18-04-2017, 07:51 PM
Quote:It depends from case to case. In this particular case, I'd agree that crediting the "find" itself is hard and not essential to the argument, since the parallel is so strong that it was noted by various people independently.
That said, I'm trying to make a habit of crediting as specifically as possible since in the past vague statements of mine have led to misunderstandings. But again, in this case I agree with the sentiment that crediting the first find is less important and difficult, if not impossible. If you want to propose a correction to my post then I'll gladly edit it, but for lack of anything else I'll leave it like this for now.
Now perhaps more importantly, and this is with the moderator hat off, it's typical for Voynich studies that the man who is still considered the expert in the field finds it necessary to create a thread on the forum about an overconfident attribution copied from one of Diane's posts. I agree that Diane places too much importance on attributions and that this can be jarring, but this is really something that goes both ways. Next time you can just let me know how I can increase the accuracy of the attribution and I'll happily update the information.
Bottom line, politics in Voynich studies are annoying. I'm impatient, I want to research, to discover, to know what others think about my arguments and to hear theirs. This won't work if old politics keep getting precedence over new insights.
Koen,
I have no intention to play the 'Voynich police' and try to point out all incorrect statements that one finds all over the internet.
And here I am just talking about the demonstrably incorrect ones.
This problem of trying to figure out "who said what first" happens to be a topic that I had mentioned here in this forum just a few days ago, and which concerns this forum. To continue in the other thread would create an off-topic.
The information that happens to be the topic of this particular question is spread over five different blogs, in chronological order:
- Edith Sherwood
- Stephen Bax
- JK Petersen
- Diane O'Donovan
- yours
Sorting it out here in this forum seems to be the only logical approach to me.
Whether you want to update your blog is your decision. I think you can decide from what's written in Stephen's blog what is known and what is unknown.
However, just in order to be clear, let me add what I know.
- I don't know exactly when I noticed this similarity. It was not before 2009, but well before 2012, so my best guess is 2010 give or take a year. I did not talk about this to anyone.
- It was part of my May 2012 presentation at Villa Mondragone
- JKP mentioned recently that he first saw it round about the same time, but my impression is that he is as uncertain about it as I am. It is entirely possible that he saw it first. JKP and I have not had opportunity to exchange opinions about the MS until after this forum started.
- Edith mentioned it on her blog much after I had seen it. As a matter of fact, she did not make the comparison with the Paris MS, but with another one (this remains an exercise for the reader).
- In spring 2014 I exchanged some mails with Alain Touwaide, since he approached me in relation to his edition of Sloane 4016. I pointed out this similarity to him then. (I had forgotten about that when I wrote the comments to Stephen Bax's blog).
- I sent the comparison also to Ray Clemens when he was preparing the photo facsimile. He liked it enough to include it in the book. He asked me if he should credit me for this, but I answered that it had been seen by several different people independently. (This is the occasion I mentioned at Stephen Bax' blog).
I do think that this parallel could be quite relevant, by the way.
I also know very well how to acknowledge and credit people to whom I owe information.
This is completely independent of whether I agree with his or her theories about the Voynich MS.
The person I disagree with most strongly in that respect is Rich Santacoloma, but I am grateful to him for several references that I would otherwise not have known about, and it is a matter of standard courtesy to acknowledge this, as I do.