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The unexpected confirmation
- The unexpected confirmation
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The unexpected confirmation
ReneZ > 04-08-2019, 04:35 PM
Many people, past and present, have been greatly interested in finding explanations or translations of the text of the Voynich MS. In no few cases, these people were actually quite convinced that they were on the right track.
One of the reasons why they were so convinced may be (have been) what I would call the 'unexpected confirmation'.
Basically it means that one unexpectedly learns about something that one did not know before, but would seem to confirm what one has been thinking. This is better explained with a few examples.
Probably the best known is Newbold. He was translating the text of one of the pages of the MS, and came up with: "in a concave mirror I saw a star in the form of a snail ... between the navel of Pegasus, the girdle of Andromeda and the head of Cassiopeia" (text from Kahn: the Codebreakers). This is where the Andromeda galaxy is found, and Newbold stated that he did not know of that before. It seemed like the perfect confirmation that he was right.
A second example is given by Stephen Bax. When he was considering that the plant on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. could be Hellebore, and he transcribed the word that should give the name, he came up with Ka(e)ur. Searching the web, he found that Hellebore was called "Kaur" in Kashmir. This is the sort of striking discovery that seemed to be beyond coincidence.
I have often wondered if the same thing did not happed to Wilfrid Voynich. His complete conviction that the Voynich MS was a Roger Bacon work was not even completely understood by ELV and Anne Nill after his death.
But what if he had indeed formed the idea of (Albertus Magnus or) Roger Bacon, and only after that saw the name of Bacon in the Marci letter? This would be such a case of unexpected confirmation. However, this is clearly speculation and we may not know for sure. (Even though he wrote that this was the order of events in his 1921 paper, we may be skeptical about it).
I don't doubt that such striking confirmation must be happening on some scale to many people working on theories, and it will be hard to be truly critical whether a confirmation is real, or could simply be a coincidence. -
RE: The unexpected confirmation
-JKP- > 04-08-2019, 04:44 PM
Very good topic, Rene. Very relevant to VMS research.
I think it applies to plant identifications also.
Over and over I have seen identifications of a specific plant based on the first one someone finds that seems similar. Sometimes it is no more than a similar flower and the rest of the drawing is ignored, but even if it is the whole plant, I'm constantly thinking to myself, "But there are other plants with those characteristics—what about them?"
One almost gets the impression that many people STOP LOOKING as soon as they come across something (anything) that seems to confirm their initial hunch.
It's an easy trap to fall into. Once you start seeing patterns, it's hard not to see other things through the same filter. I sometimes switch gears (e.g., from stars to plants or from plants to text) to try to take myself out of that "space", and come back to it a few months later with the blackboard hopefully at least partly erased so it can be seen again with semi-fresh eyes. -
RE: The unexpected confirmation
ReneZ > 04-08-2019, 05:33 PM
I ran into some remarkable examples of this myself. Fortunately, I suppose, the confirmation came too late and I had already abandoned the idea. But it's worth explaining.
Back in the days where we had only the MS and the Marci letter, and nothing particular about the Prague history was known, I had my own 'Voynich faked it' theory. It was based on a spy novel, and ran as follows:
Voynich never escaped from his Siberian exile. He died there and the person who arrived in London was a Russian spy. The purpose of the Voynich MS, produced by Russian intelligence, was to side-track or occupy Western cryptographic agencies. When Voynich became rich and successful, he became a risk, so Anne Nill was put beside him as a secon plant to keep him under control.
Of course, lots of new evidence appeared and pieces started falling into place, and the fake theory could not explain things anymore.
But then, at some point I was reading in Millicent Sowerby, who worked for Voynich in London how amazed she was, when she first met Anne Nill, how much control she had over Wilfrid Voynich. Isn't that curious?
Even 'worse', in 2012, Rafal in his presentation at the Villa Mondragone showed that Voynich was:
- last seen in Siberia (Irkutsk) on 12 June 1890
- arrived in London on a ship from Hamburg 5 October 1890 (i.e. 115 days later)
He claimed to have wandered through the desert for months. However Rafal also pointed out that the fastest boat trip from Shanghai to London was of the order of 110 days. There is no way that he could have travelled from Irkutsk to Shanghai and then to London.
What better proof could there be of my spy story?
(In the end we know he took the train through Russia, thanks to research by Gerry Kennedy). -
RE: The unexpected confirmation
Koen G > 04-08-2019, 06:02 PM
Oh, I've also suffered from this. It's a side-effect of confirmation bias, I think. You've got your feelers out for certain things and sooner or later you're bound to learn something new which seems to confirm your theory.
One thing I've realized is that even respected and practiced scholars fall for this. Not many people come prepared for the challenges presented by a document like the VM.
The best remedy I think is to always be prepared to adjust your views when better evidence presents itself. Nobody has got it all right at the moment, and probably half of what I believe is just wrong. This isn't too problematic if you don't get stuck in a cycle of autoconfirmation that ignores better evidence. -
RE: The unexpected confirmation
Helmut Winkler > 04-08-2019, 08:10 PM
About the spy story: taking into account late 19th c. conditions, I think it is very likely that V. was set free in Russia under the condition of going to London and spy on the Russian emigrants there, was turned arround by the British Secret Services or was working as a double agent. I would explain so much, including the Ethel Boole story and Anne Nill. And his success as a bookseller, that has set many people wondering. For example, it would be interesting to know if his BM contacts had Secret Service connections, they could have been laundering money. Many late 19th c. Scientific Institutions were involved in these operations. But as far as I know, the British files are kept secret even today. -
RE: The unexpected confirmation
davidjackson > 05-08-2019, 12:36 AM
Well, Britain is the only European nation state to continue in an uninterrupted state from them until now. Who knows what those files could uncover..
When the official histories of MI6 were published, quite a few years ago now, I spent some time trawling through looking for references to voynich. I found none. Several of his associates were mentioned, but given the times, it would have been more remarkable had they not.
At the time, I remember thinking that maybe he just wasn't important enough to warrant a mention. -
RE: The unexpected confirmation
ReneZ > 05-08-2019, 03:57 AM
David that is most curious.
As I wrote, my theory was based on a spy novel, and this was Desmond Bagley's "Running Blind". In it, the "hero" was chasing a double agent (indeed). When searching through his files, he couldn't find any reference. But this was not because he was not important enough. The guy was so important that he was beyond the access level available to him
On another note, the meeting between Voynich and ELV in London had been set up by a family in Russia, I forget their name. I have always had this notion that the famous: "Did I see you in the citadel in Warsaw?" should be a code to establish that they were both talking to the right person. -
RE: The unexpected confirmation
Antonio García Jiménez > 05-08-2019, 03:48 PM
Very interesting the spy story.
Given that I do have a theory, I can apply to myself the idea of 'unexpected confirmation'. It could be. Who knows. I am old enough to know that any solution to a scientific problem has to be validated by others.
In my case, I can only say that I have not had one but several unexpected confirmations