[Article] The Singulion and the Sequence: A Methodological Review of Layfield and Davis 2026

[Torsten]

I think it is quite likely that the herbal pages each represent an individual topic - each is a different plant, that is - which means that the interior pages of herbal singulions would not be expected to have consistently high similarity scores when compared to one another. That is why we did not attempt to use the herbal scores to suggest a sequence for herbal singulions. The data were very clear for Quires 13 and 20, but for the first eight quires, I'm not at all sure that there IS a "correct" sequence of singulions. There is definitely more work to be done.

Lisa, thank you for engaging with this substantively — I want to work through one factual point that seems to bear on the broader question.

Your response invokes "each herbal page represents an individual topic" as the reason the herbal LSA data don't support a correct singulion sequence. The DM paper cites Layfield & Davis 2026 (the DHQ paper) for this claim: "The results for the Herbal section in (Layfield & Davis, 2026) suggested that each page is a distinct botanical topic" (DM paragraph 35).

I've gone back to the DHQ paper to check. The conclusions section (paragraph 41) applies "each page is likely a different topic" specifically to the Cosmological, Astronomical, and Astrological sections (paragraph 41.2), citing the unique diagrams and zodiac signs on each page. About the herbal section, the DHQ paper's conclusion is different: "Beginning with the first A→B transition, the scores show a marked decrease, suggesting that the A→B transition is significant" (paragraph 41.1).

The specific finding about herbal → herbal comparisons in the DHQ paper is that 77% of the manuscript's lowest scores are Herbal → Herbal comparisons at page breaks: "The overwhelming majority of the remaining scores (77% or 46) were Herbal → Herbal page comparisons, virtually all of which were near or on a page break." (paragraph 35 of the DHQ paper). That's a claim about score drops at page transitions, not about each herbal page being topically distinct.

So the DHQ paper's LSA analysis doesn't seem to establish topical distinctness for herbal pages. The topical-distinctness inference for herbal appears to rest on the illustrations (different plants each page) rather than on the LSA data — which is a defensible intuition, but it's not what the DHQ paper is being cited for in DM paragraph 35.

This matters for the current discussion because your response treats the topical-distinctness claim as the reason the herbal conjoint > facing differential doesn't support a correct singulion sequence. If the claim is an intuition from the illustrations rather than a finding from the LSA data, then it's an intuition that would predict low conjoint scores and low facing scores throughout the herbal — but the DM Table 8 shows elevated conjoint scores in most herbal quires. That empirical pattern needs an explanation, and the topical-distinctness intuition (whether derived from illustrations or from data) predicts against it, not for it.

I don't think this changes what needs to happen next — as you say, there's more work to be done. But it does mean the herbal conjoint > facing differential is left without an interpretive framework in your work so far.