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+--- Thread: Three issues: Why? How? and 'How Much'? (/thread-2278.html)
Three issues: Why? How? and 'How Much'? - Diane - 04-02-2018
After a decade, I see three major issues which seem to occupy a blind-spot in the study.
I don't mind whether it becomes a discussion, but I'd like members to think about these things in terms of the different approaches to treating the script, text, imagery, codicology, and questions of whether the text is, or isn't in cipher.
WHY?
Contemporary historians (as such) tend to have little time for this question, since in historical terms the answer to one 'why' is potentially infinite, and only leads to other 'why?' questions. On the other hand, all the disciplines chiefly interested in explaining why things are as they are expect to provide, and to be provided with discussions which recognise, enunciate and then carefully explain the 'why' of things.
I find, especially, that linguists are trying to explain why Voynichese works as it does and in their own way cryptologists are too. The same concern is paramount in my work as a comparative iconographer (I hate the word 'iconologist'). This I see as a major problem with the way the imagery is treated. It is not enough to say 'what' you think you see in an image, or 'what' you think it looks like. The picture has to be explained as a whole, and that means explaining (not hypothesising) the reason that it is drawn in the style it is, and explaining (not guessing) its purpose - the 'why' of its being made.
The second is the 'How' of the study overall. Methodology is the essence of science; method is central to discussions of script and language. But when it comes to talking about supposedly historical narratives, or talking about the pictures, I'd have to say that in the past ten years where methodology is concerned it has been ranging between the deeply flawed and the non-existent Methodology is more than 'being methodical' - it means studying the formal methodology of the discipline in question. Theorising about how to conduct a lab. experiment, or how to identify significant elements in a written text, or in a picture just won't do. Really. Plausibility is too low a standard - right results are gained by knowing appropriate means and methods.
That's the HOW.
'How Much'? Researchers tend not to spend enough time determining the relative weight of things which have been said against the hard evidence from which the ideas derive, as distinct from how many people all think and say the same thing.
Scrutinising carefully the evidence for *everything* taken for granted by others is most likely to break the 100 year deadlock. Because - let's face it - nobody has managed to read the text yet, have they? All the current theories, speculations and all the rest must be flawed in some way, and most likely flawed from the foundations upwards. How much should you take as a 'given' and use as basis for your own work? No one can tell you that, but it's worth taking time to make a list of all those things you take for granted: say, that the manuscript was made in Europe, or that the botanical folios were intended to be some sort of European-style herbal, or that the picture of a crossbowman in one roundel of the calendar makes the whole manuscript German... Where are the calendar 'nymphs' in a German calendar? Where are pictures of this style in a Latin (western European) herbal?
How much can you really take 'on faith'? I'd say very, very little. Same premises, same results, and so far the results are... zilch.
Anyway, think about it.
Also - think about what it does to the idea of shared intelligence if you block everything said by another member.