14-04-2019, 01:52 PM
Linda, I do share your suspicion when you say "in case it hurts their credibility in their main body of work, or the perception thereof." How fringe the Voynich is, is hard to say; I suppose it depends on your perspective. I would think that depends on how distinctive the contents of the manuscript are and well of course as to the question of the unreadable text. I, personally, think it must have an important place in the history of cryptography.
I think failure to understand it correctly could damage their reputation more than it would for an amateur who has little to lose if their theory is discredited.
I agree one has to be careful not to bother people; I try to avoid making a nuisance of myself when contacting people and to a person I have found everyone I have contacted to be very friendly and as helpful as they can.
A significant number of academics are unaware of the Voynich and express some curiosity in it. To be honest I think actually what I am trying to do in making contact with people more experienced in a field that I am interested in is not unusual practice. The Voynich is possibly somewhat unusual in that it falls over many different fields, even more reason I think for an interdisciplinary approach making use of a variety of expert insights that we can draw together into an overall picture.
Certainly there is a case for working from the ground up with primary sources in archives as Nick Pelling suggests, but I only think one should resort to that if one decides the available experts do not have the level of knowledge that one needs, even so they may have a clearer idea of which archives to look in. It seems foolish to overlook such potentially value sources of insight and expertise.
Having said that I was rather hoping that some others had ideas as to who may be the right people to contact in the non-map fields I listed.
I think failure to understand it correctly could damage their reputation more than it would for an amateur who has little to lose if their theory is discredited.
I agree one has to be careful not to bother people; I try to avoid making a nuisance of myself when contacting people and to a person I have found everyone I have contacted to be very friendly and as helpful as they can.
A significant number of academics are unaware of the Voynich and express some curiosity in it. To be honest I think actually what I am trying to do in making contact with people more experienced in a field that I am interested in is not unusual practice. The Voynich is possibly somewhat unusual in that it falls over many different fields, even more reason I think for an interdisciplinary approach making use of a variety of expert insights that we can draw together into an overall picture.
Certainly there is a case for working from the ground up with primary sources in archives as Nick Pelling suggests, but I only think one should resort to that if one decides the available experts do not have the level of knowledge that one needs, even so they may have a clearer idea of which archives to look in. It seems foolish to overlook such potentially value sources of insight and expertise.
Having said that I was rather hoping that some others had ideas as to who may be the right people to contact in the non-map fields I listed.