@ Stolfi It’s like everything else here: thesis, antithesis, and 100 other theses.
But I think we need to argue scientifically and logically.
I’ve said this before: I am NOT claiming that the writer of the marginal note is the author or one of the scribes of the VMS, because I don’t know that—nobody does.
Regarding the “daiin dain”—it’s striking that there are counting glyphs: ed, eed, eeed—one to three strokes; the same applies to ain, aiin, aiiin, and almost the same for air. These families are preceded by different “markers”—k, t, d, for example. I don’t believe these are spelling errors, but rather clearly recognizable counting structures of a cipher.
If one has to negate this structure in order to prove anything, that is an assumption—and one can make it—but it immediately weakens one’s own thesis—no, not refutes it, but merely weakens it. Every further assumption in this direction weakens the thesis even more.
The marginal note is a matter of logic. If I can explain so many words with a single small assumption—8=s—then, according to Ockham’s Razor, one should take it into account. And since I can identify so many words that are German and some that are Latin, I assume that the marginal note was written in Latin and German, as was customary in Germany at the time. Here, too, I don’t need any further assumptions—that’s simply how it was! This mix of Latin and German was the norm, not the exception (maybe the whole Voynich manuscript is written this way)
So this is the theory that costs the least. Much less than a theory that assumes a marginal note is an attempt to correct or reconstruct the Voynich glyphs.
As a scientist, surely you must recognize that???
But I think we need to argue scientifically and logically.
I’ve said this before: I am NOT claiming that the writer of the marginal note is the author or one of the scribes of the VMS, because I don’t know that—nobody does.
Regarding the “daiin dain”—it’s striking that there are counting glyphs: ed, eed, eeed—one to three strokes; the same applies to ain, aiin, aiiin, and almost the same for air. These families are preceded by different “markers”—k, t, d, for example. I don’t believe these are spelling errors, but rather clearly recognizable counting structures of a cipher.
If one has to negate this structure in order to prove anything, that is an assumption—and one can make it—but it immediately weakens one’s own thesis—no, not refutes it, but merely weakens it. Every further assumption in this direction weakens the thesis even more.
The marginal note is a matter of logic. If I can explain so many words with a single small assumption—8=s—then, according to Ockham’s Razor, one should take it into account. And since I can identify so many words that are German and some that are Latin, I assume that the marginal note was written in Latin and German, as was customary in Germany at the time. Here, too, I don’t need any further assumptions—that’s simply how it was! This mix of Latin and German was the norm, not the exception (maybe the whole Voynich manuscript is written this way)
So this is the theory that costs the least. Much less than a theory that assumes a marginal note is an attempt to correct or reconstruct the Voynich glyphs.
As a scientist, surely you must recognize that???