[split] About knowing the history of Voynich research

[-JKP-]

The only thing one can really do is to keep in mind that one's observation may not be new, and try to avoid making too grand claims.

This is really the bottom line. Humility is really the key difference between ideas that are well-received and ideas that aren't.

I do believe in crediting past work, but as Rene has pointed out, the difficulty of KNOWING all the past work is considerable (probably impossible), and the job of tracking down the first person to say something is not trivial. Even if you track them down (which can take weeks or months), one often discovers that all they did was mention an idea in passing, without any actual study or corroborating evidence. There was a guy who mentioned almost every human language as being the underlying language of the VMS. Every week he added another language or two. He didn't research them. He didn't prove any of it. If the VMS turns out to be one of those languages, does he deserve credit because he looked around the Web and found yet another language to add to the list and did nothing more?

As far as humility goes, there's something to be said for knowing what you don't know. The smartest people I know (and they are scary-smart) are quite humble in terms of understanding there are infinite things we don't know, while still realizing that they have something special other people don't have. The ones I gravitate toward are the ones who have a real passion for learning and for their work.


It doesn't really matter to me if people make grand claims. I try to look past personal traits to see if the logic and methodology are sound. If they can back up those claims with results that can be replicated, and their research has gone past what is historically known, I appreciate their contributions.


Unfortunately, it is seldom the case that people who make grand claims provide a good argument to back up those claims. In fact, it is often those who make the grandest claims, who say they have solved it and send out official news releases that hype it more than it deserves, who seem least able to back up their research with information that enables others to understand and confirm the results (not just in Voynich studies, but in many fields). It's as though bombast is used to fill in the holes in the methodology. The bigger the holes, the more the hot air. But eventually hot air cools.


There are people in the Voynich community who are tackling this puzzle one brick at a time. This is much less flashy than claims of solutions, but it might be the most effective way to tackle the problem and I wholeheartedly support their efforts. If we ever learn what is going on in the VMS, I hope they get whatever credit is due.