26-04-2016, 07:25 AM
I don't see anything wrong with what JKP is writing above.
Now of course, if:
- over the years whole groups of researchers have shared one observation about the MS (drawing "A" looks like "X") ,
without knowing if it's right or wrong (i.e. drawing "A" really represents "X");
- and then researcher N comes along claiming to be the first to identify drawing "A" as "X";
then researcher N could write, for example, something along the lines of:
There would be nothing wrong with that!
If, instead, researcher N claims to be the first to say that drawing "A" is "X", then this is clearly false.
Especially if this false claim has been pointed out to researcher N by several people, many times, over many years.
In the end, it all depends on the wording.
Anyone claiming to be the first with something has to
- be very clear *which aspect* precisely is a first
- be sufficiently certain that nobody did this before
In the case of the observation that the rosettes folio looks like a map, there is a section in Nick Pelling's "curse" printed in 2006 in which he discusses in great detail that the upper right circle represents (in his opinion) the city of Milan, tentatively identifying several buildings. The central circle he associates with the city of Venice. All of this is based on earlier work by himself that was partly shared on internet resources.
Whether I believe that Nick's analysis is correct or not doesn't matter. The same is true for Marco Ponzi's analysis published at the blog of Stephen Bax or Jürgen's here at Ninja. All of them are detailed. All of them are different.
The last two, which are both relatively recent, both acknowledge that Diane has been doing similar work.
Nick's is a printed book. Marco's is a blog entry. I don't know what is the purpose of the other two, but how to refer to online resources from printed media isn't completely clear to me, and this is of course changing with the emergence of E-journals and E-books.
Now of course, if:
- over the years whole groups of researchers have shared one observation about the MS (drawing "A" looks like "X") ,
without knowing if it's right or wrong (i.e. drawing "A" really represents "X");
- and then researcher N comes along claiming to be the first to identify drawing "A" as "X";
then researcher N could write, for example, something along the lines of:
Quote:Over the years many people have suggested that drawing "A" represents "X". Here, we will examine a particular case, namely that ... (etc). We believe that this is the first detailed analysis of this type.
There would be nothing wrong with that!
If, instead, researcher N claims to be the first to say that drawing "A" is "X", then this is clearly false.
Especially if this false claim has been pointed out to researcher N by several people, many times, over many years.
In the end, it all depends on the wording.
Anyone claiming to be the first with something has to
- be very clear *which aspect* precisely is a first
- be sufficiently certain that nobody did this before
In the case of the observation that the rosettes folio looks like a map, there is a section in Nick Pelling's "curse" printed in 2006 in which he discusses in great detail that the upper right circle represents (in his opinion) the city of Milan, tentatively identifying several buildings. The central circle he associates with the city of Venice. All of this is based on earlier work by himself that was partly shared on internet resources.
Whether I believe that Nick's analysis is correct or not doesn't matter. The same is true for Marco Ponzi's analysis published at the blog of Stephen Bax or Jürgen's here at Ninja. All of them are detailed. All of them are different.
The last two, which are both relatively recent, both acknowledge that Diane has been doing similar work.
Nick's is a printed book. Marco's is a blog entry. I don't know what is the purpose of the other two, but how to refer to online resources from printed media isn't completely clear to me, and this is of course changing with the emergence of E-journals and E-books.