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+--- Thread: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research (/thread-3148.html)
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - Koen G - 07-04-2020
Is there really a culture of seniority on the forum? Perhaps to some extent, but I can't imagine that this is worse than on similar specialized fora?
I do remember well that as a complete newcomer four years ago, I felt overwhelmed by all the information. There are the names of early researchers like Newbold, mailing list era researchers like Stolfi, current researchers, people who are associated with a specific theory (like SantaColoma). At the same time you want to learn about the various aspects of the manuscript and learn about relevant subjects like medieval herbals.
It's kind of like starting in a new company, I guess
It's good to be aware of this with regard to newcomers. But I do not have the impression that this is a problem on the forum, just the fact that there is a lot to learn (and forget.. and relearn.. )
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - MarcoP - 07-04-2020
(07-04-2020, 11:30 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Marco's image reminds me of Brian Cham's curve-line system. I'm not entirely on board with his system per se, but the underlying observations are valuable.
I too often forget where I first saw things. I checked Rene's site and the concepts illustrated in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were nicely discussed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (paragraph title: The Nature of the Symbols). In particular, he points out the several glyphs based on c and i and the fact that a can be seen as c + i.
Also, his conclusion is a sober "it doesn’t mean anything, but it’s interesting".
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - RenegadeHealer - 07-04-2020
Wow I got a little carried away with that last post of mine. I've had way too much time to sit around and ruminate recently; I'm not really such a drama queen under normal circumstances. You're right Koen, it's really not a big problem at all, just a minor thing that could make the forum a little nicer.
And actually Rene, I should clarify I didn't mean to imply that you were giving me a hard time. The discussion of info sourcing just jogged my memory. It was actually R. Sale who I remember getting called out recently for failing to acknowledge a former researcher with a similar idea.
JKP, I like your idea of compiling a cannon, so to speak, of essential reading for intro-level Voynichology. I'm going to keep a running list going on my desktop, and add to it whenever I read a classic article and think it belongs there.
If anyone is looking for help with the wiki, also, feel free to PM me.
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - R. Sale - 08-04-2020
When I first joined those other guys <the VMs-list>, it was like red meat for sharks. "Oh, look! Another VMs-solution Loonie. Shall we spit out the bones?"
The Ninja's, by and large, have been far more civil, despite the occasional dust-up, now and then.
The relevance of history depends the combination of investigative history with investigative interests. In any investigation of the VMs cosmos, it certainly is more relevant to go with the Oresme comparison, than to accept some earlier Andromeda hypothesis that Newbold cooked up to support WMV's 'Roger Bacon' hypothesis. That sort of history tends to show how much progress has been made.
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - ReneZ - 08-04-2020
(07-04-2020, 10:35 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Wow I got a little carried away with that last post of mine.
No harm done
The problem of not being able to know all (or even much) about past research was already lamented by D'Imperio in the 1970's, and obviously by now the amount of 'past research' has exploded in comparison.
There is no solution to that. The only thing one can really do is to keep in mind that one's observation may not be new, and try to avoid making too grand claims. If nobody knew about something, this will appear from people's reaction.
There is a lot of research described in several archives, which is not online, and they include a real treasure of information (see e.g. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Only a handful of people know what is in there.
The old mailing list history is only partially available, and it is very difficult to read. The majority of it can be safely skipped, but there is also some very good stuff in there.
My web site has only a fraction of that.
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - Aga Tentakulus - 08-04-2020
UNI Zurich offers a course on how to better understand and read old books.
It doesn't turn a hobby researcher into an expert, but it does make him or her a little more professional.
Registration is not necessary, but has advantages.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
in deutsch:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - ReneZ - 09-04-2020
(07-04-2020, 08:13 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I checked Rene's site and the concepts illustrated in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were nicely discussed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (paragraph title: The Nature of the Symbols). In particular, he points out the several glyphs based on c and i and the fact that a can be seen as c + i.
Also, his conclusion is a sober "it doesn’t mean anything, but it’s interesting".
Let me just add something from the old mailing list archives, a discussion from 1998 between John Grove and Jacques Guy: (Note that the character <x> is l )
Quote:John Grove wrote:
>
> The forms all have counterparts starting with <i>: <ig>, <x>, <2>,
> etc. We
> also have <a> = <c>+<i>.
My view is that <c> and <i> are equivalent, each occurring in the
context of strokes similar to itself. Cryptologia published an article of mine
a long time ago where I showed that the two sets of letters, the c-like
and the i-like, occurred in almost completely mutually exclusive
variation. That can be due (in a linguist's eye) to two things:
1. they are allographs of the same grapheme (like the two form of small beta in Greek)
2. extension vowel or consonant harmony
Later, but still a long time ago, I argued on this list that <cc> and
<a> were two different ways of writing "a". It had not even occurred
to that <a> = <c> + <i>
> All the letters containing an initial
> "c"-curve are also the only letters that can be preceded in the same
> word by the little letter that looks
> like "c," e.g. <c89>, <ccc89>. On the other hand, the letters <x> and
> <2> (which have very high frequencies) can *never* be preceded by
> <c>, *ever*; they are instead preceded by <a>. or <o>.
> Now the fact that he saw these things as 'two-stroke' characters
> seems promising to me -- as it supports my observations. However, it
> may simply be that Currier was employed in roughly the same field as
> I work in - and thus analyzes things from the same perspective. What
> was his job? If he was a crytanalyst
He was. But I am a linguist, and I reported the same phenomenon. I did
not know about Currier at the time, either. So that makes his
observation all the more credible. When results converge...
> Jorge, on the other hand, has attacked the VMS from a linguistic point of view
Jorge is a computer scientist. So now that's three viewpoints that converge:
cryptology, linguistics, computer science.
> - there are just not enough characters in just the
> right places to form a simple alphabetic language
Yes there are! Look in the archives, before the invention of EVA,
when we were groping for a "pronounceable Voynich", I came up
with two: one looking like a sort of mock-Latin which sounded
grand and mysterious (good for ceremonial magic?), another, more
serious that looked much like a sort of Indonesian. Piraha, a
south-american Indian language, has only three vowels and seven
consonants. But it has tones. So it doesn't Rotokas (in Papua
New-Guinea) which has five vowels and six consonants, but no
tones.
He then goes on for quite a while about interesting examples how unwritten languages were written out, introducing all sorts of ambiguities and errors...
I will have a look for Jaques Guy's Cryptologia paper. I think it was mentioned here before...
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - RenegadeHealer - 09-04-2020
(08-04-2020, 06:10 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The only thing one can really do is to keep in mind that one's observation may not be new, and try to avoid making too grand claims.
This is really the bottom line. Humility is really the key difference between ideas that are well-received and ideas that aren't.
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - -JKP- - 09-04-2020
(09-04-2020, 02:09 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(08-04-2020, 06:10 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The only thing one can really do is to keep in mind that one's observation may not be new, and try to avoid making too grand claims.
This is really the bottom line. Humility is really the key difference between ideas that are well-received and ideas that aren't.
I do believe in crediting past work, but as Rene has pointed out, the difficulty of KNOWING all the past work is considerable (probably impossible), and the job of tracking down the first person to say something is not trivial. Even if you track them down (which can take weeks or months), one often discovers that all they did was mention an idea in passing, without any actual study or corroborating evidence. There was a guy who mentioned almost every human language as being the underlying language of the VMS. Every week he added another language or two. He didn't research them. He didn't prove any of it. If the VMS turns out to be one of those languages, does he deserve credit because he looked around the Web and found yet another language to add to the list and did nothing more?
As far as humility goes, there's something to be said for knowing what you don't know. The smartest people I know (and they are scary-smart) are quite humble in terms of understanding there are infinite things we don't know, while still realizing that they have something special other people don't have. The ones I gravitate toward are the ones who have a real passion for learning and for their work.
It doesn't really matter to me if people make grand claims. I try to look past personal traits to see if the logic and methodology are sound. If they can back up those claims with results that can be replicated, and their research has gone past what is historically known, I appreciate their contributions.
Unfortunately, it is seldom the case that people who make grand claims provide a good argument to back up those claims. In fact, it is often those who make the grandest claims, who say they have solved it and send out official news releases that hype it more than it deserves, who seem least able to back up their research with information that enables others to understand and confirm the results (not just in Voynich studies, but in many fields). It's as though bombast is used to fill in the holes in the methodology. The bigger the holes, the more the hot air. But eventually hot air cools.
There are people in the Voynich community who are tackling this puzzle one brick at a time. This is much less flashy than claims of solutions, but it might be the most effective way to tackle the problem and I wholeheartedly support their efforts. If we ever learn what is going on in the VMS, I hope they get whatever credit is due.
RE: [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research - Aga Tentakulus - 09-04-2020
This is the case with many dissertations. To make them look good, you simply leave out the negative findings. Often it is done so that you can get research funds later on.
Based on the statistics, it is 2 out of 3 where it is nicely spoken. Who admits also gladly that the work ends in nowhere.
So even theories can be justified positively or negatively.
Example:
Jesus never lived, Christmas did not exist yet, and Christmas trees from that time were never found.