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Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

medievalists.net

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Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#21

Post by Typhon »

aaron695 wrote: post #18

Why can't people just realise humour is not unique to one's own time period and culture. Jumped the shark here - "He also speculates that the reason this work is written in a language never seen before was that it was made by a small group of people who belonged to a culture that didn’t have a written form."

I am puzzled by your comment.

Do you mean to imply that the Voynich manuscript is "obviously" a joke ?

Do you mean to imply that, in your view, the invention of a new alphabet to write an hitherto unwritten language, which would then have failed to gain widespread acceptance, is a less realistic explanation than your own theory ?

Would you please care to explain it in greater details, then ?

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#22

Post by bnegreve »

> Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

As the author of this work states it himself, this is a "proposed partial decoding" and it is "tentative and provisional".

But anyway, the methodology is interesting and the video is worth watching. Although I'd be surprised all his speculations are correct, it seems to be the way to go.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#23

Post by caseydurfee »

Typhon wrote: post #11
bencollier49 wrote: post #5

The combination of the Voynich Manuscript's history of translation claims, taken together with the origin of this work ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/I... ), leads me to view this with at least something of an air of caution.

I read the paper and found it to be intelligible and interesting, making reasonable attempts to justify sound, plausible hypothesis. Obviously he may not be right, but his explanations are well worth reading.

This describes many, many translation attempts of the Voynich Manuscript, though. At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading, because they all seem to follow the same pattern.

Try and identify plants/stars/places in the text by their real names, work backwards from those names, find some other semi-intelligible parts of the manuscript based on that, then handwave away the 80% of the manuscript that has to be gibberish because the information density is too low to be some kind of natural language... why is another attempt along these lines interesting?

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#24

Post by EGreg »

This is pretty cool, and if it is not a hoax then this is one of the only documents that remains a mystery in the age of us cracking codes, not just ones like the Zimmermann telegram and the Venona project, but even the Vigenère cipher which was eventually broken and deciphered.

So this could be like navajo code talkers ... an organic language that is hard to decipher because it comes from a culture so unconnected to anything, that it developed its own symbolism. This is an intersection of cryptography and history.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#25

Post by Typhon »

caseydurfee wrote: post #23
Typhon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the paper and found it to be intelligible and interesting, making reasonable attempts to justify sound, plausible hypothesis. Obviously he may not be right, but his explanations are well worth reading.

This describes many, many translation attempts of the Voynich Manuscript, though. At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading, because they all seem to follow the same pattern. Try and identify plants/stars/places in the text by their real names, work backwards from those names, find some other semi-intelligible parts of the manuscript based on that, then handwave away the 8…

then handwave away the 80% of the manuscript that has to be gibberish because the information density is too low to be some kind of natural language

Well, if you'd read more carefully, you'd know that Stephen Bax is precisely claiming that it is a natural language. And I don't know as much as you regarding the other translation attempts, but from what I gathered, they made assumptions which are incorrect from a linguistic perspective (e.g words "too long" or "too short" for it to be a natural language, which in fact only proves that it's likely not a european language)

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#26

Post by lotsofmangos »

caseydurfee wrote: post #23
Typhon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the paper and found it to be intelligible and interesting, making reasonable attempts to justify sound, plausible hypothesis. Obviously he may not be right, but his explanations are well worth reading.

This describes many, many translation attempts of the Voynich Manuscript, though. At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading, because they all seem to follow the same pattern. Try and identify plants/stars/places in the text by their real names, work backwards from those names, find some other semi-intelligible parts of the manuscript based on that, then handwave away the 8…

At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading

Then your commentary on the subject is utterly worthless.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#27

Post by lotsofmangos »

bencollier49 wrote: post #5

The combination of the Voynich Manuscript's history of translation claims, taken together with the origin of this work ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/I... ), leads me to view this with at least something of an air of caution.

However, if you given an appropriate weighting for The Telegraph and consider the influence of Betterige, any reasonable Bayesian analysis would conclude from this evidence that Luton can't be all that bad.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#28

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

Well, he's trying to recognize the plants and work out backwards from their known names, but there's a lot of assumptions and glossing over involved in this approach.

1) A figure hints at a sunflower, but the idea is refuted based on the supposed location and date of this manuscript (sunflower is native from the American continent).

2) Another figure was recognized as "coriander", that looks nothing like it, but they went with it anyway because the transcript was possible.

It looks like a botanist is more likely to figure out this manuscript than a linguist. The other theory that this manuscript is about plants from the american continent [1] is less flawed in my opinion. It could also explain why it's in an totally unfamiliar script, as it could be a pre-Spanish language, or an attempt from a foreign to codify it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7199751

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#29

Post by mitchty »

Typhon wrote: post #21
aaron695 wrote: post #18

Why can't people just realise humour is not unique to one's own time period and culture. Jumped the shark here - "He also speculates that the reason this work is written in a language never seen before was that it was made by a small group of people who belonged to a culture that didn’t have a written form."

I am puzzled by your comment. Do you mean to imply that the Voynich manuscript is "obviously" a joke ? Do you mean to imply that, in your view, the invention of a new alphabet to write an hitherto unwritten language, which would then have failed to gain widespread acceptance, is a less realistic explanation than your own theory ? Would you please care to explain it in greater details, then ?

I think the implication is that a likely explanation of the situation is that if the alphabet is a mish mash of other languages it is also possibly just a made up conglomeration that was used to make up the manuscript.

Basically the xkcd comic would apply, just that the people (or person) that wrote it had a fairly broad linguistic ability.

But I'm just assuming.

Re: Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds

#30

Post by jccooper »

zzleeper wrote: post #16
bencollier49 wrote: post #5

The combination of the Voynich Manuscript's history of translation claims, taken together with the origin of this work ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3326436/I... ), leads me to view this with at least something of an air of caution.

What is the relation with Luton? Can't see any mention here: http://stephenbax.net/

University of Bedfordshire is a result of a merger of a Bedfordshire campus of De Montfort University and University of Luton.

http://www.beds.ac.uk/aboutus/history

The linked story is from before the merger (2005), and before the center Bax works at was founded (at a third campus).

I wouldn't say that story has much relevance here. You'd want to look into the credentials of his language center and Bax himself (which look decent to me, though I don't know anything in particular.)

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