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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

#81

Post by Renaud »

wavefunction wrote: post #76
Renaud wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it certainly point toward a rich patron in any case, someone who could afford all this manual labour. But what is more likely? That this is a forgotten language of which only a single mystifying example exists (ignoring the completely unlikely plants being described in the manuscript), or that it is a work of fantasy that has merits of its own?

A botanist disagrees with your assessment of the plants described in the Manuscript: http://phys.org/news/2014-02-botanists-voynich-similar-mexic...

That out of the 300+ plants described about 12% could match some existing ones doesn't really allow anyone to make definitive conclusion as to whether these plants could be real. I'm sure you could match some of the simple ones to more than one plant and that still 85%+ that are unaccounted for.

Beside, that doesn't detract from the fact that the author of the manuscript could still have found inspiration into existing plants, imagination doesn't preclude a basis in reality.

Maybe the manuscript was written in Mexico. Maybe it is written in a cypher to obfuscate the fact that some of its content might be believed to be heretical (it contains a fair amount of naked women and appears to have some diagrams and illustrations that may relate to a theory of the origins of life or an animistic explanation of natural phenomena).

In an case, it's certainly an interesting subject of research, but I still think that the possibility of it being a work of pure fiction, maybe for the sole amusement of an eccentric rich patron, is a possibility.

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

#82

Post by DanBC »

Renaud wrote: post #81
wavefunction wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A botanist disagrees with your assessment of the plants described in the Manuscript: http://phys.org/news/2014-02-botanists-voynich-similar-mexic...

That out of the 300+ plants described about 12% could match some existing ones doesn't really allow anyone to make definitive conclusion as to whether these plants could be real. I'm sure you could match some of the simple ones to more than one plant and that still 85%+ that are unaccounted for. Beside, that doesn't detract from the fact that the author of the manuscript could still have found inspiration into existi…

I've seen pictures of animals that were described to an illustrator. They're pretty far from the actual animal. Is that possible here?

I imagine drawing a plant from a dry mangled sample is going to be tricky.

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

#83

Post by pyre »

catshirt wrote: post #79
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that this is more of a mob lynching, rather than constructive combined effort. To look for models that work, look no further than open source. Projects with high amount of interest quite often do better.

i assure you it was intended to be a constructive combined effort. i only skimmed the article linked but it doesn't seem to reference the fact that the kid who was falsely identified was found dead, presumably by his own hand. "hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works", as they say. on a lighter note, if you consider an open source project "crowdsourced" then i posit the current collaborative a…

Which kid is that? The one that was already missing before the bombing?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-26/falsely-accused-bombin...

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

#84

Post by Typhon »

aaron695 wrote: post #56
mitchty wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kinda. Probability one - it's a joke/hoax/fun. Hence it's unique and no one has any idea about it in current day. The small group of people who created it had a laugh and are long dead. Probability two, it's a bizarre exciting new language we know absolutely nothing about in anything else. It's freely available on the internet for everyone to see, incredibly popular and know around the world and looked at by many exp…

Or maybe it's an existing language in a yet unknown script.

they don't really get how much people in the past and in other cultures are just like us, they like funny, silly and fun things too

Thank you for your condescension. Obviously, philologists, linguists and other specialists are stupidly wasting their time while you have it all figured out based on the "obvious" insight of one rather lame XKCD strip.

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

#85

Post by catshirt »

pyre wrote: post #83
catshirt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i assure you it was intended to be a constructive combined effort. i only skimmed the article linked but it doesn't seem to reference the fact that the kid who was falsely identified was found dead, presumably by his own hand. "hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works", as they say. on a lighter note, if you consider an open source project "crowdsourced" then i posit the current collaborative a…

Which kid is that? The one that was already missing before the bombing? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-26/falsely-accused-bombin...

yes. he was missing, then falsely accused, then found dead.

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

#86

Post by marlin »

This news led me to finally have a look at the manuscript, there are some very curious details in the text.

First you should get the PDF copy from http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2...

The page numbering used below is taken from the Yale PDF.

* On page 49v in the left margin, you can clearly read "1 2 3 4 5", suggesting again to me that the writer had previous knowledge of other languages. The same page has more arabic number series in the left margin of the page, "0 2 9" repeats, and "8 9" occurs (read top-down). I may be confused by the apperance of the symbols. However the "1 2 3 4 5" sequence is a extremely unlikely coincidence.

* These numbers in the left margin can be seen on several other pages, such as 54v. Again, i may be confused by the appearance of the symbols. However the more i look at it, it does look like a code.

* On 57v, we can see what appears to be an alphabet sequence in the circles. The sequence is mirrored on the other part of the same circle in the second circle counted from the outside.

* Page 66r again has a left-column top-down list of symbols, what looks like a encryption key of sorts.

Many clues in the document makes me believe it is unlikely to orginate from america, such as crossbowmen, castles and bath houses.

I published a longer write up on my blog, at http://martinlindhe.blogspot.se/2014/02/the-other-day-news-b...

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

#87

Post by Luyt »

There is a skeptoid episode about the Voynich manuscript: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252

"A famous analysis done in the 1970's by US Navy cryptographer Prescott Currier found that the Voynich manuscript is written in two distinct languages. He used the term languages, but also cautioned that they're also consistent with different subject matter, different encryption schemes, or possibly just different dialects. He called them Voynich-A and Voynich-B. Interestingly, Voynich-A and Voynich-B are in two different handwritings, though both use the same alphabet and script. Every page of the book is written entirely in either A or B. The Biology and Star sections of the book are written in Voynich-B; the others are written in Voynich-A. The exception is the first and largest section, Botanical, which contains some of each. But they're not simply interspersed. The way the book is bound uses bifolios, which are groups of pages folded together, which are then stacked on top of one another to be bound. Each bifolio in the Voynich manuscript is written entirely in one language or the other."

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

#88

Post by Luc »

Renaud wrote: post #59
pavanky wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike late 20th century, Writing in the 15th century was rare and a costly endeavor. It is possible that it is an expression of whimsical fantasy. But it would be highly unlikely for this reason.

Well, it certainly point toward a rich patron in any case, someone who could afford all this manual labour. But what is more likely? That this is a forgotten language of which only a single mystifying example exists (ignoring the completely unlikely plants being described in the manuscript), or that it is a work of fantasy that has merits of its own?

I know several dialects that are dying out, that lived and evolved for hundreds of years within 50km of each other, each of which is practically incomprehensible to a speaker of the other. Seeing them in written form is painful, because some kind of mapping has to be invented to the latin character set, and I can absolutely see someone inventing their own characters for the sounds not represented.

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

#89

Post by wavefunction »

Renaud wrote: post #81
wavefunction wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A botanist disagrees with your assessment of the plants described in the Manuscript: http://phys.org/news/2014-02-botanists-voynich-similar-mexic...

That out of the 300+ plants described about 12% could match some existing ones doesn't really allow anyone to make definitive conclusion as to whether these plants could be real. I'm sure you could match some of the simple ones to more than one plant and that still 85%+ that are unaccounted for. Beside, that doesn't detract from the fact that the author of the manuscript could still have found inspiration into existi…

Certainly. I agree with many of your excellent points. One other possibility is that this Manuscript copied from those earlier texts while 'adding' additional 'wholly new' creations. Or even that our knowledge of the bio-diversity of Central and South America is still lacking...

When this was still a curio with no apparent ties to any part of the world, I figured it was simply another 'esoteric knowledge system' using symbols and the structures of the information to convey that information without giving it away to the uninitiated. I wondered about the placement of leaves and vascular systems, colors used in combinations, the combinations of animals and plants and placements on the page. All the sorts of things esoteric scholars used to encipher their information in other works.

I think this final bit is what captivates the modern mind: we yearn to understand, even if the subject might turn out to be "meaningless" beyond a work of fantasy.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

Luyt wrote: post #87

There is a skeptoid episode about the Voynich manuscript: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252 "A famous analysis done in the 1970's by US Navy cryptographer Prescott Currier found that the Voynich manuscript is written in two distinct languages. He used the term languages, but also cautioned that they're also consistent with different subject matter, different encryption schemes, or possibly just different dialects. He…

[deleted]
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