[Article] Article in Discover Magazine

[Torsten]

For me, both are correct.

The statement "There are words in the manuscript that only appear in a certain section" and the statement "common words can always be found in other sections" are directly contradictory.

Furthermore, Bowern argues for a "certain clustering of words according to their topics," whereas I contend that there is a clustering around Currier languages and per page. You have already described this contradiction yourself back in 2019: "This does not demonstrate ... that the text variations are caused by different subject matter (as suggested in by Montemurro and Zanette). If that were the case, the difference between herbal A and herbal B should not exist." [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]

The latter was already argued in the paper by Montemurro and Zanette. Now while their argument is not proof of meaning, the article also does not say that. Instead,

making the text look a lot like meaningful language.

is a completely defendable statement.

Actually, the article even states: "But beyond the word level — at the level of large sections of text — Voynichese is, in fact, similar to familiar languages." Anyway, if there is no clustering around topics, then the assertion that clustering around topics indicates similarity is obviously incorrect.