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

[kckluge]

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So essentially the claim that the Voynich manuscript is a modern forgery is virtually unfalsifiable. However that hardly makes it likely that it is a modern forgery and liklihood is key here.

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This touches on a critical point, which is that whether a (generic) "modern forgery" theory is falsifiable and whether it is true are two unrelated questions. The problem with "modern forgery" theories being unfalsifiable isn't that unfalsifiability implies they're necessarily wrong -- it doesn't. We could decipher the bio section, and it could look like a Latin text on the health benefits of mineral baths, and someone could notice that the initial letters of the lines on the first page of the quire are an acrostic reading "Wilfrid Voynich me facit ha ha April Fools." The problem with unfalsifiability is that it makes it pointless to engage with any "modern forgery" theory as a theory. It only make sense to engage with individual claims made as part of advancing the theory to rebut those specific claims.

By the way, there may be a way to falsify the mss being a modern forgery, but it involves a (non-destructive) dating technique for estimating how long ago ink was applied to paper, parchment, or (although the texture of the surface makes it trickier) vellum that doesn't have much of a track record. When iron-based inks are applied to paper/parchment/vellum, over time iron ions migrate horizontally out from the ink into the surface, with how far they've migrated being correlated with how long ago the ink was applied -- see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the discussion of the method in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ("Surprisingly, there are only two applications of this method to authentication. Nickel (2009) has mentioned, but without scientific details, cases of (1) ‘‘Diary of Jack the Ripper,’’ supposedly from the end of nineteenth century, but dated by McNeil to 1921, and (2) the autograph of Abraham Lincoln, supposedly from 1863, dated by McNeil to 1869 +/- 10 years." -- so not a huge body of use or replication...)

Karl