The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Pepper]

More in general, I find most arguments along the lines of: "that would have been an unusual / unnecessary / illogical thing to do" too subjective and really too weak an argument to let it affect my thinking.

For one it is subjective, an another thing is that what would be illogical (did I forget: inefficient?) nowadays would not be so in the later middle ages...

I come at it from the other side. I find the "the author did it this way because X Y Z" are often the weakest part of an argument, and definitely felt this for Jorge's post above. Not that it affects whether the solution is right or wrong, but including it weakens the whole argument IMO.

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I think you're misreading Rene's use of "forced" there. He's not using it in the sense of "someone put a gun (or crossbow :->) to their head", he's using it (I think) in the sense of "none of the Jesuits (say) who worked up Romanization schemes for tonal Asian languages found the Latin alphabet so inadequate for the purpose that they were motivated to invent a new script."

By the way, welcome back.

I think you mixed our names up but if I read this right yes, that's what I meant.