26-10-2019, 09:56 PM
Hi JKP:
"People can be wrong about one thing and right about another. I strive to be specific in my critiques."
Of course, and as I said, I accept that YOU did not connect your two critiques of Mr. Touwaide (botany and forgery). But please understand, since you criticized both his botany references, AND criticized his opinion of forgery, it would be natural for anyone... me included... to assume there could be a connection.
This, especially since it appears that much of Mr. Touwaide's belief in the modern forgery possibility is BASED on his observations relating to botany. They do seem connected to me, and I'm not sure how to disentangle them. For instance, the summary states,
"Locard's "exchange principle" suggests that criminals always leave traces behind them. For the VMS herbal, "grafting" could be the key: it points out that the plants were created by assembling elements derived from several different plants." This, after pointing out several similarities between plants in the VMs and other, known herbals... suggesting they were copied from them by Voynich, by being sketched at the British Library, "Following the parallel with Sloane 4016: Voynich used to frequent the British Library. He might have taken sketches of the manuscript there and later reworked the illustrations to create the VMS."
So the two seem to me to be inextricably linked: If Mr. Touwaide's botanical observations are correct, the evidence points to forgery; if he is poor with his botany, his forgery beliefs are undermined, too. So it may be purely coincidental to see them both independently, but you have to understand why I would have initially believed they were being linked.
"People can be wrong about one thing and right about another. I strive to be specific in my critiques."
Of course, and as I said, I accept that YOU did not connect your two critiques of Mr. Touwaide (botany and forgery). But please understand, since you criticized both his botany references, AND criticized his opinion of forgery, it would be natural for anyone... me included... to assume there could be a connection.
This, especially since it appears that much of Mr. Touwaide's belief in the modern forgery possibility is BASED on his observations relating to botany. They do seem connected to me, and I'm not sure how to disentangle them. For instance, the summary states,
"Locard's "exchange principle" suggests that criminals always leave traces behind them. For the VMS herbal, "grafting" could be the key: it points out that the plants were created by assembling elements derived from several different plants." This, after pointing out several similarities between plants in the VMs and other, known herbals... suggesting they were copied from them by Voynich, by being sketched at the British Library, "Following the parallel with Sloane 4016: Voynich used to frequent the British Library. He might have taken sketches of the manuscript there and later reworked the illustrations to create the VMS."
So the two seem to me to be inextricably linked: If Mr. Touwaide's botanical observations are correct, the evidence points to forgery; if he is poor with his botany, his forgery beliefs are undermined, too. So it may be purely coincidental to see them both independently, but you have to understand why I would have initially believed they were being linked.