16-08-2016, 01:49 PM
Rene,
As so often, you deflected the issue by a form of ad hominem - in this case suggesting that I am "not consistent" when the point I was making is that it would be more helpful if you just acted as any other researcher and offered your own insights.
I would also say that, as it happens, I'm also a professional in my field, and that field is comparative iconographic analysis. So what you actually have is a series of experts whose opinions do not agree. In that case, the usual approach is to consider the evidence adduced, the comparative examples offered, and the secondary documentation cited.
Now, the "zodiac expert" - whatever that may mean, but let's take it as a meaningful term - did not present her opinion in a way that I should find acceptable for a second-year student.
There is no attempt to analyse the figures; no attempt to explain why the month-names are a little unusual if the cycle is an astrological zodiac; there is no effort to offer proposed comparative images... nothing which is normally found in any scholarly assessment of a given document.
Speaking as another professional, though not a specialist in "zodiacs" I did not feel those comments made at a level which would enable them to be cited as evidence - not even as evidence that the person had actually sighted the original.
You may find that opinion more congenial, and adopt it as you think fit. But it certainly is not any "last word" on the subject, and while you also say you find this person's ideas or that personally convincing, again that is not an argument in the academic sense. You are simply telling us that you like it; that their arguments suit your preferences.
There is a general lack of objectivity and dispassionate approach to this manuscript, and especially to its imagery and more than any other single factor, that has prevented any genuine advances in our understanding of the object since the demise of the first mailing list. Everything seems to have bogged down in a rut from which others are being discouraged - either actively or passively - from escaping.
Sam G's examples are the topic, and objectively speaking they have more points in common with the Voynich manuscript's figures than anything in the Latin manuscript tradition: point by point.
So rather than re-railing the line of discussion, or attempting to maintain the now eight-year campaign to suggest that I am irrational, or inconsistent, or illiterate, or 'out for glory' or any other among the useless and pointless stream of memes.. how about focusing on the manuscript, and the points which Sam G. is making?
Worth trying, anyway, don't you think?
As so often, you deflected the issue by a form of ad hominem - in this case suggesting that I am "not consistent" when the point I was making is that it would be more helpful if you just acted as any other researcher and offered your own insights.
I would also say that, as it happens, I'm also a professional in my field, and that field is comparative iconographic analysis. So what you actually have is a series of experts whose opinions do not agree. In that case, the usual approach is to consider the evidence adduced, the comparative examples offered, and the secondary documentation cited.
Now, the "zodiac expert" - whatever that may mean, but let's take it as a meaningful term - did not present her opinion in a way that I should find acceptable for a second-year student.
There is no attempt to analyse the figures; no attempt to explain why the month-names are a little unusual if the cycle is an astrological zodiac; there is no effort to offer proposed comparative images... nothing which is normally found in any scholarly assessment of a given document.
Speaking as another professional, though not a specialist in "zodiacs" I did not feel those comments made at a level which would enable them to be cited as evidence - not even as evidence that the person had actually sighted the original.
You may find that opinion more congenial, and adopt it as you think fit. But it certainly is not any "last word" on the subject, and while you also say you find this person's ideas or that personally convincing, again that is not an argument in the academic sense. You are simply telling us that you like it; that their arguments suit your preferences.
There is a general lack of objectivity and dispassionate approach to this manuscript, and especially to its imagery and more than any other single factor, that has prevented any genuine advances in our understanding of the object since the demise of the first mailing list. Everything seems to have bogged down in a rut from which others are being discouraged - either actively or passively - from escaping.
Sam G's examples are the topic, and objectively speaking they have more points in common with the Voynich manuscript's figures than anything in the Latin manuscript tradition: point by point.
So rather than re-railing the line of discussion, or attempting to maintain the now eight-year campaign to suggest that I am irrational, or inconsistent, or illiterate, or 'out for glory' or any other among the useless and pointless stream of memes.. how about focusing on the manuscript, and the points which Sam G. is making?
Worth trying, anyway, don't you think?