Voynich manuscript: the solution?(the-tls.co.uk)
the-tls.co.uk
Voynich manuscript: the solution?
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/voynich-manuscript-solution/
96 comments
The idea that the Voynich manuscript is a medical text seems plausible, but the theory that it uses a logographic representation (one symbol per word) rather than an alphabetic or even a syllabaric (one symbol per syllable) one seems less likely to me. A cursory examination of the manuscript (http://www.voynich.nu/folios.html) reveals that the lexicography looks much more like an alphabetic encoding than a logographic one like Chinese. The symbols are collected into word-like groups separated by white space. Also, it appears that there are too many repeated symbols and insufficiently many distinct symbols for a logographic language.
>The symbols are collected into word-like groups separated by white space.
Couldn't the same (whitespace separation) be done for sentences in a logographic representation?
Couldn't the same (whitespace separation) be done for sentences in a logographic representation?
Of course that's possible, but I don't think so. The lengths of the groups seem to me to be distributed more like words than sentences.
[UPDATE:] More info here: http://www.voynich.nu/analysis.html
This is particularly interesting:
"The apparent lack of common phrases is one of the main anomalies of the Voynich MS text."
If that's really true I think that's a big clue. (Exactly what it's a clue of I'm not sure :-)
[UPDATE:] More info here: http://www.voynich.nu/analysis.html
This is particularly interesting:
"The apparent lack of common phrases is one of the main anomalies of the Voynich MS text."
If that's really true I think that's a big clue. (Exactly what it's a clue of I'm not sure :-)
It looks more like stenography to me. You can even recognize the contours of regular Latin letters.
There are many crank analyses of the Voynich manuscript floating around out there. The only thing I've seen that has any believability (I'm a former linguist) is this:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4
tl;dr: it's probably real writing, likely related to Roma/Syriac
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4
tl;dr: it's probably real writing, likely related to Roma/Syriac
I rarely comment here anymore, but I wanted to break that tradition to say thank-you. I have been routinely frustrated—or more honestly, just annoyed—at Voynich attempts for exactly the reasons you highlight. I have no idea if this is correct, but it's the only serious modern attempt I've seen, and I genuinely really appreciated this.
I always thought XKCD's interpretation[1] of what the manuscript is about was, despite being comical in nature, the most intriguing...
1: https://xkcd.com/593/
1: https://xkcd.com/593/
As I understand it, Voynich has a too low information content to be an alphabetic (or -- a fortiori -- logographic or syllabic) representation of a human language. If true then it is almost certainly not 'real writing'.
The videos are an impressive phonological reconstruction, but I predict (based on the assumption that the math isn't lying), that it would be effectively impossible to get much beyond ad-hoc phonetic correspondences with Romany, to any predictive morphology or syntax.
The solution in this article is rather plausible. If the writing is in a highly restricted vocabulary, with highly restricted syntax, and highly constrained domain, it would be possible to get the observed information density.
Comparing it to, say, Linear B or Egyptian hieroglyphs is instructive. Both of those clearly have the information density of regular human language.
In the end, the solution might be a combination. It might use some Roma/Syriac nouns, but it seems clear it doesn't use them in anything like a normal linguistic context.
Caveat: IANALinguist
The videos are an impressive phonological reconstruction, but I predict (based on the assumption that the math isn't lying), that it would be effectively impossible to get much beyond ad-hoc phonetic correspondences with Romany, to any predictive morphology or syntax.
The solution in this article is rather plausible. If the writing is in a highly restricted vocabulary, with highly restricted syntax, and highly constrained domain, it would be possible to get the observed information density.
Comparing it to, say, Linear B or Egyptian hieroglyphs is instructive. Both of those clearly have the information density of regular human language.
In the end, the solution might be a combination. It might use some Roma/Syriac nouns, but it seems clear it doesn't use them in anything like a normal linguistic context.
Caveat: IANALinguist
> As I understand it, Voynich has a too low information content to be an alphabetic (or -- a fortiori -- logographic or syllabic) representation of a human language. If true then it is almost certainly not 'real writing'.
That is an extraordinarily European viewpoint, where alphabets have a few tens of glyphs, each representing a single letter (or, in the case of capital letters, two glyphs per letter).
Imagine an alphabet similar to Arabic where each letter may have up to five glyphs, or even an alphabet in which the _position_ of the glyph changes it's letter. Or Korean, where each 'letter' is composed of two or three interchangable components. Or Han, in which the number of instrument strokes in the glyph affect it's meaning.
There are so many variations on what constitutes a letter, never mind an individual glyph or a full word/concept, that one cannot use strictly European analysis techniques on arbitrary writing systems.
That is an extraordinarily European viewpoint, where alphabets have a few tens of glyphs, each representing a single letter (or, in the case of capital letters, two glyphs per letter).
Imagine an alphabet similar to Arabic where each letter may have up to five glyphs, or even an alphabet in which the _position_ of the glyph changes it's letter. Or Korean, where each 'letter' is composed of two or three interchangable components. Or Han, in which the number of instrument strokes in the glyph affect it's meaning.
There are so many variations on what constitutes a letter, never mind an individual glyph or a full word/concept, that one cannot use strictly European analysis techniques on arbitrary writing systems.
> That is an extraordinarily European viewpoint
It is not at all, you misunderstand the point.
It is the technique that codebreakers used to check whether something is linguistic or not. And it is rather consistent across all languages. The 'Alphabet size' of a string might vary (i.e. logographic languages have much higher symbolic vocabulary sizes, so different per-symbol information content), but that doesn't affect the overall information density, because those symbols also take more information to encode. I haven't done the analysis myself, but as I understand it, Voynich is way way outside the range of normal human languages, European or otherwise.
And raising the issue of logographic or syllabic systems, is a point I made (did you not understand they are your examples). Even if one argued (as some have done) that the symbols in Voynich are logographic or syllabic, that would make it even lower information density, even further from human language.
I'm sorry I wasn't clear, but this stuff is very well-established in the Voynich literature. It puts genuine constraints over what the language can contain. It doesn't mean it's gibberish, but it is very unlikely to be 'real writing' derived from any known language, extant or extinct. Crucially, if it is real writing, it is of a form so dramatically different to anything we've ever seen before (i.e. fundamentally different syntactic and semantic structures), that one suspects the kind of correspondence translation techniques in the videos will be futile.
It is not at all, you misunderstand the point.
It is the technique that codebreakers used to check whether something is linguistic or not. And it is rather consistent across all languages. The 'Alphabet size' of a string might vary (i.e. logographic languages have much higher symbolic vocabulary sizes, so different per-symbol information content), but that doesn't affect the overall information density, because those symbols also take more information to encode. I haven't done the analysis myself, but as I understand it, Voynich is way way outside the range of normal human languages, European or otherwise.
And raising the issue of logographic or syllabic systems, is a point I made (did you not understand they are your examples). Even if one argued (as some have done) that the symbols in Voynich are logographic or syllabic, that would make it even lower information density, even further from human language.
I'm sorry I wasn't clear, but this stuff is very well-established in the Voynich literature. It puts genuine constraints over what the language can contain. It doesn't mean it's gibberish, but it is very unlikely to be 'real writing' derived from any known language, extant or extinct. Crucially, if it is real writing, it is of a form so dramatically different to anything we've ever seen before (i.e. fundamentally different syntactic and semantic structures), that one suspects the kind of correspondence translation techniques in the videos will be futile.
Several years ago, while I was at UT Austin, a guy from Google (Their Translate team? Sorry, I don't remember his name.) came and gave a talk on Voynich.
The punch line of one of his stories came while he was discussing the history of attempts to interpret it. One character had a dense theory that involved, as a step in the middle, involved the text being an anagram. The problem being that anagramming destroys information and, given a large enough text, is impossible to reverse. (Interestingly, this is why some 17th-18th century scientists who were obsessed with both secrecy and precedence published their results in anagram form---if someone later came along and published the same result, they could say, "See, I was first; here's what that gibberish means.")
My point being that if you're going to posit an "out-there" theory, you have to make sure your theory can get you back here.
For a short text, you may have a point, but for a text as large as the Voynich, information content is a pretty reasonable way to examine what's going on. The number of characters (as far as I know (http://www.voynich.nu/transcr.html)) is within the range of alphabetic writing. (Alphabets have <100 characters, syllabaries typically have a few hundred (Note: English has something like 5000 syllables.), and "morpho-syllabic" languages like Chinese (Thank you, John DeFrancis!) have a few thousand.)
To have more bits per character, the document would have to have more different characters. To pack more bits in via position, for example, would be possible, but you can't go crazy with the idea because you still need to be able to decrypt it. (Hangul is a neat example; it's alphabetic, but written with the letters arranged into blocks representing syllables. Neat!)
The punch line of one of his stories came while he was discussing the history of attempts to interpret it. One character had a dense theory that involved, as a step in the middle, involved the text being an anagram. The problem being that anagramming destroys information and, given a large enough text, is impossible to reverse. (Interestingly, this is why some 17th-18th century scientists who were obsessed with both secrecy and precedence published their results in anagram form---if someone later came along and published the same result, they could say, "See, I was first; here's what that gibberish means.")
My point being that if you're going to posit an "out-there" theory, you have to make sure your theory can get you back here.
For a short text, you may have a point, but for a text as large as the Voynich, information content is a pretty reasonable way to examine what's going on. The number of characters (as far as I know (http://www.voynich.nu/transcr.html)) is within the range of alphabetic writing. (Alphabets have <100 characters, syllabaries typically have a few hundred (Note: English has something like 5000 syllables.), and "morpho-syllabic" languages like Chinese (Thank you, John DeFrancis!) have a few thousand.)
To have more bits per character, the document would have to have more different characters. To pack more bits in via position, for example, would be possible, but you can't go crazy with the idea because you still need to be able to decrypt it. (Hangul is a neat example; it's alphabetic, but written with the letters arranged into blocks representing syllables. Neat!)
Being the Voynich manuscript "kinda cursive" I would say it is possible you have the phenomenon of two (or more) drawings being the same letter (or ligatures happening).
> changes it's letter
changes its letter
> changes it's meaning
changes its meaning
> changes it's letter
changes its letter
> changes it's meaning
changes its meaning
Well the document is definitely European. It may be an invented writing system, but it would probably be closer to existing European ones than something totally foreign.
Imagine an alphabet similar to Arabic where each letter may have up to five glyphs, or even an alphabet in which the _position_ of the glyph changes it's letter.
But we don't have to imagine a random alphabet which Voynich might have been written in. We can look at the actual language in the manuscript. It often shows three or four Latin-like glyphs repeated. Unless you have access to some special way these symbols are differentiated or otherwise convey information, a way that all other would-be interpreters have missed, you really don't have an argument.
And as far as European thinking goes - there's no evidence I know of a non-European origin to the manuscript.
Edit: and the languages you cite have a larger, not smaller information content than European languages, see;
https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/6167/most-su...
But we don't have to imagine a random alphabet which Voynich might have been written in. We can look at the actual language in the manuscript. It often shows three or four Latin-like glyphs repeated. Unless you have access to some special way these symbols are differentiated or otherwise convey information, a way that all other would-be interpreters have missed, you really don't have an argument.
And as far as European thinking goes - there's no evidence I know of a non-European origin to the manuscript.
Edit: and the languages you cite have a larger, not smaller information content than European languages, see;
https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/6167/most-su...
I do agree that the repeated glyphs and almost-repeated "words" are a big red flag against "can this actually mean anything?", and I'm not sure the idea of abbreviations really explains that.
However, many medieval documents even in known real languages do contain almost undifferentiated glyphs one after the other:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)
Not quite the same, but something similar might conceivably apply to e.g. the Voynich's c-like characters.
However, many medieval documents even in known real languages do contain almost undifferentiated glyphs one after the other:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)
Not quite the same, but something similar might conceivably apply to e.g. the Voynich's c-like characters.
Well, I believe what article was saying was the text was shorthand for a sequence of actions - repeated letters implied repeated actions. In this case, sequences herbal infusions, bathing, magnets, etc.
IE, there's no text to translate, it's not an abbreviation for any standard text.
IE, there's no text to translate, it's not an abbreviation for any standard text.
It's an abbreviation? I guess that's the OP's thesis.
> regular human language.
Holy Montague! You've found it! ;)
Holy Montague! You've found it! ;)
>As I understand it, Voynich has a too low information content to be an alphabetic.
Natural language can be very surprising. :)
Natural language can be very surprising. :)
> tl;dr: it's probably real writing, likely related to Roma/Syriac
Roma and Syriac are two radically different languages (Indo-European vs Semitic), so it's peculiar that the conclusion would be that it's one of the two!
Disclaimer, I haven't watched the video.
Roma and Syriac are two radically different languages (Indo-European vs Semitic), so it's peculiar that the conclusion would be that it's one of the two!
Disclaimer, I haven't watched the video.
If I understand correctly his hypotheses is that the Roma while migrating from India to Europe picked up features of various languages, in particular they used an earlier version of Syriac for spelling their language. The Voynich language was based on this language but diverged substantially by losing the /d/ sound and more.
Watch the third video[1], it's much shorter but provides quite compelling evidence to support his theory.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhtZc-nFNt0
Watch the third video[1], it's much shorter but provides quite compelling evidence to support his theory.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhtZc-nFNt0
The summary above is a bit off. The conclusion is that it's a Syriac-derived script for a dialect of the Old Roma language. Think how Urdu is an Indic language written with a Semitic script.
He has a third video now. I know because I watched all of them.
Very interesting videos! Do you know of any discussion by linguists of this analysis? I checked /r/linguistics and couldn't find anything, but I'm a bit worried about posting it there since I'm not enough of a linguist to judge the merits of the analysis myself. I found some discussion of Bax's work here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/64p2hw/secret_... but nothing about Volder.
Bax does reply in support to Volder's videos, which seems positive.
Very good indeed. The third video is also amazing. Volder (and Prof Stephen Bax?) has very convincing arguments. Also he demonstrated incredible linguistic knowledge. It is inspiring.
Thank you for the links!
Edit: Btw, looking at some suggested videos I've found this https://youtu.be/PoNm65v1thU a bit intriguing.
Thank you for the links!
Edit: Btw, looking at some suggested videos I've found this https://youtu.be/PoNm65v1thU a bit intriguing.
Where's the actual solution? I feel like I'm missing something because what I see is some plausible commentary about it and some interesting discussion of Latin and ligatures but where's the actual decoding of the writing?
The last two paragraphs direct how to decode but no fully decoded text is available.
An exercise left to the reader I suppose.
An exercise left to the reader I suppose.
The image at the top is a decoding of a couple of lines of text.
The decoding yields extremely boring Latin, so I'm not terribly surprised if the investigator decided not to decode the entire document.
The decoding yields extremely boring Latin, so I'm not terribly surprised if the investigator decided not to decode the entire document.
That's the curious thing: to an academic there's no such thing as "extremely boring Latin", especially when it comes to the Voynich. Why we're only given a tantalizing line is odd. Perhaps there is no single "universal" solution? Perhaps this is just a guess that happens to roughly work for a single line, but nothing else?
I agree. To claim a solution without writing out the whole thing so it can be analyzed in depth seems absurd to me. I'm also not convinced that the statistical analyses that have been thrown at it would fail to detect patterns of meaning that are obscured merely by abbreviation.
There is a sample decoding at the top of the article. Looks plausible.
As I read it, the writing is un-decodable because it's not really "writing" in the conventional sense, it's recipes encoded using single-letter abbreviations, many of which require an index to decipher. No index is present, and the author surmises that it was never completed, or lost.
I'm reminded of the work that was done to reverse engineer the Intel ME 11 [1], it was compressed with an unknown Huffman code which the team was nevertheless able to recover somehow. And that was with variable-length words!
[1] http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel-me.html
[1] http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel-me.html
From your link:
> In particular, MINIX was chosen as the basis for the operating system (previously, ThreadX RTOS had been used). Now ME firmware includes a full-fledged operating system [...]
Woah, did I read that correctly? That there is a version of MINIX running inside of the Intel processors of presumably almost every modern computer with an Intel CPU that has Intel ME in it? If so then that's insanely cool! I mean I still dislike Intel ME itself and wish I could disable it easily and without risking damage/destruction but the idea of there being a version of MINIX running on my computer right now is quite cool.
> In particular, MINIX was chosen as the basis for the operating system (previously, ThreadX RTOS had been used). Now ME firmware includes a full-fledged operating system [...]
Woah, did I read that correctly? That there is a version of MINIX running inside of the Intel processors of presumably almost every modern computer with an Intel CPU that has Intel ME in it? If so then that's insanely cool! I mean I still dislike Intel ME itself and wish I could disable it easily and without risking damage/destruction but the idea of there being a version of MINIX running on my computer right now is quite cool.
Yup. I'm amazed too.
On the one hand I wish the signing keys are found/"figured out" one day; that means I can look at the OS myself, which would be cool.
But on the other hand, that gives rise to "3 CPUs for your rootkits!" (there are 3 486 cores) intrusions that would be unsettlingly hideable.
I'm torn about which way to go. Personally I actually wish the signing keys (or a circumvention) was in wide circulation - it means I have to be hyper-aware about my system state and what's running on it, but the chances are, if I can modify the code running on the 486 cores, I can run my own code on them that interacts with the rest of my system in detectable ways I can define myself (eg, writing a tiny string to a known part of memory immediately causes it to be changed (eg, hashed) to something else according to an algorithm) so I know the 486 cores are busy running my code (and hopefully only my code). Shard, fragment, encrypt, obfuscate, etc that logic a few degrees, and you should have a good canary.
And then I get to say _I'm_ using (in the sense that I own) all 11 cores, 19 cores, 27 cores, etc in my Intel CPU.
FWIW, it does seem that the keys are floating around out there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189982 (i336_ was my previous account before I accidentally locked it)
On the one hand I wish the signing keys are found/"figured out" one day; that means I can look at the OS myself, which would be cool.
But on the other hand, that gives rise to "3 CPUs for your rootkits!" (there are 3 486 cores) intrusions that would be unsettlingly hideable.
I'm torn about which way to go. Personally I actually wish the signing keys (or a circumvention) was in wide circulation - it means I have to be hyper-aware about my system state and what's running on it, but the chances are, if I can modify the code running on the 486 cores, I can run my own code on them that interacts with the rest of my system in detectable ways I can define myself (eg, writing a tiny string to a known part of memory immediately causes it to be changed (eg, hashed) to something else according to an algorithm) so I know the 486 cores are busy running my code (and hopefully only my code). Shard, fragment, encrypt, obfuscate, etc that logic a few degrees, and you should have a good canary.
And then I get to say _I'm_ using (in the sense that I own) all 11 cores, 19 cores, 27 cores, etc in my Intel CPU.
FWIW, it does seem that the keys are floating around out there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189982 (i336_ was my previous account before I accidentally locked it)
> Woah, did I read that correctly?
Yep.
> If so then that's insanely cool!
I find it rather disturbing myself.
Yep.
> If so then that's insanely cool!
I find it rather disturbing myself.
Or the situation might be that if a person comes to believe that the book is simply a compendium of coded medieval recipes then one wouldn't invest the huge amount of time need to reconstruct the index and so decoding it, since at the end one wouldn't wind-up with the prestige and excitement associated with decoding an ancient language.
[deleted]
A latin tramslation snipped is in the header:
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/s3/tls-prod/uploads/2017/09/p16_Gi...
(not too convincing IMO)
Other than declaring that the solution is obvious to a self-declared expert such as himself, the author (Nicholas Gibbs) doesn't appear to give any proof of his theory.
So far I can can find online, this piece is the only thing he has ever published about the Voynich manuscript: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22nicholas+gibbs%22+voynich
Who is Nicholas Gibbs? Does anyone besides Nicholas Gibbs trust his opinion on these matters? And how did he convince the TLS to publish this drivel?
(to avoid being entirely negative, here's a link to a blog that shows what some better Voynich research looks like: https://stephenbax.net)
So far I can can find online, this piece is the only thing he has ever published about the Voynich manuscript: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22nicholas+gibbs%22+voynich
Who is Nicholas Gibbs? Does anyone besides Nicholas Gibbs trust his opinion on these matters? And how did he convince the TLS to publish this drivel?
(to avoid being entirely negative, here's a link to a blog that shows what some better Voynich research looks like: https://stephenbax.net)
"As someone with long experience of interpreting the Latin inscriptions on classical monuments and the tombs and brasses in English parish churches, I recognized in the Voynich script tell-tale signs of an abbreviated Latin format."
Oh, my.
Either this is a parody or a tutorial on how to identify "crazy person goes down rat hole" situations.
Oh, my.
Either this is a parody or a tutorial on how to identify "crazy person goes down rat hole" situations.
"Systematic study of every single character in the Lexicon identified further ligatures and abbreviations in the Voynich manuscript and set a precedent. It became obvious that each character in the Voynich manuscript represented an abbreviated word and not a letter."
And here we go....
And here we go....
"This was problematic until I realized that not only had the folios of the manuscript been cropped (the images of flowers and roots have been severed and the tops of folios hacked) but, more importantly, the indexes that should have been there were now absent. Indexes are present in many other similar books: a system of cross-reference for illness, complaints, names of plants and page numbers. For the sake of brevity, the name of both plant and malaise were superfluous in the text so long as they could be found in the indexes matched with a page number."
Whee! It's like a slip-n-slide greased with butter.
Whee! It's like a slip-n-slide greased with butter.
The Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4861262/Exper...) has a few more details:
"...one British academic claims..."
"Nicholas Gibbs, who is an expert on medieval medical manuscripts,...."
"Mr Gibbs, who claims to be a professional history researcher..."
"...one British academic claims..."
"Nicholas Gibbs, who is an expert on medieval medical manuscripts,...."
"Mr Gibbs, who claims to be a professional history researcher..."
[deleted]
Agreed. It's a super strange article (sure, written like an academic, but even most don't bury the lede that badly!)
From the article it isn't clear if all or just a portion of the text is decipherable using the implied logic (ligatures of abbreviations of medicinal items).
From the article it isn't clear if all or just a portion of the text is decipherable using the implied logic (ligatures of abbreviations of medicinal items).
You know, it does seem odd that there's no background on the author and his qualifications attached to the article, and I can't seem to find any sign of him elsewhere.
Pseudonym?
I found a Nicholas Gibbs article on a medieval figure here: http://theibizan.com/ramon-llull-philosopher-logician/
Same guy? Editor of a paper in Ibiza.
ps. http://www.voynich.nu/ has a lot of interesting discussion; it's much linked to from wikipedia.
Same guy? Editor of a paper in Ibiza.
ps. http://www.voynich.nu/ has a lot of interesting discussion; it's much linked to from wikipedia.
I wonder if perhaps the article is a teaser for a forthcoming documentary?
> A chance remark just over three years ago brought me a commission from a television production company to analyse the illustrations of the Voynich manuscript and examine the commentators’ theories.
> A chance remark just over three years ago brought me a commission from a television production company to analyse the illustrations of the Voynich manuscript and examine the commentators’ theories.
Fascinating, if accurate - and I rather hope it is. If it is, it would make the whole thing a rather instructive example of how siloing knowledge can hide truth; the author's domain knowledge has given him the tools to identify the manuscript, but it's generally been in the domain of conspiracists and 'hidden knowledge of the ancients' types.
It would be good to see a thorough study of it to test the author's hypothesis, of course.
It would be good to see a thorough study of it to test the author's hypothesis, of course.
Rather convenient "solution".
The solution is the heading and index...which are missing.
Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution. But rather a statement that it can't be solved.
The solution is the heading and index...which are missing.
Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution. But rather a statement that it can't be solved.
> Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution. But rather a statement that it can't be solved.
Not at all. Someone more motivated than the author can choose to decode it. If much of it was lifted, then you can trace back the lifted "recipe" to the earlier work and construct the index.
However, it's going to be very painful, slow work. For no real gain (who really cares about a sloppily done Medieval health self-help book?).
Not at all. Someone more motivated than the author can choose to decode it. If much of it was lifted, then you can trace back the lifted "recipe" to the earlier work and construct the index.
However, it's going to be very painful, slow work. For no real gain (who really cares about a sloppily done Medieval health self-help book?).
[deleted]
Also a statement that the solution, even if found, would be boring as hell.
Is it consistent with the layout of other similar books of the period?
>Rather convenient "solution".
It doesn't matter if it's convenient as long as it's also true.
>Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution
Huh? Indexes can be reconstructed.
It doesn't matter if it's convenient as long as it's also true.
>Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution
Huh? Indexes can be reconstructed.
As Czech myself, I prefer to believe the theory of several clever guys tricking someone important to buy a nonsense book of secrets, splitting the spoils, having a good laugh. Resonates well... Heidrich called us the Laughing beasts for a reason.
"I have a brilliant proof, but not only is the margin too small to hold it, it has been hacked off".
This guy started with a hypothesis and then set out to prove it by looking for evidence. He then said the evidence was missing (hacked off) but his hypothesis was still true. Really, it is not very persuasive.
I don't see a lot of "why" in this supposed solution. If what the author says is true, it sounds like an incredibly painstaking process to encode all of this, especially when it was something so tedious (it would make more sense if the source material were interesting or salacious!). I can sort of understand abbreviating the long plant names to individual symbols, referenced from an index, and I can understand ligatures for things like "etiam", but why make each and every single character represent a whole word? Surely the end result is that the manuscript, even with the index, becomes very, very hard to read?
And is there a good explanation for why this document apparently stands alone in history as the only manuscript written in this way? Were there others, and we just lost them? Was this just a particularly egregious example of this forgotten art, and others written in this manner were easier to decipher? Lastly, there's a whole Wikipedia page about "scribal abbreviations" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation - if decoding the Voynich manuscript were so easy as the author makes out ("It became obvious...") then why has some other medieval expert not already figured it out in the near-century people have been studying this manuscript?
And is there a good explanation for why this document apparently stands alone in history as the only manuscript written in this way? Were there others, and we just lost them? Was this just a particularly egregious example of this forgotten art, and others written in this manner were easier to decipher? Lastly, there's a whole Wikipedia page about "scribal abbreviations" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation - if decoding the Voynich manuscript were so easy as the author makes out ("It became obvious...") then why has some other medieval expert not already figured it out in the near-century people have been studying this manuscript?
What if it is just Lorem Ipsum by someone who could draw but not actually write?
A few people have hypothesized that it was the result of a case of glossolalia. Having been to the outsider art museum in Baltimore, it doesn't seem incredibly unlikely.
Not sure if serious, but on the off chance... seems unlikely. We create "Lorem Ipsum" gibberish to fill space because modern technology has made it trivially easy to do so. The same exercise would have taken a medieval writer many laborious hours.
But in contrast to Lorem Ipsum might have been sold for a high price, a la The Emperor's New Clothes?
Or, there's something called "spirit writing" isn't there, a sort of written form of speaking in tongues? Presumably the doing of which is also considered to be it's own reward.
Heck, perhaps a scribe went psychotic.
Or, there's something called "spirit writing" isn't there, a sort of written form of speaking in tongues? Presumably the doing of which is also considered to be it's own reward.
Heck, perhaps a scribe went psychotic.
It might have been sold for a high price, but vellum and coloured inks were expensive at the time, and it is a very long document when a much shorter one would still seem to fit the bill.
Seems a bit of a gamble if that was the plan, and the scribes were presumably either well-to-do or trusted by someone well-to-do if they could get their hands on the raw materials. That makes the prank/con/crazy spirit writing theory seem less likely to me but certainly doesn't rule either out.
Seems a bit of a gamble if that was the plan, and the scribes were presumably either well-to-do or trusted by someone well-to-do if they could get their hands on the raw materials. That makes the prank/con/crazy spirit writing theory seem less likely to me but certainly doesn't rule either out.
A sample translation is the key thing I wanted to read in this article, and all they gave was an illegible low-resolution snippet without an English translation -- very annoying.
As best as I can read, the purported Latin translation in the image at the top of the article says:
Folia de oz et en de aqua et de radicts de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 2 et de radicis semenis ana 1 etium abonenticus confundo. Folia et cum folia et confundo etiam de eius decocole adigo aromaticus decocque de decoctio adigo aromaticus et confundo et de radicis seminis ana 3.
Feeding the above to Google Translate gives:
The leaves of Oz and added to the water and the aromatic radicts semen Ana ana 3 2 seed and the roots ana 1 etium abonenticus the mix. The leaves, when the leaves are decocole adigo and the mix of the aromatic decocque of the cooking adigo an aromatic mix of roots and seeds Ana 3.
Yes, I realize that the author's translation might be completely mistaken, but I'm curious to read what he thinks it says. If someone can make out the words better, please do so.
As best as I can read, the purported Latin translation in the image at the top of the article says:
Folia de oz et en de aqua et de radicts de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 2 et de radicis semenis ana 1 etium abonenticus confundo. Folia et cum folia et confundo etiam de eius decocole adigo aromaticus decocque de decoctio adigo aromaticus et confundo et de radicis seminis ana 3.
Feeding the above to Google Translate gives:
The leaves of Oz and added to the water and the aromatic radicts semen Ana ana 3 2 seed and the roots ana 1 etium abonenticus the mix. The leaves, when the leaves are decocole adigo and the mix of the aromatic decocque of the cooking adigo an aromatic mix of roots and seeds Ana 3.
Yes, I realize that the author's translation might be completely mistaken, but I'm curious to read what he thinks it says. If someone can make out the words better, please do so.
Ana is the equivalent quantity of different ingredients used in the pharmaceutical preparation in Italy.
To me that translation makes sense.
Google translate is messing up badly it should be something like this for my remote knowledge of Latin:
1 leaf of oz in water, 3 ana (equivalent quantity) of aromatic roots, 2 ana of seeds, mix very well together.
Infuse the leaves mixed together with the aromatic (roots) and with the roots infusion and mix all together with 3 ana of root seeds.
seems like it says "Folia de oz 3 et in de aqua et de radacis de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 3 et de radacis seminis ana 1 1/2 [fraction unclear] etiam aromaticus confundo."
At the end of the article the author provides the following: aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc.
"Folia" = "leaves".
"Oz"= unknown, but can this be simply ounces? I'm not sure when the abbreviation was first used or if it was used in latin at all.
"etiam"="also", "furthermore", "still"
So... "3 leaves of "oz"/ 3 oz of leaves and in water and of the roots three each of 'aromaticus' three each of seeds,and of the seeds of the root 1 1/2 each also 'aromaticus' mixed."
Still kind of a nonsense. It seems there's no mention of what plant or plants should be used, unless aromaticus is that plant.
At the end of the article the author provides the following: aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc.
"Folia" = "leaves".
"Oz"= unknown, but can this be simply ounces? I'm not sure when the abbreviation was first used or if it was used in latin at all.
"etiam"="also", "furthermore", "still"
So... "3 leaves of "oz"/ 3 oz of leaves and in water and of the roots three each of 'aromaticus' three each of seeds,and of the seeds of the root 1 1/2 each also 'aromaticus' mixed."
Still kind of a nonsense. It seems there's no mention of what plant or plants should be used, unless aromaticus is that plant.
So the whole thing is written in a form of shorthand and the core index/naming that define what the individual pieces are is missing. I wonder if this wasn't meant as a "production" manuscript but as a reference document for the replication of a larger work?
was thinking the same thing. Kind of like a compression algorithm. Keep this low-paper version with an index if a scribe needed to write out another copy. Of course, if that were the cases, then it would probably be for a higher volume book and some copies of the real thing might be lying around somewhere.
Don't have time to read this properly but have been reading about the VM lately, most interesting researchers I've found are Stephen Bax[1] and this YouTuber[2]
[1] https://stephenbax.net/?cat=5
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-sW5dOlDxxu0EgdNn2pMaQ
Some really interesting analyses in there.
[1] https://stephenbax.net/?cat=5
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-sW5dOlDxxu0EgdNn2pMaQ
Some really interesting analyses in there.
He doesn't address any of the central mysteries of the manuscript, including that none of the plants in the herbarium don't actually exist in nature and the "tubes" that the women in the bath section travel through, not to mention their odd skin coloration. Plus his exploration is convenient in that he doesn't have to actually decipher anything.
Other people have also suggested Latin as the most likely base language. A better discussion is provided here:
http://www.science20.com/patrick_lockerby/patterns_of_latin_...
A fascinating analysis, half done. If the whole text were decoded and the indices rebuilt, would be more convincing.
There is a good general synopsis of the Voynich manuscript on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript
Interesting stuff!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript
Interesting stuff!
Interesting. Noticed youtube pushing Voynich in suggestions out of the blue last week, now there's an article posted up here days later.
tldr;
By now, it was more or less clear what the Voynich
manuscript is: a reference book of selected remedies
lifted from the standard treatises of the medieval
period, an instruction manual for the health and
well being of the more well to do women in society,
which was quite possibly tailored to a single
individual.[deleted]
Betteridge's law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
Like, is everyone ignoring the picture at the top of the article? That looks like a pretty believable direct translation of the ligatures to me. I know its not the whole thing, but it is plausibly consistent.
That image is titled p16_Gibbs1.jpg. To me that hints that the author is serious and is planning to release a detailed paper.
His final statement at the end of the article is really bold. "Not only is the manuscript incomplete, but its folios are in the wrong order – and all for the want of an index."
Perhaps the author is going to provide the index, and the correct order for the folios while providing what he believes to be the missing pieces from other texts from that time period?
This article looks like a teaser to me for something significant. Let's hope anyway.
That image is titled p16_Gibbs1.jpg. To me that hints that the author is serious and is planning to release a detailed paper.
His final statement at the end of the article is really bold. "Not only is the manuscript incomplete, but its folios are in the wrong order – and all for the want of an index."
Perhaps the author is going to provide the index, and the correct order for the folios while providing what he believes to be the missing pieces from other texts from that time period?
This article looks like a teaser to me for something significant. Let's hope anyway.
Site no worky without javascript, could someone paste a copy, please?
In all I am surprised more progress has not been made since the advent of the internet and its crowd-sourcing potential. There is definitely no shortage of interpretations all over the internet, and in headlines from time to time. The last one I recall from a couple of months ago suggested that there was a specific Jewish birthing practice being illustrated on one of the pages that suggested a certain origin of the text. [2]
[1]https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-fi...
[2]https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/05/author-of-myst...