I’ve had some nice emails in the last few days from all kinds of historical codebreakers, which set me thinking: what kind of person would be able to solve any of the mysteries of the Voynich Manuscript? I mean, anyone can look at it – but what kind of a mind would stand any chance of being able to solve it?
Perhaps the first thing to consider is whether you can genuinely appreciate it: not as a ‘work of art’ (only someone who hasn’t been to a proper art gallery could call the VMs ‘beautiful’), but as an artefact of puzzling beauty. I find the way that it manages to encompass so many opposites simultaneously analogous to ultra-complex chess problems (such as V.Korolkov’s near-unbelievable 1937 study):-
- Left-to-right and right-to-left aspects… but neither dominating
- Features that suggest Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Italian, French, Occitan, Slavic… but none dominating
- Old and new, traditional and contemporary, medieval & Renaissance… but none dominating
- Language, shorthand, cipher… but none dominating
…and so on. The knee-jerk academic reaction to each of these aspects is reductivist: to reduce the problem space by forcing a choice, for how can (for example) a thing be both medieval and Renaissance?
Yet my personal Voynich “moment of Zen” came when I stopped trying to wrestle with these opposites, i.e. when I stopped trying to force the evidential pendulum to swing to a single side. The way I now see it is that all these complex aspects are not inherently contradictory or paradoxical, but are instead just different sides of the thing itself, if not also different sides of the person behind it.
I therefore think that the people who will solve the VMs will be those who can manage to abandon their intellectual need for certainties, for I believe the answers will ultimately emerge from combining and working with all these ambiguities and uncertainties, not in fighting against them.
Realistically, however, very few people can manage this trick, as it goes against almost everything you’ve been taught. Perhaps the key attribute you’d need to cultivate is intuition: I’ve blogged elsewhere about how entrepreneurs need intuition, which I define as “the means by which we combine uncertainties” – perhaps Voynich researchers are utimately much the same?
Err… intuition may have very big power, but it’s not possible to make trusty scientific solution of VMS on basis of intuition, only hypothesies. And if someone publishes such hypothesis, it will be dead after primary science based discussion IMHO… Sigh 🙁
Vytautas
Vytautas: I don’t think you’ve really understood what I mean by “intuition”. The fact that we remain unable to definitively prove that the VMs is a language or a cipher or a shorthand is a special kind of fact: an uncertainty. Something is causing that uncertainty, but what? “Intuitionist logic” has three values – “true”, “false”, “unconstructable” – but what nobody seems to realise is that the observation of unconstructability can itself form a datapoint. In the VMs, we are immersed in exactly these kinds of uncertainties, and we have to try to reason with them. It’s a hard argument to follow, but everything is there.
Hi, Nick,
thanks for detail explaining, my understanding was a bit different – pardon for my bad understanding of English expressions 🙂 My opinion about today’s situation with VMS: only full deciphering (or another sort of information disclosure) may be accepted by academic people – too many hypothesies and different ideas exist. And every ideas author defend it, sometimes even with sword of defeating another ideas 🙂
Vytautas
Vytautas: Even if full deciphering is the end-line, it doesn’t mean that it’s the halfway line as well. And you’re absolutely right: too many swords, not enough scaffolding! 🙂
I had a similar question: what kind of expertise, what academic discipline, i.e linguistics, cryptography, history, mathematics, computer, would be needed to either crack it or prove it a series of meaningless nonsense.
Which of the above disciplines have had the most success in decoding other ciphers and writing systems of lost languages (i.e Mayan, linear b, etc.)
Neo: I think persistence and insight typically won over breadth and erudition… but each historical cipher and mystery has its own unique story, it’s hard to generalize.
** Saludos Nickpelling y sus lectores. Estoy a favor de la idea “Niza” si la observamos a grandes trazos, pero solo con la intuición no se va a conseguir mucho.
Se requiere para que funcione, una serie de experiencias que una persona del mundo actual no dispone, pues el problema fundamental de este manuscrito es entender lo que realmente se busca, para poder aplicarlo en la ciencia del criptoanálisis.
Podemos descubrir los fenómenos que provoca esta criptografía, pero no tienen ningún sentido si no estas acostumbrado a tratar los símbolos de una forma concreta y lógica para el autor. Esta lógica esta totalmente perdida por el paso del tiempo, posiblemente por la falta de utilidad en nuestro mundo moderno.
Por ejemplo: Imaginemos que queremos hacer un sistema criptográfico en el siglo XII y conocemos el juego llamado “sudoku”, utilizando algunas pautas del juego podríamos hacer un sistema que seria muy difícil de resolver en la época, simplemente por que ha nadie se le ocurriría criptoanálisis un texto de esta manera.
La lógica que se utiliza en el manuscrito no se ha perdido del todo, hay todavía algunas referencias perdidas en otros manuscritos de la misma época que hablan de un sistema muy similar, espero que con ello dentro de unos meses pueda conseguir algo interesante.
Pero no me prestéis mucho caso sobre los “meses”, que últimamente tengo tanto trabajo que no tengo tiempo para nada del manuscrito. Después hablan de crisis?
** Greetings Nickpelling and its readers. I support the idea of “nice” if we look in broad strokes, but only with intuition is not going to get much.
Required to work, a series of experiences that a person in the world today does not, because the fundamental problem of this manuscript is to understand what is really being sought in order to apply the science of cryptanalysis.
We can discover the phenomena that causes the cryptography, but make no sense if you’re not used to dealing with the symbols of a specific and logical for the author. This logic is totally lost by the passage of time, possibly due to lack of use in our modern world.
For example: Suppose you want to do a cryptographic system in the twelfth century and we know the game called “Sudoku”, using some patterns of play could make a system that would be very difficult to resolve at the time, simply because no one would have cryptanalysis text in this way.
The logic used in the manuscript has not been lost entirely, there are still some missing references in other manuscripts of the same era who talk about a very similar, I hope so within a few months to get something interesting.
But I do not really pay much attention on “months”, which I have so much work lately that I have no time for anything of the manuscript. After talk of crisis?
I don’t know that “intuition” is not knowledge dependent- as solid as the relevance of a person’s scholarship to the subject at hand.
All those intuitions, for example, about 16th and even 17th century alchemy proved irrelevant, not because the historians of alchemy didn’t know their stuff, but because they didn’t know enough about manuscripts to sense that this was the product of an earlier time.
I’d say that Intuition is one, not-always-trustworthy, aid during the process of research.
Conclusions, though, must depend on something other.
Hi Nick! Your comment that it’s neither medieval or Renaissance is interesting. The time frame was transitional between the two! So are the picture styles, the script styles, the ciphers of the time, and other things. So the answer is, it’s a transitional artifact. There are many other transitional artifacts!
Many of the greatest artists in history were transitional figures, such as Dante, Beethoven, and others.
Sergi: I don’t currently think a full-scale cryptological attack will work – we need to work on understanding other (far more subtle) aspects first…
** Hola Nick, es precisamente lo que quiero decir, no es posible realizar un criptoanálisis sin entender los símbolos y que sentido tienen los ordenes entre ellos, pues posiblemente el sistema criptográfico es muy sencillo. El problema es que el lector considera cosas obias cuando en realidad no lo son.
Como he dicho; en otros manuscritos podemos encontrar algunas referencias que pueden orientar al investigador. Cuando se entienda se podrá realizar el trabajo de criptoanálisis.
** Hi Nick, is precisely what I mean, it is not possible to perform a cryptanalysis without understanding the symbols and meaning are the orders between them, possibly because the cryptographic system is easy. The problem is that the reader sees things obias when in fact they are not.
As I said, in other manuscripts we can find some references that can guide the researcher. When you understand you can do the job of cryptanalysis.
Dennis: you’re right, of course – but I think the ambiguity is far more overwhelming than that. Voynich researchers are (for the most part) polymathic, rational and persistent, and yet they continue to argue over ridiculously basic things.
Hi Nick, to make these discussion more useful to the purpose of getting closer to Voynich’s decriptation, why don’t you create a sort of “teamwork” ?
eivind: the difficulty lies in deciding what to do next, what to study next in order to make progress. But this issue is at the front of my mind, and I will post more on this soon…
I agree. We must first decide which path follow. For example: we should decide if the images are useful to translate the script or if they are not, if we must look at the whole book or if it’s enough to concentrate only on some pages.
I guess that only a very well organized and expert team can make it…
eivind: yes, but whose path? It seems there are nearly as many paths as Voynich researchers.
All the same, I suspect the strongest piece of primary evidence leading forward is the presence of Voynichese in the line of marginalia at the top of f17r (you can only clearly see this under UV light). This strongly suggests to me that the person who added the marginalia was also the author, and that the marginalia should probably be our main source for clues as to that person’s identity or locale.
Nick, where do you discuss UV study of f17r? I don’t recall that discussion. Are there UV images here or elsewhere on the Web?
Dennis: in “The Curse of the Voynich”, pp.29-30 (“A Sealed Letter”). There are currently no UV images anywhere, because the Beinecke didn’t have any provision for making any after “going digital”. Their photographer guy took some images of the page with and without the UV filter for me, but that wasn’t enough for image processing.
Hi Nick, (f 17r).translated.
5.words.
M.G. Writes,,and words,,foreign,,,writing,,.
( M = mud,,G = gold ).
zdravím Josef.
Hi Nick,
I presume that the person who will be able to solve the mystery is someone who, one way or another, is capable of being in two places at the same time.
It’s been suggested in the past that nobody’s been able to solve it, since we’re collectively barking up the wrong trees. So one needs to take a step back and look from a distance. Far enough to see all the variety of trees and lamp posts we should have been paying attention to in the first place.
At the same time one needs to be really close to it. One needs to grasp a large amount of details, each of which is potentially a giveway clue.
Cheers, Rene
Rene: oh, so we’ve all been particles when we should have been waves? I understand now! 😉
.~
tony: ~ if you’re asking. 🙂
Was just summing things up in a concise fashion –
(I’d send you a smiley face with a wink in return but i’ve forgotten how?!)
I’d say a necessary but not sufficient condition…
I became interested in the manuscript as a purely artistic thing and used some of the lettering in my art, then over time (and only after I saw the interesting naked ladies in tubs and tubes), I realized that my experience gave me some possible insight. I have worked for many years as Licensed Professional Counselor, and have learned so very much in my work with psychotic patients. I have come to believe that the author of the manuscript was a very intelligent man in his forties or older who had in his youth been highly educated, perhaps as a alchemist, however schizophrenia or some other psychotic disorder disrupted his life and he devoted the rest of his time writing a book that to him was undoubtedly very important, however due to his confusion, it did not make sense to anyone.
*** Dorothy: Creo que el manuscrito tiene sentido, solo hace falta esperar un poco y alguien sabrá descifrarlo. Creo que para el verano mas o menos… 😉
*** Dorothy: I think the script makes sense, just need to wait a bit and someone will know decipher. I think for the summer more or less … 😉
If it’s not (as Dorothy suggested) the work of someone mentally unsound (a logical inference), I think to decode the manuscript we have to try to put ourselves in the shoes of the creator. Stand on that cusp between the Renaissance and the Medieval world and ask, What might someone have wanted to write down that they wouldn’t have wanted others to read? This was an age when possessing any book considered heretical (to church or state) could get you killed. And due to constant shifting powers the opinion on what was acceptable could change like the weather. If this is a code, then it’s recording something the creator doesn’t want the average person to understand. One of the things that comes to my mind when I think about this manuscript is that song, “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a partridge in a pair tree…” I found the song annoying until I learned that it’s a song in code that Catholics could sing in public about their faith without anyone being the wiser. (Each of the numbered objects symbolises a part of their faith – the first being christ on the cross).
I think to decipher this manuscript it’ll take several types of minds working together.
1) A fluid mind – an imaginer who loves the Medieval world and the Renaissance who sees possibilities and connections others don’t make because they’re just so pie in the sky.
2) A methodical mathematical yet intuitively creative mind. The sort that masters chess or enjoys doing obscure crossword puzzles against the clock.
3) Since we don’t even know what language the creator spoke (though we can assume they were probably taught Greek or Latin) you’d need a language archeologist…someone who can speak most European languages…as spoken or understood at the time of the manuscripts creation. I doubt a lone individual will ever crack it because they’d need more specialist knowledge and abilities than one person could study in a lifetime.
*** Hislop: Yo pienso lo mismo.
Hay muchas razones para que alguien esconda un mensaje. Alquimia, religión, anatomía, política, avances científicos…
En un país de ciegos, el tuerto es el rey.
*** Hislop: I think the same.
There are many reasons for someone to hide a message. Alchemy, religion, anatomy, political, scientific …
In a country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
This blog piece really struck me, about the way in which understanding something might depend on our being able to see it as a mixture of conflicting, contradictory elements, as “dappled”, or “fuzzy”.
I was suddenly reminded of the Rumpelstiltskin story, not quite sure why … seeing a similar tale in which someone with little or partial knowledge of “mystical agricultural approaches” boasts ( or attempts to sell supposed knowledge about it ) to a wealthy/powerful lord about how they are able to increase their wealth, and perhaps health, with secret x, y and z methods and the king pays for or demands that they write the instructions down … and they manage to come up with something which looks plausible on superficial examination but is in a code which is so laborious to decrypt ( if not necessarily to write ) that the lord gives up after the first few pages, ( which might sound convincingly “expert” ), and never discover that the later pages were virtual nonsense ), … *or* needs one or more keywords/decrypting key which they would have to “earn” or divine in some way? 🙂 … Perhaps the powerful/wealthy lord/king uncovered or deduced the subterfuge and had the con-man/boaster executed/punished, and the book shut away. . . .
I’m just trying to imagine a narrative which explains such a lengthy piece of never-decrypted encryptation and its subsequent disappearance for 200 years, etc; ie. that most of it is rubbish, a fake.
Some of it is “real”, and some/a lot of it isn’t what it purports to be?
I have to say that I very much like Dorothy Brundrett’s idea. The author must have seen astronomical diagrams, but the ones in the Voynich MS are ‘lookalikes’ which are just not quite right. Also he must have seen herbal MSS, and again the drawings in the VMs are just not quite right.
The pharmaceutical pages fall in the same category as the herbal pages.
Then in the rosettes page he let his fantasy take over…
Totally agree about the astrological diagrams. “Lookalikes” as you say, but “not quite right” ( January, or is it April, with 29 days for example, among several other things I noticed ). And the text perhaps is too, a “lookalike” of real language in gothic script. I definitely get a “false” feeling about the VM, and some sort of mental illness, or perhaps autism, would explain how it is “not quite right”, while at same time it feels too “honest/genuine” or sincere and serious to be a scam/con/cheat/hoax. 🙂
PS. Scrub my mention of autism. Despite the obsessive attention to minute detail etc there is something “delusional” about the VM which doesn’t square with autism as such.
Yep, agree with Dorothy that some sort of mental illness is the most likely explanation, for both the amount and type of work involved and the fundamental “non-sense” of it, the “appearance” of being something while not making any sense. It would also explain why it was never decoded.
I wonder if anyone will ever find out who had the material, ( inks and paper ) the leisure and the general educational background to carry this out. 🙂