About the Researcher - Signs of Life

John W. Oller, Jr., PhD in General Linguistics from the University of Rochester joined the faculty at UCLA in the summer of 1969 and was accelerated to tenure and the Associate Professorship in 1971. He joined the faculty at the University of New Mexico in 1972 and founded the Department of Linguistics. He was promoted to the Full Professorship in 1980 and in 1997, moved to Louisiana to build the PhD in Applied Language and Speech Sciences. It was approved unanimously by the Board of Regents in 2001. Oller twice held an endowed professorship funded by Doris B. Hawthorne and the Board of Regents 2015-2017. His most recent book, now in its third edition, 2020, introduces human anatomy and physiology, especially linguistic and genetic sign systems, along with a biosemiotic analysis of human maintenance, repair, and defense systems. On June 1, 2021 Oller left UL Lafayette. He remains Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico (joller@unm.edu).

mount-suribachi-iwo-jima — Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima where the five-week battle took place between US forces and the Japanese who had dug tunnels throughout the impregnable volcanic mountain. The landing took place February 19, 1945 and lasted until March 26, 1945.

flag-raising-sculpture — *Flag raising sculpture in Washington, D. C. Image in the public domain.*

For the 2010 Centennial Celebration at Fresno City College (FCC), based on his essay about great teachers Oller was invited to nominate Hans Wiedenhoefer to be acknowledged as one of “100 Stars for 100 Years”. Wiedenhoefer was a national Hall of Fame coach and athlete in both football and wrestling, a Purple Heart medalist for the landing at Iwo Jima in WWII. Wiedenhoefer was there on February 23, 1945 when the US marines raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi. He was a handsome, soft-spoken historian, scholar, marine, and athlete-extraordinaire and was represented by his sons Hans Jr. and Kurt who accepted the post-humous honor for their father in 2010.

Oller’s current research continues to examine biosignaling systems and the human language capacity. Unsurprisingly, theoretical and empirical studies show that disorders, diseases, and mortality are caused by disruption of biological messages by toxins, both macro and micro traumatic collisions, and by pathogenic invasions. It follows that health and well-being are dependent on true representations in biosignaling systems. For published mathematical proofs revealing the dependence of all meaningful sign systems on ordinary true narrative representations (TNRs), see The antithesis of entropy 2010 and Biosemiotic Entropy: Concluding the Series 2014. Oller is currently Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.

To survive and thrive, we depend on TNRs. The immediate problem is how to avoid pain and misery while postponing death, yet we long for an eternal solution. So, comes the crucial question: if God has revealed His grace and mercy in the work of Christ on the cross, will we believe it? Is the biblical Gospel true? I believe it is, and that “ordinary truth” is accessible even to a child of about 3 to 8 years. At any rate, experimental scientific advances depend on the kind of truth that a child can understand. My own best arguments along this line, from the scientific perspective, especially the mathematical view of things, can be found in my YouTube on Quantum Connectedness.