06-10-2016, 09:57 AM
JKP
You wouldn't be in a position to know this but my first period of in-depth research into the manuscript - by which I mean formal study relying only on academic texts (plus thirty-five years experience) was conducted between 2008-10.
Like you, I avoided having my vision affected by reading any "Voynich-specific" writings, except to check via Nick Pelling's blog whether an intended line of investigation was already covered.
I published the first analysis of a botanical folio in 2010, choosing f.25v because it allowed me to introduce at once the idea of mnemonic devices present in the manuscript, and a clear instance of why the botanical section cannot be a product of the Latin European environment: the plant I identified as Dracaena cinnibaris. The style in which that 'little dragon' is drawn is, however, European (unlike most of the others), so I thought that would not be too threatening.
Between 2010 and 2013, I published detailed analyses of about thirty or forty of the botanical folios, explaining that they are composite images, that (again) they cannot be images first devised in Latin Europe (the folio showing a range of banana-type plants is obvious proof of that), and also explaining the systematic and regular way in which the 'pictorial annotations' (or mnemonic devices) are devised, and their consistent relevance to the content of the picture.
These posts had to be made private because "Steve D" developed a habit of taking any hitherto unmentioned plant id, and applying it apparently at random, and without explanation, to some other folio altogether.
But in short, I had concluded from my analysis and research that the images are devised differently from Latin works'; that they are designed as composite figures - even the 'ring-in' on folio 9v - and there is intelligent system and order to their structure. But the plants are not those of a Latin herbal, and cannot have been first devised by a Latin European.
So please don't mistake the conclusions of research for another balloon being floated as 'hypothesis' or 'idea' or (to use Rene's preferred term "proposition"). I do not see in such terms the mutual respect which is owed by those working on the imagery to fellow researchers working on the text, or - most importantly - to the artefact itself.
You wouldn't be in a position to know this but my first period of in-depth research into the manuscript - by which I mean formal study relying only on academic texts (plus thirty-five years experience) was conducted between 2008-10.
Like you, I avoided having my vision affected by reading any "Voynich-specific" writings, except to check via Nick Pelling's blog whether an intended line of investigation was already covered.
I published the first analysis of a botanical folio in 2010, choosing f.25v because it allowed me to introduce at once the idea of mnemonic devices present in the manuscript, and a clear instance of why the botanical section cannot be a product of the Latin European environment: the plant I identified as Dracaena cinnibaris. The style in which that 'little dragon' is drawn is, however, European (unlike most of the others), so I thought that would not be too threatening.
Between 2010 and 2013, I published detailed analyses of about thirty or forty of the botanical folios, explaining that they are composite images, that (again) they cannot be images first devised in Latin Europe (the folio showing a range of banana-type plants is obvious proof of that), and also explaining the systematic and regular way in which the 'pictorial annotations' (or mnemonic devices) are devised, and their consistent relevance to the content of the picture.
These posts had to be made private because "Steve D" developed a habit of taking any hitherto unmentioned plant id, and applying it apparently at random, and without explanation, to some other folio altogether.
But in short, I had concluded from my analysis and research that the images are devised differently from Latin works'; that they are designed as composite figures - even the 'ring-in' on folio 9v - and there is intelligent system and order to their structure. But the plants are not those of a Latin herbal, and cannot have been first devised by a Latin European.
So please don't mistake the conclusions of research for another balloon being floated as 'hypothesis' or 'idea' or (to use Rene's preferred term "proposition"). I do not see in such terms the mutual respect which is owed by those working on the imagery to fellow researchers working on the text, or - most importantly - to the artefact itself.