[Blog Post] Peter Bakker on the VMS

[Torsten]

Hi Torsten,

Personally, I don't consider that the airy and non-specific gestures your autocopying papers make in the direction of apparently paralinguistic Voynichese behaviours are sufficient to pass for a genuine argument: still, you have made your bed and will surely sleep soundly in it for years to come.

Thanks for your reply nonetheless.

Cheers, Nick

The fact that someone does not come to the same conclusion as you does not mean that his reasoning must be be wrong.

"Torsten's theory is both interesting and sincerely held - he believes it is sufficient to explain many (though not, I believe, all) of the features of Voynichese text. He is an astute observer, and (I believe) has run tens of thousands of statistical tests to provide the evidence supporting (or, at least, consistent with) his views.

But this also offers a splendid challenge to the rest of us: if we can find things that disprove his autocopying theory (and I think there are several areas where Voynichese is not as straightforward as his presentation makes it out to be), then the things we find to do that might well advance our understanding significantly." You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.