(14-04-2019, 04:51 AM)Morten St. George wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's possible that your own work might not be beyond criticism. For example, just above the "S A L", on the same blog page, you note that someone called Pelling claims that "a single plant seems to appear in three separate places in the manuscript: f17v, f96v, and f99r", to which you respond "No way!"
Technically, looking at the three plants in isolation, you might be right. But can't you see that those three plants look a lot more like each other than any of the three look like any other plant in the VMS? It is fully rational to suspect that they could all be the same plant or at least that they may have some connection.
I disagreed with Pelling. That doesn't mean I'm right (or that he's right). A third person with a different idea might be right.
What I did was disagree, offer another interpretation and offer my argument. I am not into this right-and-wrong thing. Saying that I disagree (even if I do so passionately) is not the same as saying the other person's interpretation is wrong. I present an argument as best I can and then TIME and MORE RESEARCH will bear out whether it's right or wrong. I never assume I'm more right than the other person until my argument is out there and has a chance to be reviewed, rebutted, and then we move toward the truth.
Quote:Morten St. George: On f116v, you think "pox" means goat. Can't you see that the x is in much darker ink than the preceding po and hence could be overwriting a different letter? Can't you see that the VMS is largely a book about botany, not zoology?
No I do not think pox means goat. That is not my idea. I have simply said (over and over) that the interpretation is rational, it follows the linguistic substitutions that were common at the time. I supported whoever proposed it as a logical possibility. I have offered about 20 different readings for the text on 116v, maybe more (goat was probably one of them since I was aware that box and pox are synonymous in some dialects before I knew someone else had proposed it, but it was by no means the only idea I had for the word that resembles pox). I've blogged about the various words many times and also have discussed possibilities on the forum. The discussion is ongoing.
The goal is to find the truth, not to put my ideas above others. The whole point of writing about them is not about ego—it's about getting the ideas reviewed by other eyes to see if they stand up to scrutiny.
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As for pox being over-inked. Maybe it is, but it's not the only possibility. It's possible a little too much ink got on the quill when the writer dipped it, and it blobbed on the curve. Either way, I've never absolutely assumed it was an "x", as can be seen by the way I wrote about it on the blogs.