13-02-2025, 02:28 PM
(12-02-2025, 03:00 PM)Koen G wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The current paradigm for VM imagery research is this: assume that everything is intentional and meaningful, and that this meaning can be recovered through speculation.
This approach, to which I also contributed, is not likely to ever lead to any broadly shared insights or consensus.
Speculation, if considered carefully, could and should be used as a means of beginning new research, not as a means of ending it. New insights, speculation or not, may unlock avenues of thinking that do eventually lead to a breakthrough. Speculation on the meaning itself however will not lead to consensus. It would need to be a "I speculate this.. so maybe we can research that" situation.
Speculating that swallowtail merlons may have some use in narrowing down author locations led to valuable research being done in that area, for example. If the speculation was simply "I think these are swallowtail merlons, therefore the author hated the pope" it wouldn't really lead to anything beyond discussion.