Manifesto

Over the past two decades, study of this manuscript has seen increasing efforts made by adherents of one or another ‘Voynich theory’ to actively suppress – and to deter others from ‘paying attention to’ – any lines of research or any discoveries incompatible with their preferred theory.

I am offended at being personally approached and ‘advised’ – by someone I’ve never met – that I should, or should not read whatever I choose, even if it means “paying attention” to people expressing a different opinion: from my own or from the ‘mass’ opinion. What I decide, in the last analysis, will depend on the weight of evidence. A reasoned argument, by a person sufficiently qualified to provide one, is all the ‘advice’ I welcome.

What I would hope for, and what did for a time characterise this study (during the time of Jim Reeds’ mailing list) can be described in terms similar to the IAS’ ‘manifesto’:

a place where scholars regard the manuscript and its phenomena without being carried off in the maelstrom … comfortable and quietly spoken … afraid of no issue; yet under no pressure from any side which might tend to force its scholars to be prejudiced for or against any particular solution of the problems under study; and allowing the tranquillity essential to any fundamental inquiry into the unknown.

And this above all