New Blog post: "Mysterious Steganography"- a Damning Observation

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Yes, we can observe that many scripts which baffled people in the 1600's are better understood now. The reason for this is probably a more systematic and scientific approach of scripts and science in general, the development of the scientific method. The development of systematic ways to understand forgotten scripts, to reconstruct lost languages.

All true. It is why there were, by the early 20th centuries so few languages were still not understood.

But the fact that we still don't understand the VM will at most highlight its exceptional status. And exceptional artifacts are allowed to exist: it is not because something is a unique find, that it is therefore inherently fraudulent. The Antikythera mechanism is an easy example.

First of all, this misstates my argument. I do not contend that "because something is a unique find, it is therefore inherently fraudulent". I don't believe that, and that is not at all my point. I've also used the Antikythera mechanism as a parallel example of uniqueness, calling the Voynich "The Anitythera mechanism of manuscripts". So you see I would not say that uniqueness=fake, and haven't here.

Your argument boils down to this: "X has a property A which is unique, therefore X is fake". But the problem is that nothing inherent to this property A points towards X being fake. And "uniqueness" in itself is also not a good reason for something to be fake, because then we would be able to call lots of things fake.

And here again you have given an argument which is not mine. I do not, and did not, say anything like this. There are a great many unique items in the world which are very real. I don't even know anyone who has used such an argument, certainly not me.

But back to your point about the Anikythera mechanism... although you didn't specifically make this point, you may have intended it. Correct me if I am wrong:

"We know unique items exist, and are real, and the Antikythera mechanism is real. Like the AM, the VMs may be a unique item, seen by the men of the letters, and survived to 1912 to still be mysterious and unique. Therefore, Rich's argument does not show the Voynich to be fake, only unique."

And if so, yes, you are absolutely correct, on an absolute level. And of course this occurred and occurs to me, too. But here is the problem: We know the men of the letters were exposed to hundreds, if not thousands of mysterious and unknown languages and characters. They discussed many with Kircher, and like all curious, scientifically, linguistically minded people of the time, it is obvious they would have been exposed to a great many languages in their lives.

Virtually all were solved by 1912. For one to believe the Voynich is genuine, and also the book they saw and discussed, one has to believe the phenomenal odds that the one book they saw, was the one still unsolved, still mysterious, in 1912. None of the others they saw, or would have seen, happened to fall into Voynich's hand. I have no problem if that is a position you wish to take, I do not, and would not, as it stretches all credibility.

The only way to make is seem tenable is to alter the argument in some way, but as it stands, as I mean it, I think it is a difficult position to support.

Rich.