+- The Voynich Ninja (https://www.voynich.ninja)
+-- Forum: Voynich Research (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-27.html)
+--- Forum: Voynich Talk (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-6.html)
+--- Thread: Expert opinions about the VMS (/thread-676.html)
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - Koen G - 28-08-2016
Might the difference in the types of experts perhaps be more acceptably expressed by those who have a vast theoretical knowledge versus those those who have more practical 'in the field' experience?
An expert on medieval herbals will approach the VM differently than someone who assesses artefacts for museums, for example. The questions they will ask themselves, whether steered by the request or not, might be different ones.
Both are of incredible value, but I would love to hear more of the second kind.
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - Diane - 28-08-2016
Although Rene didn't phrase this as a question, and says that he doesn't understand (or 'has a problem with') the term "Latin Christian, I'll suppose the problem he has is lack of understanding, and that although no question was asked, he would like to understand it.
There is a substantial difficulty in attempting to speak about the culture within western Europe (i.e. not including Constantinople, Dalmatia etc.) without having to cope with anachronistic ideas about the difference between nationality, geography, vernacular languages, the shifting boundaries of the territories claimed by a particular ruler at a particular time.
That problem is a habit of imagining that the medieval world had "nationality" in the way we think of it today, and imagining that a person born in one region mustn't have access to the culture of any other. There's a sort of "either or" mentality which is anachronistic for the medieval period.
But this means that while people are perfectly happy to speak generally about "Byzantine Greek" culture of "Islamic/Arabic" culture (say about medicine), they get horribly tangled up when referring to the equivalent phenomenon in western (Latin Christian) Europe.
That is to say, that just as the lands under Muslim government had Arabic as their common tongue of education and religion, and this permitted a unified intellectual culture from one end of the domain to the other, regardless of the variety of peoples and places; and just as a similar common language of education and diplomacy (Greek) united the multiplicity of people under Byzantine rule, just so in medieval western Europe (exclusive of Muslim Spain, or Byzantine region) were united by a common religious culture - western Christianity, and the common language of that religion, of education and diplomacy: Latin.
So "Latin Europe" refers to the equivalent of "Islamic India" or "Byzantine Armenia" - that is, not the whole of the landmass, but that which shared the culture defined chiefly by the common language and, in fact, by he religion common to a majority of the people and the rulers.
However, we also have to be able to indicate when a group of people - such as Saracens in Sicily, or Jews in France, lived within that general territory but were not themselves Christian. So we may speak of the Jews of Latin Europe, or the Jews of Byzantine Europe, or the Jews of Islamic Europe (an area which once extended well into what is now France.)
I hope that clarifies the point adequately. It is one which better and more accurately represents the situation in medieval Europe before the rise of nation states, when the common language was replaced by parochial vernacular, the once-shared religious culture broken into parochial/national churches, and so forth. That is when a man born in lands owned by the King of France started to find he might not have a common language with which to speak to someone from, say, Hungary or Sicily.
D.
(27-08-2016, 01:43 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If to adopt the terminology of "micro" vs "macro", then I'd say we are all going into micro with the course of time, due to increasing specialisation in science (engineering etc.) The institute of macro-experts probably expired with Diderot or even Kircher
Collaboration of a huge number of "micros" is what the modern tendence is toward.
Anton, you are absolutely right about the tendency to have a large number of 'micros' collaborate.
It has it's problems though. One is that each of the specialists in a specific part of a specific subject (to call them 'micro-' specialists is no insult, but I accept that it may be jargon that others here haven't heard before) .. tend to see any given problem in terms of their own area of expertise, or interest.
Experience has shown, at least in my field, that it's best to call in a 'macro-' first, to evaluate the overall problem and identify which particular areas of specialisation are needed to fill in the details of the original broader outline.
I guess it's a bit like getting the architect in to design the house, and then calling in brick-layers, plumbers and electricians. One will say that you can't build a chimney of that shape, you need to add a bit here, or put it somewhere else. Then he plumber will say you could save thousands by switching that bedroom for the bathroom next to it.. and so on. Fairly small changes and lots of new details, but very important to getting the whole thing right.
Probably not a great analogy, but I hope you get the idea.
No-body knows everything, which is precisely why Kircher made such big mistakes. He never seems to have listened or wanted to learn from anyone else.
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - Davidsch - 28-08-2016
One expert says he makes a distinction between P- and Q-Celtic and the other expert says he distinguishes Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic.
(read more: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
They are both experts if they talk on that level, but in my research and results such a discussion is totally irrelevant.
addition: I mean nothing negative by this, only that in my opinion such "name-tags" are not important in my world.
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - ReneZ - 09-09-2016
Picking up from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ...
Historical introduction
After the deaths of Ethel Voynich and of Anne Nill, H.P.Kraus came into the possession of several of their (and Voynich's) manuscripts, and a large collection of collateral material about their book business, including notes, letters, etc.
When he gave the Voynich MS to Yale, he split this collateral material into two parts. The material that apparently dealt with the Voynich MS was given to Yale, and all other material relating more generally with their book business was given to the Grolier club in New York, of which he was a member.
The material in Yale (Beinecke) is summarised You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (scroll down, to boxes A to N).
The material in the Grolier club is summarised You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
Apart from these collections of correspondence, there are important other collections, the most notable probably the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , but there are many more. (Some have not been seen to my best knowledge, e.g. the Panofsky-Friedman correspondence in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, or correspondence between Heckscher and Panofsky about the Voynich MS).
Summaries of the historical work on the Voynich MS
The Grolier club material has been studied most intensively by Arnold Hunt, not a household name in the Voynich fora, but also by Colin McKinnon. Rich Santacoloma has also visited it several times, and posted a number of interesting anecdotes that emerge from this collection. I have not (yet) written about it, and it is not clear to what extent Mary D'Imperio used this material. In any case, it is more indirectly concerned with the Voynich MS.
The Beinecke material has been studied by many people, notoriously Mary D'Imperio, but we also have a short report from Jim Reeds in the mailing list archive. I have used parts the material for my web site. Rich Santacoloma has also written about it.
I believe that D'Imperio also consulted the Marshall foundation material of Friedman. Jim Reeds certainly has.
About D'Imperio's book
Large parts of D'Imperio's book are outdated, and likely to be superseded by the new Yale volume.
Her descriptions of what is in the material in the Beinecke are, however, as valid now as they were then. I don't know how many people in this forum have had a chance to see any of it, but it won't be many.
A number of statements in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are contradicted by D'Imperio and other sources, e.g. that no specialist analyses of many aspects of the MS were ever done.
Others are not borne out by any sources that I am aware of, primarily statements that amateurs or 'Voynicheros' are suppressing or rejecting the work of professionals / experts.
New developments
Proper palaeographic analysis, i.e. more than the one brief statement that has been made (which, unfortunately I couldn't find back so quickly) is still lacking, but the materials of the MS have recently been studied again by experts. Not all of this is public yet, but some of it has been included at my web site. No suppression of specialist opinion here.
Proper, qualified opinions about the imagery are relatively rare still, but there are a few. Toressella, Stolot and more recently Touwaide, Blume. It should be clear that one should not simply reject these just because they don't fit with one's opinions.
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - Diane - 09-09-2016
Just to point out a couple of errors.
Rene is in error saying that "Proper, qualified opinions about the imagery are relatively rare still".
Stolot is not an expert on the Voynich manuscript's imagery and has never produced or published any detailed study of it to my knowledge - do correct me if I am mistaken.
Touwaide is certainly an expert on the history of Latin European and Byzantine medicine and in the course of his academic research has seen so many examples that his opinion on any medieval herbal manuscript in those traditions, or in the Arabic may be relied upon. I am sure that despite his being a genuine and recognised expert, he would also be the first to deny that he is an expert on the imagery in the Voynich manuscript.
As it happens, I am also a formally qualified expert in iconographic analysis and provenancing, as Rene is well aware, and have thirty-five years' experience in that field - as Rene is also aware.
I find it very ironic then, to read that he believes one should not reject detailed and expert assessments of the imagery because they don't accord with one's opinions.
That is the last time I will remind Rene that to insinuate that a qualified professional is not entitled to be regarded as such is inappropriate from a person without any training or experience in the discipline. As in any field, of course, there are levels of competence and particular fields of expertise. Mine is comparative iconography and provenancing. And in my qualified opinion, the botanical imagery in the Voynich manuscript is not of Latin European origin and does not constitute a herbal in the usual sense.
Thank you all.
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - Anton - 09-09-2016
First, I don't think it is correct to speak of "experts on the Voynich manuscript's imagery" in the sense of the word "expert" that we are discussing here. This is because such thing as "Voynich imagery" is not a specifically recognized field of science. There are no journals on "Voynich imagery", no chairs on that subject in universities, no departments in academia etc. I don't know if there were a more or less significant number of peer-reviewed papers on Voynich imagery in scientific journals.
Hence, we could speak of "experts (on different things) discussing (or assessing) Voynich manuscript's imagery", but not of "experts on the VMS imagery".
We could speak of persons having dedicated much time and effort to studiyng the VMS imagery. And those may well be experts in this or that kind of imagery. But that does not make them "experts on the VMS imagery". For example, if Diane is an expert in iconographic analysis and provenancing, I would not call her an "expert in VMS imagery". Likewise, I would not call Nick Pelling "an expert in VMS cryptology", Stephen Bax "an expert in VMS linguistics" or myself
"an expert in VMS telecommunications".Second, the point of discussion here seems to be that Diane is not mentioned amongst the row of "proper, qualified opinions about the imagery" as Rene put it down. I'm not sure if Rene intended this list to be exhaustive: if he did not, then I see no grounds for further discussion of this issue, and if he did, then the question is of course in the definition of "proper and qualified".
Indeed: what should be the criteria by which an (supposed) expert's opinion is to be "respected" or "trusted" by non-experts? Let's say, a person comes in and makes some statements. What should we ask him to support his credibility? Should we ask him to show us his diploma? His CV? His list of peer-reviewed papers? His professional certificates? Letters of recommendation, may be?
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - Koen G - 09-09-2016
Anton - I think the point is the following:
Questions to a person like Touwaide are very specific: does this manuscript have anything in common with the manuscripts you know everything about.
Answer: yes, BUT.....
Questions to people who are supposed to provenance imagery without making (expensive) mistakes have to approach an object with a very wide, open lens. Hence, when I asked a museum curator if the style of the VM feline reminded her of anything, she sent me an image of a Syrian mosaic. I did not guide the question in any way, because both Syria and the period of the mosaic had not been on my "Voynich radar" before.
So the thing is, when an expert comments about the VM, we have to keep in mind which question they are answering.
The opinion of a Touwaide can be extremely valuable, if he includes the precise reasons why he thinks the VM is like X manuscript.
The opinion of someone like Diane is also extremely valuable because we get a broad view of the different cultural influences at work.
For me it doesn't have to be one or the other. A manuscript with different cultural influences is bound to have traces of the culture and time in which it was ultimately copied. Enter Touwaide. But it is such a shame to stop there and not take a good look under the hood. And for that I rely on the opinions of people who, by their professional experience, have seen and worked with artifacts from a wide cultural and historical range.
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - davidjackson - 09-09-2016
Thank you Koen for getting back on track, at least one previous post was becoming rather snidey for my liking. Let us stick to the topic and not start dragging in past disputes.
Certainly this forum is not the place to start criticising the editorial decisions of third party websites.
Obviously there are no professional VMS experts, because such a field does not exist. Any pretence to the contrary is a conceit. There are gifted amateurs, and there are professionals with an interest.
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - Diane - 09-09-2016
(09-09-2016, 07:14 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Indeed: what should be the criteria by which an (supposed) expert's opinion is to be "respected" or "trusted" by non-experts? Let's say, a person comes in and makes some statements. What should we ask him to support his credibility? Should we ask him to show us his diploma? His CV? His list of peer-reviewed papers? His professional certificates? Letters of recommendation, may be?
Perfect question, which it has a conventional answer. It has nothing to do with personality. Friedman was a lousy historian but a well-experienced cryptanalyst.
Look at what the people have actually produced, and then the thing to consider is whether that displays an adequate understanding of the basic issues involved - as, I'm sorry to say, few have done in relation to this manuscript as an artefact or its imagery as atypical.
After that basic test - 'do they know anything about e.g. ciphers, provenancing images etc.', move on to the hard matter..
*Evidence
*Argument
*Conclusions.
with their essential adjuncts:
*Sources, *Citations *Bibliography.
- and that's what you judge, don't you? Not just for content, but for balance, depth of insight, original and substantial new contribution to the field, and lack of personal attachment to any argument.
The person who made that book, or other form of contribution to a field can be dead for all it matters in judging what they have contributed.
The value of their work has nothing to do with personality, nor race, colour, religion, place of residence, or interest in kings and things.
The acid test is what they DO. An expert writes about the manuscript, and only about things directly relevant to others' understanding of it; a hobbyist is just a lobbyist for their pet theory.
D
RE: Expert opinions about the VMS - davidjackson - 09-09-2016
Very neatly put Diane.
However I quibble with your last assertion - a hobbyist need not be a lobbyist for any theory. Some may be - but many have no particular theory they try to thrust upon others.