Distinguishing Characters

[Mark Knowles]

- in case of a historical innovation, evidence of the previous thoughts may no longer be available, or ahs not yet been found.

This is true. However they will only be found if people look for them, which makes the search for them an important endeavour. There often seems to be an eagerness to postulate an explanation for the Voynich "cipher" without any attempt to find or justify any historical antecedence.

In any case, my main concern with respect to the discussion is the term "The cipher". We do not even know if there is one, or, if there is a method, it is anything like "a cipher".

I agree we don't know if there is a cipher. However when I conducted my poll on the Ninja forum the majority of those who answered said that they believed the Voynich to be most likely written in cipher. In fact on the last occasion that I asked you then you said that you thought the Voynich to be written in cipher. So whilst this may not be the case it seems reasonable to operate on the basis that it is the most likely scenario. The "cipher" is the most important or distinguishing feature of the Voynich manuscript, so this topic is on a side issue, but very much central to the study of the manuscript.