VMs: Epibrating Cerebrating

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

   I've been wondering what response Rugg's article would bring from 
the public.  According to its uniform standards of editorial judgment, 
our favorite publication printed this letter to the editor in the 
November 2004 issue:

-----------------------------------
*Cerebrating Voynich*

   I was delighted in Gordon Rugg's approach in "The Mystery of the 
Voynich Manuscript."  Rugg's attention to the history of the acceptance 
of certain views underlines the social and personal forces that have 
shaped the sciences. 
  
   We must pay attention to the politics and provenance of "fact," the 
process of "expert reasoning," as Rugg puts it.  Increasingly, we must 
join the perspectives of available disciplines: biology, psychology, 
history, linguistics and many other fields.  Only such cooperation can 
pry truth from process and allow us in some small way to escape our wiring.

   Certainly, "forms of sensibility," as Kant put it, affect our 
knowledge. Because we are in a better pisition than any other age to 
examine such forms and categories, we should do so in a more systematic 
way.  I hope reliance on such investigations will become a larger 
element in our scientific literature. 

                                 John J. Ronan
                                 Magnolia, Mass.

----------------------------

   To quote an old and bad joke, "Hmm.  I wonder what he meant by *that*?"

Dennis

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