26-04-2016, 11:49 PM
Just a note.
Over the past eight years, I have noticed, and experienced, a curious unwillingness among some Voynicheros to admit the existence of work which presents clear objections to their favoured theory.
This seems to me - again from eight years of battling this peculiar phenomenon which I've only encountered in Voynich studies, though having spent forty years in research in a number of fields related to my specialty.
Refusal to acknowledge prior research - and I mean research - seems to me the single major obstacle to any real progress being made in Voynich studies. It is also - and I can say this from the experience of attempting to get colleagues involved - is the single most important reason why the specialists we need will have nothing to do with the manuscript online. The palaeographers and codicologists, most linguists, and other keepers of manuscripts will not assist. They need only to consider the way in which (pace Zandbergen) my work and character has been denigrated, and positive recommendations made by some theorists to newcomers to 'pay no attention' or ditch my posts unread, for them to decide it is not a worthy field to enter.
What Nick Pelling once memorably described as the "Groundhog day" phenomenon in Voynich studies is largely due to a peculiar idea which floats about in Voynich studies - not that it affects everyone, but it is about - that one need only refer to people whose work accords with a preferred theory.
As example: one person says the archer's bow is German, though no German bows of that type were made of wood, or made in that shape until the sixteenth century. That work is constantly repeated and taken as the correct opinion. Another researcher later produces an artefact which explains all those items which the first could not, including the position of the archer's hand. This other bow is also made of wood - but it is a Spanish and possibly Northern French bow, not attested in Germany. Readers are not directed to both, to allow them to judge the evidence: the second study is assiduously ignored - apparently because it fails to support one preferred theory.
I read everything written about a folio or a topic - if I'm able to do so - but this bizarre bias in Voynich studies means that I am concerned that the 'wall of silence' may put me in a position as embarrassing as the Wastl's ignorance of my work has placed them.
Re-inventing wheels - the "Voynich Groundhog Day phenomenon" as Pelling once called it - leads to so much wasted time that honesty about the range of work done is the only fair way to go. I'll mention the Wastl's work, though it follows mine and I think it entirely mistaken. My readers are entitled to decide that for themselves.
But it's those who went before me, and whose observations I was obliged to re-discover for want of better information, that I am most keen to see acknowledged, whether I used their work or not. Hence my appeal for information to add to the footnotes.
Over the past eight years, I have noticed, and experienced, a curious unwillingness among some Voynicheros to admit the existence of work which presents clear objections to their favoured theory.
This seems to me - again from eight years of battling this peculiar phenomenon which I've only encountered in Voynich studies, though having spent forty years in research in a number of fields related to my specialty.
Refusal to acknowledge prior research - and I mean research - seems to me the single major obstacle to any real progress being made in Voynich studies. It is also - and I can say this from the experience of attempting to get colleagues involved - is the single most important reason why the specialists we need will have nothing to do with the manuscript online. The palaeographers and codicologists, most linguists, and other keepers of manuscripts will not assist. They need only to consider the way in which (pace Zandbergen) my work and character has been denigrated, and positive recommendations made by some theorists to newcomers to 'pay no attention' or ditch my posts unread, for them to decide it is not a worthy field to enter.
What Nick Pelling once memorably described as the "Groundhog day" phenomenon in Voynich studies is largely due to a peculiar idea which floats about in Voynich studies - not that it affects everyone, but it is about - that one need only refer to people whose work accords with a preferred theory.
As example: one person says the archer's bow is German, though no German bows of that type were made of wood, or made in that shape until the sixteenth century. That work is constantly repeated and taken as the correct opinion. Another researcher later produces an artefact which explains all those items which the first could not, including the position of the archer's hand. This other bow is also made of wood - but it is a Spanish and possibly Northern French bow, not attested in Germany. Readers are not directed to both, to allow them to judge the evidence: the second study is assiduously ignored - apparently because it fails to support one preferred theory.
I read everything written about a folio or a topic - if I'm able to do so - but this bizarre bias in Voynich studies means that I am concerned that the 'wall of silence' may put me in a position as embarrassing as the Wastl's ignorance of my work has placed them.
Re-inventing wheels - the "Voynich Groundhog Day phenomenon" as Pelling once called it - leads to so much wasted time that honesty about the range of work done is the only fair way to go. I'll mention the Wastl's work, though it follows mine and I think it entirely mistaken. My readers are entitled to decide that for themselves.
But it's those who went before me, and whose observations I was obliged to re-discover for want of better information, that I am most keen to see acknowledged, whether I used their work or not. Hence my appeal for information to add to the footnotes.
