New Post: "I Do Listen to the Experts. Do YOU?"

[tavie]

Ironically, when I explain, at length and in great detail, my reasoning and the basis for it, it is then said I am "gish galloping", or as Rene said years ago, "arm waving". Which is it? Am I sweeping things under the rug; or explaining in too much detail, every detail?

I don't think the two (gish galloping and arm waving) are opposites.  I think gish galloping is not at all about presenting detail, at least not in terms of depth.  It's about quantity over quality:  providing a lot of weak arguments without going into depth on each one, because when examined individually, there isn't much to them.  It is a powerful tactic because readers' brains will often think "Well, if there's that many arguments, there must be something to it.  It can't be a coincidence that there are so many points in its favour."  And then that leads to hand-waving when an individual argument is fatally attacked.  The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.  Years ago I read an article that was arguing that Celtic was (I think) an Afro-Asiatic language or closely related to it or something.  It had so many arguments, in double figures, and it was almost quite convincing...until the inevitable rebuttal article which went for each individual argument and showed that some were based on false premises/methodology, and the rest depended on the first few.

I had to look up this "Gish Gallop", and first of all I have to say it is both incorrect to claim this about me, and also a pretty nasty thing to do so

I can't speak for what Karl meant but I don't think it's a deliberate tactic.  Some "solvers" do it too, and I don't think they use it deliberately either.  It's just how our brains work when we are emotionally attached to a belief (we are trying to convince ourselves as well as others) and there is a lot of emotion coming across in this thread. 

But here is the kicker, the "coup de grace": In that book is mentioned Jakub Hořčický, with a seemingly invented (the book has many errors, and seemingly fanciful inventions) brother Christian Hořčický. This Christian Hořčický is in the place of Jakub in history, in that he is the chief botanist and physician to Rudolf. And as you know, Jakub Hořčický was later named Jakub Horčický z Tepence, and whose name appears as though a signature on the front page of the Voynich. As I wrote in The Primer for the Voynich Forgery, I believe Wilfrid’s original intent was to make the Voynich look as though it was a work from the hand of the (probably invented) Christian Hořčický, a character who Bolton places as the owner of the (also imaginary?) “The City Pharmacy” in the Capitol of Bohemia. Perhaps Wilfrid’s intention was that it looked to have been owned or written by him, or written and/or owned by his son, Jakub Hořčický. The latter is real, and was actually the chief botanist and physician to Rudolf II.- and, as I said, "signed" the Voynich.

We must have a different definition of "coup de grace" because I can't see at all how this is the knock out blow, or even a blow.  If the manuscript had the signature of the fictitious Christian Hořčický, that certainly would have been telling.  But it didn't, so how on earth is this the "coup de grace"?  If this is the strongest argument, what does that say about the others?  Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

I do think this is a very poor forgery, and do not think its acceptance is due to any great ability on his part... but more attributable to a low standard of acceptance by the audience. It is human nature for people to think that if they are fooled, they were fooled by the greatest.

Put aside quality in terms of ability, and let's talk about effort.  There must have been an awful lot of effort and care put into what has been mentioned about the binding and arrangement of the folios, and creating the text (why have so many different scribes writing in different systems?).  Why then does Voynich pull a "Baldrick" as Karl said and then leave in those drawings that would invalidate his claims?  I may have misunderstood but it sounds like you are saying that the missing folios and the rearrangement of the folios is evidence of forgery because Voynich decided to rebrand it as a Roger Bacon manuscript and removed folios that were inconsistent with this rebranding...but he left a lot in that is inconsistent with the Roger Bacon branding because he was lazy/incompetent and that's also evidence of forgery? 

And despite getting others to help him with the writing, he couldn't get anyone who was even half decent at drawing? 

I'm sorry also if I've got this wrong, but I don't think you've addressed the point others made about the seeming contradictions.  You say the Kircher correspondence is talking about a different book than the Voynich because it doesn't mention the naked ladies, zodiac, signature...but that Voynich was informed about the description of the book with "unknown characters", "plants unknown to the Germans", "stars", "chemical symbolism", is proof of forgery because Voynich must have heard of the description and based the manuscript on them? 

Am I being unfair, and you only mean the first one?  When you talk about his relationship with Strickland, it sounds like you are also arguing this did likely influence the manuscript.  But if that's the case, then was Voynich assuming the Kircher correspondence would never be dug up and compared to the book, and so no one would notice the obvious discrepancy?  Or was he assuming that it was perfectly reasonable for some aspects to be left out from the earlier description (the zodiac - perhaps too normal to have made the list of weird elements; the naked ladies - weird enough to make the list but perhaps not something gentlemen would draw attention to at the time; the signature - was it really the most relevant thing to mention?).  In which case, surely either he was right and the omissions are plausible...or he was an absolute moron and wasted effort making his forgery easy to spot? 

The other possibility being that it didn't influence the manuscript at all...