(15-04-2024, 07:06 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You write "He found a pile of old parchment, cut it up to make a fake book, made the ink, and went wild."
If that were the case, you should be able to see it even with old parchment. The cut edges would then appear new and clean, but this is not the case.
Worn does not mean that the pages in the centre are dirty, but the edges. Especially the corners.
If you look at an old psalter, it is mostly the corners. That's where most of the spit sticks.
The VM also has this characteristic. Simply signs of use.
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So, according to your theory, he must have reworked it. There are no coincidences.
For me, the traces of use come from the time of Tepenec (and whatever their names were), when the book passed through hundreds of hands to be studied and examined.
Well first of all, let me make an observation about a situation that has been apparent for over a decade now, in my own experience:
A person, unaware of the background (findings, evidence, whatever) about some area of Voynich research, only reads and knows, through no fault of their own, only the superficial and pre-digested mainstream information. That is, the information has already been winnowed down, processed into an opinion, and posted at fact... or, not posted at all, outside of a few less read blogs, like mine.
So then these people do not know the entire basis of my reasoning when I make a point. At the same time, the few people who have been around long enough to know that basis, do not speak up to explain it to them. So the point I make seems baseless to the person wondering how I could say what I do.
And then, when I give an answer, and it is necessarily incomplete... for I cannot write a chapter about each and every point each time, I must have some hope the person I am discussing these things with will know that basis, whether they agree or disagree with my point about it, or not. Their lack of full knowledge on the subject gives that person a false impression. They think it is I who "don't know" about some element of my idea, or assumes I had not thought of it.
This last comment of yours is an absolutely perfect example of this. The thing is, my simplifying the creation of the Voynich to, "He found a pile of old parchment, cut it up to make a fake book, made the ink, and went wild", was relying on your knowing some things to understand why I would say this. But from your answer, I see you do not. Here is the background:
Long ago, in various conversations in the Voynich Net Mailing List, and elsewhere, several people noted that SEVERAL (not all!) of the edges of SEVERAL of the Voynich pages/leaves looked much brighter, and straighter, than many of the others. They looked to them as though they had been cut more recently than the edges of many other leaves looked to have been*. Why? The issue gets dropped, and not repeated, as many do, unless and until it can be explained somehow. Since it is not explained, you don't hear about it.
So you then read my statement, not knowing that, and think, "Wow... Rich has no idea the edges are not cut, and not lighter". No, many do, apparently, look "new and clean". I never said all, you assumed that, not realizing this.
Again, not your fault. It would take a search of the Voynich.net archives, many comments on many diverse blogs, and my own blog. Here is one place in which I discuss this issue, and come up with one possible explanation. That explanation fits with other observations, including those made by Nick Pelling. He noted that scars and other features of the calfskin seemed to match up between two or so leaves. His "take" on this is that it shows that leaves were made from the same skins, in some cases. I give an alternate explaination to his, and posit that the leaves of the Voynich were cut down from full size sheets, to make the quarto Voynich: You are not allowed to view links.
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By the way, this is also a perfect example, again, in which I listen to an expert... if anyone is, we should include Mr. Pelling. He, Rafal Prinke, Rene of course, the Comegys, Janick, Tucker, Bax, Elonka Dunin, Elmar Vogt, Klaus Schmeh, Philip Neal, Berj Ensanian, Greg Stachowsky, David Jackson, Diane O'Donovan, Robert Sherman and probably a dozen others, all have many valuable insights and observations, and a useful depth of knowledge... extending back decades, in some cases. But the thing is, we will not all agree on what they report actually means... not me with them, nor they with each other, to varying extents.
And by the way, you may note I've left off that list many newer people to the Voynich question, and some older ones. That is the subject of an up and coming post of mine, as I have seen a backslide in the basic knowledge of the Voynich, best represented by several of the recent Malta conference, and the panel which made it up. The "new crew" is just so filled with actual, demonstrable errors about the Voynich, which have been used in papers, lectures, and subsequent interviews and documentaries. And it is getting worse, not better.
Once a foundation begins to crumble, the pace to total collapse only increases.
So back to you concerns about my claim there are cleaner looking, cut looking, edges. There are, this is a fact. We can all explain it different ways, if you read my blog post, you will have mine. Then in the future, hopefully, when someone mentions these... for whatever reason... you, and anyone remembering this will opine based on the facts of the matter, rather than simply, and incorrectly assuming that all the edges of the Voynich are old and dirty.
As for worn areas, in the way you describe and show, I am not sure why that would be an issue. There are many reasons for worn edges we can plausibly suggest: Yes, that the parchment was ill treated and stored, blank or not. That the edges were falsely aged through the manipulation of a forger (another case where I have an understanding as to just how common and easy it is to do this, as I have read almost every scrap about the history and practice of forgery on the planet, while you have not), or even, in some cases, in which the folded edges were from blank sheet of full sized folios in a partially blank work that was disassembled. And then, I can hear your gears turning, you are thinking, "HOW can he SAY THIS?". Well because I know of cases of old, unused parchment being found in old books and ledgers. And there are other features which could support this idea, too.
But this brings me to another point about our conversations, which are like a mechanical ratchet mechanism. You know what those are, of course... a wheel turns in one direction only, because of a spring ratchet held against notches in the wheel. The allegory goes like this: You ask a question, or challenge me with something I said. I bring up several points, and you ignore some of those, but challenge a couple. I answer those with several points, and you ignore several, and challenge a couple. And so on and so forth. The wheel then only turns in one direction... you never stop to explain, nor answer, all the points I bring up. There are many examples of this in our recent discussions, but this is an effect is a microcosm of the Paradigm driven state of Voynich research as a whole.
For instance, one of many, you didn't explain how, if worn by use, as you say, the pages are worn, but the ink and paints are overwhelmingly "fresh as a daisy". You went on as though I had never brought that up, let alone give your answer for it.
There are a good 40 or more major issues and questions that never get satisfactory explained... and hundreds or thousands of sub issues. I've been compiling a list of them, for another future post. By not being addressed, it gives the false impression that "There's nothing to see here", and the Voynich is all neat and tidily an controversially genuine and old manuscript, and "cannot be" a forgery. No, this is not the case at all, it has a raft of problems which are never addressed, or even mentioned. This then paves the way for some to make the false claim that forgery has been "dis-proven". This has often been said, even in print. On the surface, it seems to make sense... but only if one is unaware of the large number of anachronisms and anomalies that are never aired, never explained, never addressed properly if at all ... except by a few, like me. And then, over and over, when I am discussing almost any idea, I am surprised that the person I am having said discussion with, does not know the basis by which I've come to my opinions. But, I should not be surprised, really, it is truly the "State of the Art".
* Another click of the ratchet wheel is this: Those examinations, tests, whatever, are rarely to look for things that might hint at forgery, it goes, generally, in one direction only: Genuine and old. This is normal, paradigms defend themselves, like an organism. Read Thomas Kuhn. Anyway, if the Voynich were examined for all newer, cut edges, and using Pelling's observations, and those of others, as to possible alignment of those pages, my hypothesis could be tested. A "virtual Voynich" could be built of what I suspect are the larger folios the pages were cut from. This, too, is an oversimplification of what could be done, and the evidence that would support or contradict said hypotheses. But it will not be done. Do I have to suggest why I think that is, or do you know my answer by now?