprets NA in light of: (a) Peirce’s philosophy of science and his theory of signs (semeiotic); and (b) a close reading of the published essays and unpublished manuscripts Peirce composed during the decade before NA’s publication and the six years he lived post-publication. These primary materials suggest that the key to understanding the so-called humble argument at the heart of NA is Peirce’s conviction that the universe is a divine sign. The humble argument is a recommendation that one make musement, or the playful contemplation of the universe, a daily habit. Since Peirce believed that the universe is a divine sign, he predicted that anyone who mused for forty to fifty minutes daily would eventually come to believe in God’s reality. Peirce describes the humble argument as the innermost of three nested arguments, the latter two defending the reasonableness of the humble argument. The second argument, which Peirce accuses theologians of neglecting, appeals to the instinctiveness of the idea that God is real as evidence of the truth of that idea. As stated, that argument is flawed, but it can be reformulated as an empirical prediction that intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms will tend to develop conceptions of God or Ultimate Reality. The third argument defends the reasonableness of the humble argument by construing the idea of God as arising, like scientific hypotheses, through abductive inference. Contra Peirce, this dissertation argues that, although analogous to certain abstractions that play important roles in science, the idea of God is not a valid scientific hypothesis because it entails no testable predictions. Given this lack of testable consequences, Peirce’s pragmatic defense of the meaningfulness of the idea of God is inconsistent with his pragmaticism, having more in common with William James’s individualistic interpretation of pragmatism, which Peirce had previously opposed.