Logic issues

[farmerjohn]

Instead of that, a systematic approach to decipher an unknown writing system using an unknown language is necessary. For doing so we must describe the most characteristic properties and determine typical patterns. Only if we understand the writing system this will tell us something about the language (see for instance the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

The manuscript has been attacked by "systematic approaches" for a century and the result is well known. And funnily, the linked paper says that "Ventris made a series of inspired guesses"
The thing is that one shouldn't restrict researcher to certain research methods (let him use systemacy, guesses, exhaustive searches, trial and error, whatever; one wild guess can be worth of several years of systematic work), but strictly test proving mechanisms.

Therefore, not only the solution itself but also the way of deciphering an unknown script is interesting and important. To ask for the way the solution was reached should be a first test to a decipherment attempt. Researchers using the trial and error method are unable to explain how the writing system works. Moreover they have to admit that they were only guessing.

The citation from The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose often comes to mind (sorry for too long, but the topic itself is too vague and general).

"...A colleague (Ivor Robinson) had been visiting from the USA and he was engaging me in voluble conversation on a quite different topic as we walked down the street approaching my office in Birkbeck College in London. The conversation stopped momentarily as we crossed a side road, and resumed again at the other side. Evidently, during those few moments, an idea occurred to me, but then the ensuing conversation blotted it from my mind!

Later in the day, after my colleague had left, I returned to my office. I remember having an odd feeling of elation that I could not account for. I began going through in my mind all the various things that had happened to me during the day, in an attempt to find what it was that had caused this elation. After eliminating numerous inadequate possibilities, I finally brought to mind the thought that I had had while crossing the street- a thought which had momentarily elated me by providing the solution to the problem that had been milling around at the back of my head!

Apparently, it was the needed criterion that I subsequently called a 'trapped surface' and then it did not take me long to form the outline of a proof of the theorem that I had been looking for (Penrose 1965). Even so, it was some while before the proof was formulated in a completely rigorous way, but the idea that I had had while crossing the street had been the key."

The fact that the solution was obtained when crossing the street is important and interesting (no, really). But I hope it wasn't used in the proof of the theorem