Decipherment Quotes

“[...] a good interpretation makes sense of such an impressive amount of mutually corroborating data that coincidence must be excluded. Such a result cannot be reached without sound practice and good method.”
― Y. Duhoux, A Companion to Linear B: Mycenean Greek Texts and Their World

“That so far the material has been dealt with in a rather subjective way provokes the question whether a means can be found of handling it objectively. [...] This chapter considers the applicability of the statistical tests employed by Wilson and the general problem whether the Linear B data are suited to statistical analysis.”
― Jennifer K. McArthur, Place-Names in the Knossos Tablets Identification and Location

“No data are excluded on subjective or arbitrary grounds. No one piece of data is more highly valued than another. The consequences of this policy have to be accepted, even if they prove awkward.”
― Jennifer K. McArthur, Place-Names in the Knossos Tablets Identification and Location

“The aim of the research is to determine what groups can be drawn up as a result of regular association of place-names. A further step is to consider whether such groups have a geographical significance. This was accepted by Palmer as a reasonable hypothesis; Wilson argued the case for it by considering possible ways in which information to be recorded on the tablets was received by the scribes. Underlying this work is the assumption that groupings may have a geographical basis, but it has still to be shown that this is a reasonable assumption.”
― Jennifer K. McArthur, Place-Names in the Knossos Tablets Identification and Location

“[M]eaning is part of an object to the extent that it acts upon intelligence in a predictable way.”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid