[Transcription] Stephen Bax on his research

[Diane]

Koen,
I'm a little shocked by the banality of Bax' comments - most are no more than repetitions of the same-old assumptions, which are constantly left unquestioned and untested by the great majority of persons developing them - e.g. an assumption that the botanical imagery is related to the 'herbals' tradition and then hunting herbals, or assuming that the calendar's roundels do - or ever did - constitute a zodiac and only looking at zodiac series. 

 I like Darren Worley's approach, but as so much of Voynich writing,  it too is directed by the tacit assumption that the answer to any question is already known. 

As if the only point of this research were to pull up things suggesting support for an old idea, and usually one based on no more than an impression, or required to suit some ill-considered presumption.  

Surely research should begin by investigating the grounds for what has been said in the past, and the basis of current assertions rather than presuming mere 'ideas' are enough and must prove true in the end.

That Bax can let this fundamental methodological flaw in Voynich-land pass him without notice doesn't auger well, it seems to me. It isn't scholarly method to swallow unfounded assertions whole.

Nor is it scholarly method to merely repeat - unacknowledged -  observations first made by others, and of whose source many are quite well aware.  In some cases, the things he describes as what 'we' (meaning him and whoever) have come to believe were in fact established, proposed, or argued cogently as long as twenty years ago.  

The relative positions of the gallows, for example.  Or  that the elongated letters we call 'gallows' appear in non-elongated form elsewhere.   Why doesn't he acknowledge Neal, or ... well, you know. The others. Julian Bunn for example.

To repeat such observations by others in a tone suggesting them original to Bax (and/or whoever else he means by "we") seems fairly plainly to suggest either dishonesty or gullibility. 

 Dishonesty if in fact he, himself, learned these items by reading ... old mailing list posts, or Philip Neal's site, or the posts to ciphermysteries and so on ... and gullible if he never stopped to another informant to provide details of when and by whom some parroted observation was actually first made.  

Even to me, who was involved in the study for less than ten years, and who has no particular interest in the text's written part, the way Bax announces these items suggests either someone who doesn't do his research, or someone who has done his Voynich research but is dishonestly representing others; contributions as his own by the simple means of omitting acknowledgements... or, as others have done, Bax has been gullible and permitted one or more others to do that 'get-the-glory-by-omission' thing which sees wrong attributions, and false reputations for expertise gained by those chiefly interested in the latter.


In any case, it casts into doubt Bax' thoroughness as a researcher, and his ability - so vital in a scholar - to think critically about the value of his sources... written or otherwise.

I was hoping, as I hunted the transcript, that there would be some item in all that  mish-mash of things repeated from Reeds, or Stolfi, or Currier, or Pelling, or Neal.. etc., which would be the item that  Bax believes he has so far contributed, himself, to this study.  Of such things there seem too few to have merited so long an interview.


Even his stated philosophy... about focusing on the primary source, looking carefully at details, being self-critical as one works, not pre-empting conclusions and so on and so on... some of it is jolly near word-for-word the arguments I've published online, criticising the usual hypothesis-driven style.

Perhaps one of the linguists can recognise the pearl in the morass of 'pick-and-stitch' but I can't.

I had thought Bax ill-done by until now.  Thanks for taking so much of your time to turn the script into text; you've changed my mind on that subject.

Postscript. Purely in the interests of objective fact... when I explored the 'Romany' thing and published a fair bit about that line of investigation, my sources and my observations and final conclusions... I don't recall anyone suggesting that the possibility had been considered before.

The number of Voynicheros who read and/or downloaded those posts amounted to about the number of active Voynicheros at that time (before the end of 2011).   

Nor can I recall anyone mentioning to Worley when the sudden announcement of a 'Romany' theory was made, that there had already been published a good deal of work in which the subject was first raised, and then investigated - albeit  in terms of culture, art and lines of transmission, not of language. 

 My conclusion (just btw) is that it was unlikely in the extreme that the Romany had been in any position to have their language recorded by anyone in medieval Latin Europe - ethnology as a science  yet to be born, and the Romany socially isolated and soon ostracized by the Latin population - though there is an account which mentions that at least one Indian Romani spoke Basque.  

What I did find was that the attitude of later writers is too confident in its ill-informed 'skepticism' about the Romany testimonies to their origins.  I considered especially  reports of a certain 'Thomas' - a gipsy leader who gave his origin as southern India.  I also noted during the investigation that it is true the style, as well as the content of much in the botanical section accords with customs of southern India from whence it appears to have been gained during c.10th-11thC, but thereafter passing westwards via Mesopotamia and Syria in to the south-western Mediterranean.  My reasons for these views, the comparative evidence and academic sources were all  outlined in the blogposts.   That, however, was before I learned that there was little point in adding bibliographies.  

The old research blog  was closed when I began 'voynichimagery' but if anyone is still seriously attracted by a 'Romany' theory and wants to read those posts, I'll reprint a few of the more detailed fyi.