Diane O’Donovan has recently commented (here and elsewhere) and posted a number of times (on her own blog) about the priority of various Voynich ideas. For any given Voynich idea, who was first to mention, conceive, propose, argue, or even (puts tin hat on head and ducks) form it into a Voynich theory outlined in the TLS?
The immediate problem (obviously enough) is that 99% of Voynich ideas are groundless nonsense, homeopathically anchored on the sands of whimsical misreading, fanciful speculation, and over-optimistic just-so-ness. As a general category, then, it’s right up there with all the “pathology of cryptology” first outlined by David Kahn and more recently buffed by Klaus Schmeh in Cryptologia.
To be sure, Diane isn’t concerned with the priority of nutty Voynich ideas, such as the “diary of a stranded alien” notion, which every few days still manages to get reposted somewhere or other on the Internet. (And that is far from the nuttiest… so please excuse me if I don’t winch myself back down into the darkling pit containing the worst of the genre.)
Rather, she has formed a set of theories about the Voynich Manuscript which she believes to be both novel and true: and she is anxious/concerned to ensure that nobody should steal those ideas (i.e. by presenting them as commonplaces, or by passing them off as their own) and thereby deprive her of her ultimate Voynich research glory. As such, asserting priority has become an increasingly big concern of hers of late.
Well… I must confess that I do have a certain amount of sympathy for the desire to look back at what has been put forward in the past. However, even though I often feel the specific need to refer to D’Imperio’s index or to grep the archives of the old Voynich mailing list, for me this is only to try to gain a richer perspective on a particular topic, e.g. by looking at the conversations around it.
A significant part of the difference between her and me would therefore seem to be that I look backwards to try to place ideas in their context and by so doing to enrich my understanding of them; while Diane looks backwards to ensure that her ideas are genuinely hers, and that she hasn’t inadvertantly taken that which is someone else’s.
To the very greatest degree, then, priority is a non-issue for me, in that it is something that will get resolved (a) only once we can definitively decrypt Voynichese, and (b) by an entirely different kind of forensic historian (i.e. not by the people doing the research). Given that I see so few genuinely productive research paths being taken at the present time, the value of worrying about priority right now is surely inversely proportional to that of finding a rich new research furrow to plough.
Voynich priority, then, for the 99% of ideas out there that are complete bullshit, is surely an utter waste of time. And for the 1% of partially tenable ideas, it’s no more than very marginally better than that, and will make only sense once the plates have been cleared away after the big Voynich solution pizza party.
Anyone who hasn’t yet grasped that the solution to the Voynich will most likely fall squarely in the middle of the wide multi-dimensional chasms between our falteringly thin tendrils of historical and cryptological insight hasn’t been paying enough attention. That solution will most likely surprise us more by its curious proximity to the many sensible things that have been said about the manuscript, not by its distance from them.
Nick,
Sorry to be the first, and to be posting a correction.
The issue has nothing to do with my being concerned about the theft of ‘my theories’, for two reasons: I don’t have ‘theories’, and secondly the plagiarism, mis-use and repetition of my work without mention of the source has been so regularly and determinedly done, now, for years, that there is ample documentation and no real cause for me to worry about confusion over the point.
No, this story about my being a paranoid hunter of pecuniary or other advantage is so much dust raised by the persons most in need of material to present unattributed as an ‘idea’ of their own.
The issue is rather that the abandonment of scholarly method, principle, courtesies and system is an active hindrance to genuine advance, misleads those who take earlier assertions as basis from which to begin work, and generally results in the endless, pointless, re-invention of things already thought and proven to be right, wrong or beyond reasonable demonstration.
Any serious newcomer is entitled to be told honestly about where they may read the first proposal, argument and demonstration (if any) of some notion now commonly asserted AS IF proven, and for themselves to consider and to weigh the merits of the seminal paper/blogpost/mailing list comment etc.
A skeptic is not someone who sits back and says ‘convince me’ and is then convinced by mere plausible patter. A skeptic believes nothing without investigating the evidence and informing argument for him/herself.
How can this be done when any attempt to suggest that Voynich writers should acknowledge their sources is met by comments aimed only at insulting or demeaning the person who says so? The aim in such a case is to deter others who might be inclined to agree with the principle… and THAT my dear Nick is a technique more appropriate to propaganda and religion than to valid comment on a fifteenth century manuscript.
Take an example… the usual assertion that there is a resemblance of some sort between the Voynich folios with ‘ladies in fluid’ and the genre of the Balneis Puteolanis.
I am still trying to shove away the obfuscations and bluster to discover (1) to whom this idea first occurred, or rather who first dared assert it and (2) where I can read their detailed exposition of the historical, iconographic (or any) sources that informed their opinion. Ideally, I should also like to see – as would be routine in the work of any serious scholar – pointers to the persons and sources which debated that conclusion, and so to read their reasons and evidence too.
If Voynich studies were a court of law, the situation we have would be more-or-less equivalent to a judge informing a jury that “you will hang this man because I say he’s guilty and you all know me – would I lie to you?”
Diane: while I haven’t read every single page on your website (is that even possible?), I think it is utterly beyond question that you have numerous theories that actively inform where you look, what you consider to be evidence, and – most important of all – what the Voynich Manuscript is. I don’t characterise you here or elsewhere as being “a paranoid hunter of pecuniary or other advantage”, or anything close to it. I do not believe you are a skeptic, simply because you have so many theories. I think people who assert that they don’t have theories – i.e. that all their work is completely factual and lacking any interpretational aspect whatsoever – when the opposite is the case do a grave disservice to scholarship.
Nick, Diane:
Thinking “out of the box” rigorously cites earlier errors and omissions in ways that patterns emerge. For example, it took 25 years for holders of the Rosetta Stone to be forced to realize that phonetic patterns dominated the text, and 100 years of holders of a dozen Mayan texts, and the death of Erik Thompson, for Russian code breakers mod 4 phonetic patterns to be accepted.
Today, there oddly exists in 120 Egyptian math problems and over 500 Mayan math and astronomy problems basic “unsolved problems”. The main pattern that emerges to those that “think outside the box” is that number theory building blocks based on prime numbers and arithmetic operations are ignored by academics that only transliterate math texts within garbled language issues.
Academics since 1927 concerning Egyptian texts oddly have continued to mis-transliterate scribal division as only single false position, a medievel method used to find roots of first and second degree equations, rather that a vivid modern number theory rule, scribal multiplication and division was often inverse to one another. Hana Vymazalova indirectly proved in 2002, aspects of the topic, while bowing to public academic pressure oddly concluding that Peet, 1923, was correct with respect to the contents of five Akhmim Wooden Tablet (AWT). AWT partitions of a hekat are easily read by multiplying by 1/3, 1/7, 1/10, 1/11, and 1/13, and not easily read as returninf all five by multiplying each partition by 3, 7, 10, 11 and 13 to a hekat unity (64/64).
The same type of academic pressure is applied, or sadly acknowledged without rigorous proofs, in Mayan mis- transliterations of math texts by linguistics fir 120’years. Linguists wish to declare de facto ownership of Mayan texts by holding back “adding back” missing scribal shorthand number theory steps, as Egyptian linguists have been doing for 90 years.
Think out of the box, equally accepting linguist and math pattern inputs, within interdisciplinary teams, a rarity in the Voynuch decoding world as well.
Best Regards,
Milo Gardner
Ah ! Hello Milo ! It is about time somebody mentioned numbers. Literally knotted strings of them. Mayan means of communication. I think I was about ten years old when I read a novel about them. That would have been about 60 years ago.
Quipu ?
beady-eyed wonderer
Diane, the first time I saw the Voynich Manuscript (in 2007) I had never seen any theories or writings by anyone except Edith Sherwood. I didn’t even look at very much of Sherwood’s site. Google led me there because I was searching for Leonardo Da Vinci. I read a small part of the Da Vinci idea, looked at a few of the plants, and became instantly hooked on the VMS because I like plants and puzzles. I didn’t even look at Sherwood’s plant IDs again until I had done my own identifications, and discovered we don’t agree on most of them anyway.
At that time, with no exposure to anything written by anyone else (I didn’t even know there was a community of Voynich researchers), the Rosettes folio looked like a map to me and the ladies in water looked like they were bathing (especially the nymphs who appear to be scrubbing each other’s backs), the human body parts looked like human body parts, and rainbows looked like rainbows.
So… if the rosettes folio turns out to be a map and the ladies turn out to be bathers, and the body parts turn out to be body parts, who am I supposed to credit? Some things take research and some are intuitively obvious. To me the plants look like plants, the bathers look like bathers, the streams and cave-like shapes look like streams and grottoes, and the rosettes foldout looks like a map (whether mythical or literal).
If I were to find out they are *not* plants or bathers or rainbows, or a map, I would credit the person who made and substantiated such a discovery. If someone were to discover other aspects of the manuscript that are not intuitively obvious, I would credit them too, but it seems like a waste of time to research who-said-what for things that jump out at the majority of viewers and for which we don’t yet have proof.
Anyone want to switch to Global warming?
J.K.
If someone says an image in a manuscript ‘looks like’ this or thatg which happens to rise to their own imagination, it is the equivalent of cloud-gazing. You can tell me that a cloud looks like a dragon, and while producing (afterwards) great number of dragon-pictures will assure me that such a likeness has its reason, it will not ever convince me that the cloud is a dragon or was intentionally created to resemble a dragon.
What we see, constantly, in Voynich studies, is cloud-gazing and random impressions justified afterwards by production of images from a very limited range, the intention of which is to make seem more convincing a bit of hypothesising whose basis (if one were able to trace it to its origins) is nothing more than a ‘looks like to me’.
A prime example, of course is the ‘sunflower’ story.
It is a fine example of how the failure to admit lack of experience or qualifications in iconographic analysis, when combined with a certain over-confidence, good public networking skills and so forth, can result in nonsense not only being promoted, but being widely accepted and having any number of researchers repeat it, believe it, and set of coursing a non-existent hare.
In that case – happily – the scholarly conventions meant that O’Neill’s name was not omitted when those coming later repeated it as a ‘Voynich fact’. So we can now go back to the original proponent, read his evidence (flimsy) and see what other opinions he knew and considered (none).
The more recent habit among those who like to seem wise, but not to appear indebted to the ‘unimportant’, has seen the equivalent of the ‘sunflower’ red herring multiplied beyond all expectation or reason.
What I would like to see return to this study is a habit of accurately crediting first sources for an idea that a person then takes up and begins promoting. To do otherwise, as I said, hampers the study, prevents people checking whether a ‘Voynich fact’ is, or isn’t well founded, and permits debate.
That these normal, sane procedures are still observed by those working on the text’s written part makes the aberrant forms of writing about the imagery and ‘theoretcial/fictional’ history all the more peculiar. After all, some persons are righteous in writing about the written part of the text, but shift to the ‘theoretical/fictional’ state of mind as soon as history or imagery is mentioned.
So – back to the ‘Balneis..’ fiction/theory.
I should like to look in depth at the way this notion has taken hold: to begin with the first proponent and see what sources, evidence and specific details led to the formation of his opinion or whether all we have is a bit of theory/fictional narrative.
If I asked who first thought the ‘gallows’ looked like sixteenth century letters’ ‘gallows’, I’m sure the information would be given easily, correctly and pleasantly
If I ask the equivalent about the ‘Balneis…’ story, or dispute the fairly rubbishy assertion that the Voynich archer is a German figure… nothing but ad.hominems, ‘blanking’ , refusal to engage, and/or (because usually both) a adoption of my evidence, sources or reasoning with total refusal to acknowledge the source.
It is not true that what is not honest does not advance; what is true is that it is unable to reach the correct destination.
Nick – you are mistaken about my having ‘many theories’. In addition to explaining my opinion (as I did first in 2010), I have looked into various other possibilities raised in the course of research, or by the content in others’ work. To do otherwise would mean that exposition of my own views and the reasons for them would seem no more than the usual Voynich style of history where theories are created, and one-eyed hunts then follow for anything that could be interpreted as support.
Perhaps you mistake the phases in which the research was published for my having changed my opinion. First, I published a selection of the analytical studies – section by section, folio by folio. Then I explained the principles informing the botanical folios and showed comparative examples to clarify why I had reached my opinion. (Pity Panofsky never did the equivalent; we’d be 70 yrs for’arder).
After my sabbatical I repeated in brief the evidence for having identified a number of marked chronological strata (phases of initial enuncation), repeated the importance of certain details in determining non-Latin European origin the imagery, and then began addressing the historical context(s) appropriate to the imagery’s evidence of alteration not only by time (surprisingly slight) but by cultural affects.
I had reached the critical period for the material’s transition to the west when the level of mis-use, outright plagiarism, or distorted imitation (all without mention of the original source) persuaded my publisher – and me – to cease sharing more.
As I said in 2010, I’ll say again now after having provided so much online. The imagery’s earliest stratum is Hellenistic. Alexandria or another such centre of Greco-Egyptian culture is most likely.
The second important stratum I date to the 1st-3rdC AD: technically the ‘Roman’ era, but the evidence suggests a region beyond the boundary of the Roman empire, and where Asian and Hellenistic culture melded.
For the period intermediate between the 3rdC AD and the 12th, I have concluded retention in the eastern sphere rather than in the Mediterranean. For a majority of the ‘ladies’ folios, the region in which the matter was retained is (in my opinion) the higher ‘road’ overland from the Black Sea towards the east, where the botanical folios speak of that other and complementary ‘road’ by sea. The botanical images (or ‘large plant pictures’) show not single plants but a group, united by similar forms, similar and adjacent habitat, and practical economic value for the business of the east-west trade. It’s a bit more complex than that, but the more complex matter is summarised by my conclusion that the Theophrastan rather than Dioscoridan corpus will be most relevant.
As to the last stratum in the imagery – I’m not talking about the pigments here – it is clearly to be dated to between the mid-fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The style of those drawings is compatible with the western (Latin European) conventions, and this is why the same small number of pictures have figured so disproportionately in efforts to maintain a theory of all Latin European origin (or, most recently, a Byzantine-Latin-German-Italian-Swiss-Aegean) version of the older ‘Germanic cultural product’ theory.
So.. again.. where on earth did the ‘Balneis’ thing start – and with whom, and where can I read the evidence adduced, and from which that idea derives?
Diane: I have never heard so much speculative theory misrepresented as historical fact. I wish you luck with your continued research… but it remains so far from fact that it makes for frankly rather embarrasing reading.
I suppose that, in terms of “priority”, the theory outlined before (Greco-Egyptian, Roman, Eastern and Western European “strata”) is considered by everyone who has been reading more than superficially about the Voynich MS, to be Diane’s original work, and I have never seen anyone taking it over, claiming to be his/hers, or consider it “generally known”.
Now here is a caveat, though, and this makes all discussions about priority pointless, and certainly not of academic / scholarly nature.
Before the age of the WWW, there has been a rich exchange of information, (including speculation and hypotheses) about the Voynich MS. This has been done in the form of letters written on paper, and a large number of these has been preserved.
How can anyone argue that none of these people have ever considered that:
– the rosettes folio might represent a map
– the biological section of the MS bears resemblance to balneological MS illustrations
– etc etc
If one wanted to do a serious (scholarly) analysis of any kind of priority in Voynich MS ideas, one *has* to go through this material.
Making any kind of unconditional statements about priority, without having looked at this, is necessarily invalid.
Rene: a good example of this is the vast amount of correspondence of the early Royal Society, part of which I was going through a few days ago. Everyone was aware of Kircher’s books (these are repeatedly referred to) and even of his unreliability: but people such as (later Sir) Robert Southwell visited Kircher’s gallery in Rome a good number of times, and even considered him a friend. Who is to say that mention of a curious book (and theories around it – Kircher always seemed to have theories and explanations) won’t emerge from Southwell’s letters (I haven’t yet got that far), or from those of any of the other thousands of visitors there?
D. O’D. wrote: “As I said in 2010, I’ll say again now after having provided so much online. The imagery’s earliest stratum is Hellenistic. Alexandria or another such centre of Greco-Egyptian culture is most likely.”
Pretty much everything that was written about astrology/astronomy and plants in the middle ages came down through Greco-Roman and Arabic filters. There wasn’t much new knowledge added until the Renaissance.
Why do I see no Arab buildings? They are usually flat. But did not find one. But all have a Gibel, which is typical for snow last. This is also the reason why the crust has onions.
The nice fancies on some roofs, that is typical Middle-European. I did not see a half-moon. Typical for the Arab world. The plants are also typical Middle-European. There is even a bay window, naja typical.
Why should I now accept the origin lies in the Middle East?
Most researchers do not share their most precious results, because of “the
anonymous ripple effect” (the idea will move silently to other website blogs without mentioning the original author).
Secondly, there is sometimes envy between researchers that I can imagine that that’s another reason not to share.
But,
I did not read any relevant theory which knits images to something solid we can work with, so what is this discussion about? Yes, you can discuss air, or present
hollow sentences, but there is no real progress from there.
As an experiment I will publish something, that has not been discovered nor described, before the end of the year. My guess is that it will not be picked up the first month and when it does, “the anonymous ripple effect” will apply.
Priority in scientific and philosophical research is important in three major respects:
1 – credit should be correctly given* where credit is due for the conducting of sound research;
2 – false credit is false history;
3 – any theory which claims to be novel can be rapidly debunked on the basis of lack of knowledge of prior art.
As anyone who reads my blog knows, I am working on the theory that the VM symbols are Latin breviographs. I do not claim this as a new theory. The mere fact that Nicholas Gibbs claimed this idea as his own demonstrates lack of basic research into prior art.
btw: I am making significant progress. Previously I used only text based programming to analyse the MS. I want to make my methods and materials open to anyone, so am learning how to convert my code into windowed programs. I hope to post all my materials and win/linux executables in the near future. Meanwhile, the first words of the VM are:
Peractum es con itaque … [this] is a teaching book with which …
It’s a manual on the use of herbs, wild and cultivated, for the preparation of herbal baths.
Progress can be slow because objective statistical expansion methods must be supported by a subjective view of the entire linguistic, historical and visual context. Without subjective input and context, any 4-gram could be transcribed in about half a million ways.
A question: has anyone proposed before that the suns and moons on f68r1, r2 and r3 are all moons? I can find nothing on the web. The context is a belief, dating back to at least Pliny the elder, that the moon influences plant growth.
Pliny also wrote of blue canopies bespangled with stars.
“Awnings have been lately extended, too, by the aid of ropes, over the amphitheatres of the Emperor Nero, dyed azure, like the heavens, and bespangled all over with stars”.
BOOK XIX Ch. 6
If ‘ar’ is ‘aris’, meaning a temporary or lightly constructed shelter and ‘or’ is ‘oris’, meaning an opening or entrance, then the writer speaks of what we would call tents or marquees. Do some of the illustrations depict marquees or canopies such as were used as bath-houses? Has this been suggested before?
* credit is often wrongly given. Who invented the lead-acid battery? Wilhelm Josef Sinsteden, a German military surgeon invented it, but most books give a Frenchman the credit.
@Diane
the main motto on your website reads ” Personal Observations” and that’s it. No more and no less than your individual and emotional interpretation of the imagery of a central European medieval manuscript that you can’t read.
There is no such thing as scholia if it comes to th VM, because there is no institution and no academic standard to separate the just-for-fun or the stranded-aliens from “serious” research. As a consequence there is no serious research at all – except from the pure physical appearance of the Ms (i.e. radiocarbon, binding, ink etc.) and the provenance.
So what? Your have your opinions, your frequently switching theories from East to West or vice versa and your furious refusal of the possibility that the VM could simply be of German/Alpine origin. To me the latter seems to be your main impetus.
Your endless fight for priority and credits is absolutely senseless as long as your “personal observations” are not commonly accepted. They aren’t and they won’t be because there is no plausible reason for them to be.
As Rene pointed it out right : “Now here is a caveat, though, and this makes all discussions about priority pointless, and certainly not of academic / scholarly nature.”
Yes, there is no real scholarly Voynich research (my own working hypothesis included), but a lot of fun for everyone interested in the mystery. At the end there will be only one solution: the complete decryption of the text and nothing else.
I don’t want to be someone having a go at Diane. Clearly Diane is someone who is highly intelligent with a very relevant specialist expertise to bring to bear on the Voynich.
Yes, I have, it appears, some significant methodological differences with her as I also have with some others. Nevertheless I think there is something to be said for bringing different methodologies to bear on the manuscript.
Diane, I do find it slightly infuriating that you give the impression that you are the only person with sufficient expertise to be qualified to work on the Voynich. And that your way of doing things is the only valid way of doing things. Clearly understanding a manuscript, actually, maybe surprisingly, isn’t just about Manuscript Studies. Very general Historical Analysis is important to understand the historical context in which a manuscript was written. I have relied a lot on photos of medieval buildings; I don’t see what is wrong with that.
I agree with Nick that some of these very general priority discussions are pointless such as:
1) The idea that the manuscript dates from the 15th Century.
2) The idea, whether one agrees with it or not, that the manuscript is a hoax.
3) The idea that the manuscript is written in a hitherto unknown language with a unknown script.
4) The idea that the manuscript is written in cipher.
5) The idea that the 9 rosette foldout represents a map.
-> One may or may not agree with any of these
Specific Ideas where priority discussions are justifiable:
1) The manuscript was written by Leonardo Di Vinci
2) The manuscript was written by Antonio Averlino
And more…
I think priority is very important, but only when related to specifics.
Patrick – Nice to have someone see the point.
Mark,
It’s not about a personal priority – that’s an incidental effect. It iis about transparency (notice that most responses have been insult or bluster… as ever. I am still trying to discover who first asserted some similarity to exist between imagery of the ‘ladies’ and images in copies of the Balneis.
Note, also, that such determined hostility and silence, and the fantasy that in attempting to research this question I’m ‘seeking glory’ is a long-standing meme begun in c.2010 on the second mailing list, when I first began trying to discover who started this or that item of ‘Voynich faith’.
Despite his adopting the usual hostile tone and insinuation, Nick himself has never, to my knowledge, refused to help with such basic investigation of Voynich ‘theories’ and has never – whether by deliberate omission of his source or positive mis-representation of it, permitted any to credit him with matter he gained by reading another person’s writing.
I have not had the same experience dealing with Zandbergen, and as a result cannot use, or recommend his website in good conscience.
Charlotte – You are mistaken. But very thoroughly mistaken: in your assumption, notions, etymologies, argument, presumptions and so forth. You do not think sufficiently, or with sufficient care. To correct every error in your comment is unnecessary, given the usual level of Nick’s readership. So as example, let’s just take the first item. You say:
1. ” Personal Observations” [are] No more and no less than your individual and emotional interpretation of the imagery of a central European medieval manuscript that you can’t read.
Is a personal observation identical to the expression of a subjective emotion? You presume it is; you are mistaken.
Is the manuscript a ‘central European’ manuscript? If so, in what sense? Are you speaking of the place it was made, the language informing the main written text, or the images which are our clearest indication of original provenance for the contained matter.
Have you stopped to consider where the idea began that the manuscript is a ‘central European’ manuscript? Who first said that? Is the case well set-out, reasonably and thoroughly presented with the evidence which led to that conclusion’s being reached?
Is there someone you can ask to point you to the original bit of in-depth study which resulted in a ‘central European manuscript’ idea being circulated until it reached you, who have apparently swallowed the ‘idea’ without troubling to examine its worth.
You might like to look into that item. I’m still trying to find out how the ‘Balneis’… notion came to be so prevalent. No-one’s saying, are they?
What they’re saying is “Believe it or suffer the consequences of enquiring into these items of faith.”
Come on, Nick… is is possible to get a reasonable answer about the ‘Balneis’ thing? As an historian trying to write the history of the ‘Balneis-Voynich’ theory… where would you begin?
Diane: I would have thought that “the Balneis thing” would have been apparent to one, some, or all of its 17th century owners (I strongly suspect that we have so far found less than 50% of the extant 17th century correspondence relating to the VMs), and very probably for its 15th and 16th century owners too. The same would probably be true of ‘the Herbal thing’, and very probably ‘the Zodiac thing’.
As to the 20th century historiography of “the Balneis thing”, I don’t know. I’d be a bit surprised if Manly didn’t twig the similarity in the 1920s, but I don’t know if anyone has yet gone through his papers looking for Voynich-related stuff, as I suggested back in 2008: http://ciphermysteries.com/2008/07/27/john-matthews-manlys-papers
Note: I’ve updated the link to the John Matthews Manly collection, which should be https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.MANLY&q=MANLY
Further note: I suspect that the most interesting stuff by far in Manly’s papers will prove to be his correspondence on cryptography (Series II: Correspondence, Cryptography).
It is rather easy to verify that my web site is littered with citations and acknowledgments to the work of others, and the support and help I have enjoyed.
This also includes acknowledgments to people with whose opinions I do not agree.
Another completely groundless attempt from Diane at vilifying me. Boring.
Diane wrote: “Have you stopped to consider where the idea began that the manuscript is a ‘central European’ manuscript? Who first said that? Is the case well set-out, reasonably and thoroughly presented with the evidence which led to that conclusion’s being reached?”
Who cares who said it first?
It was probably back in the day when Wilfrid Voynich discovered the manuscript at the Villa Mondragone, when he hoped it might be a Roger Bacon cipher. There was no Internet, no Interlibrary loan system, no digitized exemplars, no access to many of the libraries and repositories that are available now. He, his wife, and secretary did what they could with what they had, and to expect Voynich to present *evidence* for his ideas is like asking a car salesman to show you an inventory of a vehicle’s flaws. He was a bookseller, not a historian. He wanted the best possible price for his prize.
The obsession with the origin of the “central European” idea is a waste of time until the actual origin of the VMS is discovered. Even then, it might not be worth figuring out who said it first because it was probably a verbal communication in the 1920s between Voynich and his network of associates. He did, after all, find the VMS in Italy, so he probably supposed it was from there or somewhere nearby.
It’s more productive to continue the research than to constantly dispute differences of opinion about something that cannot yet be verified.
The study of the origin and history of the development of ideas can be worthwhile. It can illuminate other forgotten, but important ideas. In my own writeup I have opted to describe the process by which my own thinking developed as I believe that is much more useful than the end result of the process of theorising.
However I wouldn’t give it the level of emphasis that Diane does at this stage.
Nevertheless if Diane wants to become a historian of Voynich research who is to stop her, but similarly individuals are welcome to avoid that debate and focus on their own research.
I completely agree that the study of the origin and history of the development of ideas can be worthwhile, but that’s not really what Diane is asking. Based on the way she brings it up in almost every post, she appears fixated on the fact that some people’s opinions about the manuscript’s origins differ from hers.
Continuing to research the manuscript itself is more productive than trying to figure out who “said” (guessed) its origins in the teens and early twenties when a world war was in full swing. Some lines of research are productive, like finding letters about the manuscript and studying their contents to try to discern the manuscript’s provenance, and some lines are not productive, like figuring out who first said it was a central European manuscript. The original information about the manuscript’s origin came from Voynich himself and even that was known to him to be untrue because he had promised not to tell. After he died, different information came out, but who actually “said” that it was central European probably did so in the twenties after a certain amount of skepticism about it being a Bacon cipher began to institute itself, and there’s probably no record of it.
If Diane wants to know who first “wrote” that it was of central European origin, that might be documented somewhere. Even early researchers were guessing places all over the map, including Egypt, Italy, Greece, Prague, Germany, England, India, etc. As for those who currently hold the opinion that it’s central European (or not), that’s their opinion and they are entitled to it and prior opinions may have nothing to do with how they feel.
Diane,
being part of “the usual level of Nick’s readership” just let me answer you in a few very simple words you might understand.
I don’t need to ask someone to point out to me the origin of a central European codex since I’m myself an expert in paleography, codicology and history of book art (including imagery) of the late Middle Ages up to early Renaissance in central and southern Europe. If ever I need professional support from colleages in the field I know where to find them, be sure. Btw: neighter me nor one of them has ever heart of you as an expert in European codices.
Coming to the “usual level” in the mirror of your arrogance:
Almost all of Nick’s readers have an academic background (as well as himself) and work scholarly in their different fields, whatever they may be. But common ground for all VM studies should be a scientific approach from every possible angle that rules out the obvious nonsense and encourages new input even if it comes from amateurs and newbies.
The so called Voynich “research” is now kind of a world wide open source project, and everyone can join it with his/her own opinions, speculations, phantasies or real valuable insights. There are no superior judges to decide what is valuable or not, and consequently you are not one of them.
At the usual level of Nick’s readership you’d just have to consider that your are no more and no less than an average part of it, and everything would be much easier.
Your sophisticated insultings are too obvious and too ridiculous to hit.
Yes, it’s endlessly boring. Nothing more.
Ok. I am now slightly uncomfortable as I don’t like conflict and I don’t want to feel that we are all having a go at Diane.
Obviously time is used more valuably doing actual research than getting into fights with other people.
I think probably Diane could do with being more respectful and less dismissive of other people and their skills and abilities. And others, including myself, could be less judgmental of her.
All the Best to Everyone!
Diane wrote: “Have you stopped to consider where the idea began that the manuscript is a ‘central European’ manuscript? Who first said that? Is the case well set-out, reasonably and thoroughly presented with the evidence which led to that **conclusion’s** being reached?” [asterisks mine]
I think one of the problems here is O’Donovan’s use of the word “conclusion”. I’ve never heard anyone express a central European origin as a conclusion. It’s usually discussed as a possibility or a likely possibility, which is as reasonable a line of thought as anything else. Even in Jim Reed’s 1994 summation, he qualifies it as “possibly” central Europe, which means that in 1994 and earlier, the researchers Reed had in mind had not “concluded” that central Europe was a decisive origin either:
In September 7, 1994, Jim Reed of Bell Labs summed up what was generally said about the Voynich Manuscript as follows:
“The following facts about the VMS are repeated in almost everything written on the subject. The VMS is a book of about 104 vellum leaves, sized about 16 cm by 23 cm (6 by 9 inches), written in an unknown (but apparently alphabetical) script. It is profusely illustrated with plant drawings, zodiacal diagrams, what have been called ‘‘cosmological’’ diagrams, and diagrams with unclothed women romping on what seem to be water slides. The style of writing and of drawing seem to place its production in the late 1400s or early 1500s, possibly in central Europe.”
The following facts about the VMS are repeated in almost everything written on the subject.
The VMS is a book of about 104 vellum leaves, sized about 16 cm by 23 cm (6 by 9 inches), – fact
written in an unknown (but apparently alphabetical) script. That the script has never been definitively identified, or even described is a fact. That it is alphabetical is not a fact; that it has seemed to many to be alphabetical is true.
It is profusely illustrated with plant drawings – whether or not these were intended as purely ornamental designs (e.g. intended as say woodcarving or textile patterns) was a question never asked – let alone investigated – between 1912 and 2008, when I asked the basis from which the idea of these forming a ‘herbal’ derived.
“…. zodiacal diagrams” – I believe I may have been the first to point out that the centres of the month folios do not form a zodiac, and despite all the subsequent efforts to rationalise them as a ‘zodiac’ the point still stands.
Like so much else in this ‘field of research’ a vague impression uttered by one person becomes mistaken for ‘fact’ by reason of only two things; it is endlessly repeated, and most of those repeating it do not ask, let alone investigate, its validity. At least not if it concerns history or pictures. Quite different when one approaches the written text.
WHAT HAVE BEEN CALLED ‘‘cosmological’’ diagrams is true.
‘Unclothed women romping on what seem to be water slides” is entirely non-fact. Until I began to ask the basis for these sort of things, I don’t think that any of the cryptanalysts, or the computer buffs had so much as asked the fundamental questions of art analysis. In this case whether the figures were metaphorical or meant literally, and what intention the original enunciator had.
And once again:
‘The style of writing and of drawing seem to place its production in the late 1400s or early 1500s, possibly in central Europe.”
JKP – have you looked into the pros and cons of that assertion, or followed the repetition of that idea to discover whether or not it has any solid basis?
Jim Reeds himself produced the comparative example from Piacenza, and that’s not fifteenth century let alone early 16thC.
NOT FACTS.
So now again… the ‘Balneis’ idea. Who raised it first? Where’s the evidence and how may one evaluate its worth?
Diane: if you want to be acknowledged as (possibly but not certainly) the first person to suggest that the drawings in the middle of the zodiac roundels may in fact not be the depictions of zodiac signs they seem to just about everyone else, that’s probably fine with everyone. To my ears, it sounds more like Niall Ferguson-style counterfactuality: but that’s your boat, so float it where you will.
As far as the herbal drawings go, I was probably the first (in 2006) to propose that Herbal-B drawings may well be encrypted Taccola-esque machine drawings, a suggestion which – though somewhat too extreme an hypothesis for most people’s tastes – would seem to have rather more systematic structure and logic behind it than explaining them away as “purely ornamental designs”. But again, each to their own.
As far as the origins of the Balneis idea goes (yet again): I’ve responded in quite sufficient depth already, take a trip to Chicago and I believe there’s a good chance you’ll find out. Not that anyone else particularly cares at the moment.
Is there a plausible reason why it is not zodiac signs? Or have I misunderstood something.
Some questions:
Who was the first to send an email about the Voynich manuscript?
Who was the first Iranian to study the Voynich manuscript?
Who was the first to use the term Voynichero?
Who was the first bugle player to look through every character of the Zodiac pages of the Voynich manuscript?
Who was the first to setup a blog about the Voynich manuscript?
So many more questions…
Nick, sorry, but I can’t find a ‘contact’ area on the site. I’m interested in purchasing your book. The link from your ‘Theories’ page indicates out of print. I’m in Canada, and not available on Amazon either. Are you aware of its availability elsewhere? Thanks.
Mark, thank you for my chuckle of the day. 🙂
——————————————————————-
Nick wrote: “…Herbal-B drawings may well be encrypted Taccola-esque machine drawings…”
Nick I hadn’t seen that idea yet, but I love it.
————————————————————–
As for the idea that the VMS might be from central Europe, if we asked every Voynich researcher from Wilfrid Voynich to the present to draw a line on the map for what they consider to be “central Europe”, I’m sure we would get hundreds or thousands of different answers.
Some of the early researchers thought the VMS was a Bacon cipher. Roger Bacon was from England, but he lived and taught in Paris. Is Paris part of central Europe? It had strong ties with the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Some Europeans still considered Rome to be part of Lombardy in the 15th century (I’ve seen medieval travel itineraries that assert this). Rome used to be part of the Holy Roman Empire, which was essentially all of central Europe. Should one consider political connections in addition to geography?
Before one can determine if it is or isn’t from central Europe, one needs to define what that means.
One also needs to be clear on what someone means when they say, “The VMS is from central Europe.” Sometimes the person means, “It was found in central Europe,” or, “Most of the current provenance points to it spending a couple of centuries in central Europe.” They don’t always mean, “It was created in central Europe.”
I personally don’t care where it’s from. I care about *discovering* where it’s from. My list for possible origins for the VMS is longer than my list of identifications for some of the plants and will remain that way until I know more.
I don’t think that I would be inclined to debate the issue with somone firmly averring to the view that the heart of Central Europe, geographically speaking, would have been fairly near to the district of Chelcice, Moravia in the period to which most Voynicks seem to agree upon as being fifteenth century. I guess it must have been later part of Southern Bohemia, a largish region within the old Austrian Empire?.
This is not really about finding out ‘who first said X’.
Nick’s new post about Ellie Velinska’s parallel with MS BNF Fr.565 tells me at least that he has understood this, and Diane’s new blog post called text/image disjunction makes it all the more clear.
There is a lot of evidence that material that was well known in 14th and 15th Century Europe found its way into the Voynich MS illustrations:
– the German-style zodiac illustrations
– the T-O map discussed in Nick’s new post
– herbal illustrations
– indeed (possibly) the illustrations from the Balneis manuscripts
– and many, many details in the drawings
These are uncomfortable evidence for anyone claiming that the MS cannot be from Central Europe, but instead is a product of much earlier times and/or regions way outside Europe.
Now it would be valid to critically examine all this evidence.
Here, this seems to be done by arguing that:
– whoever first said it did not have any real arguments for it
– everyone else after that just copied it without thinking
For the Balneis illustrations this cannot work, since the first person we now have on record for noting it is a known authority: Sergio Toresella. Others may have said it before him, but Toresella is not likely to have taken up this point from earlier sources.
The resemblance was also picked and supported up by Adam McLean and Jennifer Rampling, both reliable sources who are not expected to ‘just copy’ information without thinking critically about it.
Similar arguments apply for the other points of overlap between the Voynich MS and other European MSs.
In the art world, an unprovenanced item is worth less than one of secure provenance. News without any detectable provenance is called fake news.
The history of how the ‘Balneis Puteolanis’ idea became attached to the Voynich manuscript is even less transparent than it was.
I’m keen to know, in particular, what effort has been made already to see if the ‘plumbing’ theory can be reconciled with images of bathing in open-air caverns, and further whether anyone has attempted to test the Voynichese text on the ‘bathy-‘ pages with the text of the ‘Balneis Puteolanis’.
If not, why not? If so – what sort of evidence was adduced: archaeological, historical or other.
i’m not interested in how many believe, or how many think it’s a good idea. I want the idea’s provenance and whether the ‘idea’ is the end result of solid historical research, or just another loose balloon over which everyone says ‘ooh, looka that’.
If someone else has put the notion to the test by delving into the historical and archaeological evidence – all to the good. But their work should be credited.
If the notion has never been put to any practical test, then I’ll need to do it myself.
If Rene was correct when he said earlier (see above) that the expert Sergio started this meme-notion, I’ve found nothing anywhere of an argument offered by Sergio.
Looking for any recent work, I find Google brings up nothing.
It’s been a good long time since I last referred to voynich.nu, so I went there too and searched ‘Balneis’. There’s one relevant paragraph in which the expert Sergio does not appear:
“Several people have, independently from each other, pointed out a resemblance of these illustrations with the MSs of the Balneis Puteolanis, a description of some medicinal baths written in the 13th Century (20).
..
In note 20 Rene says – ” I am aware of Brian Smith in the late 1990’s and Adam McLean.”
McLean’s name is linked – and shows a few repetitions of the usual images, the heading “some possible associations…” reading to me more like reportage of material fed McLean (by underground channels? 🙂 than any effort by McLean to claim responsibility for, or particular claim to the ‘Balneis’ myth.
So is that all there is to it?
A couple of people thinking they saw something a “a bit like” the Voynich images in some manuscript they happened to notice within whatever limits they were working?
If that’s the level of provenance which most Voynicheros will accept before buying an idea, I’d suggest none try investing in other types of medieval artefact.
Here – it’s called ‘Balneis notion’ – by ‘various, including Brian Smith’. No provenance or documentation. No subsequent efforts made to test or research the thing. But doesn’t it look *plausible*?
yerrrs.
D.N. O’Donovan wrote: “…and further whether anyone has attempted to test the Voynichese text on the ‘bathy-‘ pages with the text of the ‘Balneis Puteolanis’.”
What would you test?
The VMS text is not structured like natural language in terms of glyph frequency or positions of glyphs within tokens, so you can’t just compare text from the VMS with text from natural-language sources and hope for pattern matches.
First the structure of Voynichese has to be studied and understood.
Diane / JKP: the difficulty here isn’t in proposing a partial visual match (heaven knows we have had tens of thousands of *those* floated). Rather, the challenge is to turn one of those into an actionable hypothesis, ie one that can practically be tested in more than a hand-wavy kind of way.
In the case of the Balneis Puteolanis, the most logical related hypothesis (which I haven’t seen explored anywhere) might be whether the part of Q13 with the bathing nymphs in *is entirely in verse*. That is, the hypothesis would predict that there is a verse line structure there, but that it has been concealed, perhaps by filling the ends of lines with nonsense glyphs.
This would therefore predict that there would be something statistically suspect about the last one or two words of lines in the bathing nymphs part of Q13. And this could (in theory, at least) be tested.
Now, it’s not the most glamorous or interesting of hypotheses, sure: but it’s the kind of thing you have to put forward and develop to make any progress. And unfortunately most Voynicheros don’t want to work that hard, it would seem. 🙁
Thanks Nick – to be honest, I was expecting a sharper reply if anyone did reply.
JKP – you ask what I test – and that’s precisely how we begin setting about stress-testing something which is still just an idea. So I’m taking that as a serious question.
First, I’d ask myself whether I really understood the basis for the idea which I’ve only encountered at second-, third-, fourth-… hand. I ask who first made the proposal and where I can read the case they made for it. Maybe they offered more solid historical evidence (and even more importantly a balanced initial approach to gathering evidence) than I had thought. Other people might be jut talking shorthand… like we talk about evolution today because we all know who made the argument and we point them to Darwin (well, he wasn’t first, but his body of experimental evidence was conclusive). So someone who thought the idea crazy would realise it was well-founded.
And the opposite can happen. But what seems so unusual in Voynich studies (at least in the past decade or so) is that if you ask where to find the foundational study or argument, you find (a) you may well be pack-attacked for no other reason or (b) no-one remembers where it came from or (c) some do remember but are dam’d if they’ll tell you unless you’ve sworn allegiance to their pet theory.
SECOND: if that – pretty normal – blank wall happens, then I’ll go back to basics. I’ll read archaeological reports of excavations of those medieval baths (or what’s left of them) and anything else I can find to establish first of all whether a link between ‘pipes and channels’ and the Balneis is feasible in terms of the literary or the physical evidence.
(short cut…) we use ‘basins’ and ‘channels’ and ‘conduits’ and even ‘pipes’ to describe things other than sea-baths. However.. you get the idea.
The aim is to see if a proposition/theory/speculation/story is even remotely (a) true and (b) historically appropriate.
And then of course, you cross-check. And then present your case, evidence and reasoning to people who know about history, plumbing, architecture and iconology…and if that stays on the right side of the sieve … you have a foundational/seminal study with a shelf-life (if you’re lucky) of about 6-10 years before it is superseded and you become an acknowledgement/footnote in the works of ethical scholars.
No-one’s ever completely or permanently right. There’ll never be ‘one opinion’ ‘one name’ ‘one authority’ and that’s just fine.
Diane: I hear what you’re saying here, but I suspect you’re misapplying decent enough principles to something that hasn’t yet got to that page in the manual.
For whatever reason, we struggle to prove even the most basic thing about the Voynich: and, arguably worse, we struggle even to construct questions that anyone stands a chance of answering.
In the case of the bathing nymphs pages: it has taken a century to reach the point where we (well, some of us, at least) view Q13 as something that has two sections, say, a bathing section and the ‘other stuff’ section. If we can now start forming bathing-section-only hypotheses, we are making progress… just very slow progress, that’s all.
and I should add, the thing which keeps me at this fairly thankless task is that I hate to see any more intelligent and able people having their valuable time wasted.
This is the thing (as the Americans say)..
If the sort of cryptologists and linguists the study has attracted over the past decades have failed, one has to ask whether there’s something fundamentally wrong about the story on which they have imagined they could safely depend and take as ‘givens’ in beginning their own work.
Like this ‘Balneis’ idea. If that’s wrong – if the Voynich pictures aren’t about medieval Latin European baths, then when Nick and others try to match the ‘Balneis’ text against the Voynich text in that section… you see?
No skin off the historical novelists’ noses, it’s true. I happen to find non-fiction more to my taste, and the more technical the better.
PPS – Nick, I’ve had to waste almost half my time – which I’d rather have spent just explaining the images in this manuscript – side-tracking to show why ‘hypotheses’ are a-historical or inconsistent with the evidence. That amounts to what… three and a half years of my time. Albarellos, armadillos, armorial devices…
And not a little of the problem is due to everyone’s being so used to thinking that knowledge is gained through guesswork/hypothesising that everything one says is presumed both amateur and hypothetical. Still, it’s nice to feel het-up occasionally. Makes me feel even younger than I am. 😀
Diane: we cannot yet grasp the meaning of the Voynich’s text or drawings because meaning is something things have relative to a context, and we have not yet locked down the context enough to do that. Criticisms of textual meaninglessness have the same weight as criticisms of iconological meaninglessness.
I think there is a place for someone exploring the historical basis for the pipes and bathing aspects of the page to see if it “holds water”. There is so much about the manuscript that I am sure could be studied in considerably more detail. I think if you, Diane, explore that then, from my point of view, any facts that you discover, as opposed to theories, could be of great value.
There is so much to do with the Voynich where people have said X drawing in manuscript Y looks like Z drawing in the Voynich and then concluded that they are related. And often it is assumed that there must exist or have existed a manuscript Y containing drawing X that is the same as drawing Z in the Voynich. The Voynich Ninja forum is rife with people drawing these manuscript image parallels. Sometimes the parallels are strong, but frequently I think the parallels are tenuous at best. So anyone who can shed further light of the strength or weaknesses of claimed manuscript drawing parallels is potentially doing a valuable service. In addition I think someone providing evidence as to why a Voynich drawing is likely original content can also help.
I, myself, wonder if some of the drawings containing women and machinery together could really have been reproductions from another source and not a creation of the author’s mind. (I wonder if some of those drawings are nonsense or null drawings to confuse or distract the person trying to decipher the manuscript.) I confess that I find the focus by some researchers on manuscript image parallels seems to deny the idea that the author was an original creative thinker and might have drawn things with no obvious direct parallel. This notion also seems to belie the fact that from what we know the Voynich is a unique and original manuscript for it’s time.
As an experiment I wonder if we looked at Fontana’s cipher manuscript how many obvious manuscript drawing parallels do we find with earlier manuscripts? This is an exercise that I have not attempted as I have never studied Fontana’s work.
Mark: as far as Fontana goes, this is exactly the kind of thing that historians of machinery have been doing since the 1920s. I keep banging on about Prager and Scaglia, but there are many others like them.
As an exercise, I can look up the sources for Fontana in the critical edition of his Macchine on my bookshelf for you (in Italian).
Mark: as far as visual sources for the Voynich drawings go, I personally think that we have seen some genuinely strong arguments put forward (almost all of which I have bought hefty books about and researched further).
We’ve seen some weak arguments too, but that’s to be expected.
Nick: So you regard Fontana as very derivative. I am not saying and have not said we have no visual manuscript sources for comparison with the Voynich rather that I often see people present examples that seem to me tenuous at best and have not seen visual parallels for many details of the Voynich. Clearly there are some overarching visual relationships such as the connection to herbal manuscripts or the zodiac as well as more specific parallels e.g. alchemical herbals, but also lots of details throughout the manuscript which to the best of my knowledge are not found elsewhere; maybe the same applies to Fontana??
Mark: I didn’t say that at all, I said that I would look more closely at the critical edition of a Fontana book I have to understand more closely what his sources were.
Nick: Sorry, I clearly misunderstood you. Obviously, we cannot calculate an “originality factor”, but it would be interesting to have an idea of the extent to which one could possibility expect there to be a degree of originality within the manuscript. I tend to think of Fontana’s work as the best parallel to the Voynich, though personally I am not inclined to think that either knew of the other’s work.
I just find, for example, the idea that we will ever find a manuscript with some of the more outlandish drawings of nude women and machinery hard to believe. As another example I have already made it clear that I doubt there is a close parallel to the 9 rosette page in any other 15th century or pre-15th century document.
Nick: Of course that is not to deny that there may well be instances where your block-paradigm approach is viable as there is a direct parallel with another document, though these may be very small in number.
Mark: the point of the block paradigm approach is that we only need a single one. 🙂
Nick,
That the voynich images’ meaning “is dependent on context”. Yes of course, but I rather think that you and I may define ‘context’ differently.
Correct me I’m mistaken, but don’t you consider the Vms primarily an historico-cryptological problem, for which a clever, or a carefully constructed hypotheses should, at some stage, present the historical non-fact transformed into fact, or at least into ‘a vision acceptable’ – in a way analogous to that by which decryption transforms a meaningless text into ‘real’ text. The idea is thus a kind of fact-in-embryo.
For me its not about ‘ideas’ springing to the researcher’s imagination; it’s more about explaining, from the evidence itself, what was in the minds of the maker and his original audience, and from that identifying the particular social, historical, cultural and temporal context to which that mesh of custom, thought and practice was proper. It’s *fact and artefact*.
But when you say ‘context’, I think you mean written language found in association with a picture in a manuscript..
When a theory (no matter how many form its “we”) present a new decryption hypotheses, I know I haven’t the necessary tools to evaluate its merits; but unhappily a great many Voynicheros are of the view that a theory about the imagery is immune from objective evaluation or dismissal. That (as one person said) all anyone needs is ‘two eyes’.
As if I said that anyone able to see that an ‘O’ looks like a blank-faced head was sufficiently equipped to judge cryptological theories.
Anyway … once again…
I’d like to inspect the premises of the ‘Balneis Puteolanis’ idea, and evaluate any formal argument ever presented for it. Can’t evict before inspecting premises and evidence, can we?
At the very least… would any who have adopted the ‘Balneis’ idea like to tell me what led them to be convinced it was true?
Diane: well… it’s normally far from a bad plan to trace through places where I have discussed this topic in Cipher Mysteries. For example:
* 2008 – https://ciphermysteries.com/2008/06/03/adam-mclean-and-voynich-baths
* 2009 – https://ciphermysteries.com/2009/06/18/q13-and-voynich-balneology-sources
* 2012 – http://ciphermysteries.com/2012/04/20/cod-sang-688-and-abbreviated-longhand-roman-ordinals
* 2014 – https://ciphermysteries.com/2014/12/07/introducing-the-block-paradigm-for-voynich-manuscript-research-part-1
All of which reminded me (thanks to Arnold Krebs) that I have been meaning to have a look at Pavia’s Aldini 488 for far too long now:
http://www.bibliotecauniversitariapavia.it/bu/index.php?it/270/manoscritti-aldini
Given that nobody seems to have yet written a word about Aldini 488 (which looks to me like the motherlode of 15th century balneological texts) in connection with the Voynich Manuscript, I can only sensibly conclude that this is a whole zone of historical research that remains essentially untouched.
Nick –
Thank you.
Just what I needed. I’d been hunting through the first mailing list, though I must have also read your posts as they came out over that six years.
It’s the Voynicheros’ argument(s?) I need to review at the moment. And you’re right – as well I came to realise – it’s always just as well to search your site first for background like this.
really did need my memory refreshed – will re-read them all tomorrow.
Diane
Nick: I agree you only need one sizeable block-paradigm, but if they are small block-paradigms then you will need more than one, though even one small block-paradigm can have significant value. As you know, I believe the T/O map on the Rosettes page constitutes a small block-paradigm.
Clearly the Voynich is a product of its time and therefore the author must have been influenced by manuscript sources that he/she was familiar with, however I think there is a tendency amongst some Voynich researchers to ignore the potential influences of non-manuscript sources I.e. in very general terms all other aspects of the author’s day fo day experience. As an example, in my “map” analysis, whether correct or incorrect, I have drawn heavily on non-manuscript sources as regards questions like the appearance of specific buildings or architectural features. Then the extent that the author adds his/her creative input ontop of their influences in producing the final manuscript I consider important.
It has been suggested that possibly the Voynich is a direct reproduction of content from a variety of earlier manuscripts, but with the content enciphered. I have found that and the arguments justifying that unconvincing. It is hard to disprove, certainly if the sources used no longer survive. It could even be the case that once the manuscript is deciphered it will be very difficult to determine the extent of influences and originality of the manuscript. Nevertheless, the complete reproduction hypothesis does not ring true to me. It makes me think of the possibility that the Voynich was 1 of 10 copies of the same manuscript, but the other 9 no longer survive; now this is very hard to disprove at this stage, despite this I don’t think we should entertain that possibility unless we have good reason to.
Mark: right now, we have only candidate block matches, but no confirmed or solid block matches. A single word is just too short to be a block, but even a line might be good enough.
For example, there is a single rubricated (red) line beneath one of the Voynich astro diagrams – if we could identify the same line in a parallel document, who is to say that this alone would not be sufficient to drive a significant decryption?
Note to self: remember to write up blog entry with notes on the various balneo texts contained in Aldini 488…
D.N. O’Donovan: “Like this ‘Balneis’ idea. If that’s wrong – if the Voynich pictures aren’t about medieval Latin European baths, then when Nick and others try to match the ‘Balneis’ text against the Voynich text in that section… you see?”
Cryptanalysts hope that the text is related to the drawings (it makes the task easier), but they do not assume the text is related to the drawings, so whether the Balneis idea is right or wrong isn’t really doesn’t matter in terms of analyzing the text.
It’s possible the text was added at a different time. I’m sure most of us are hoping it was added at about the same time as the drawings, but there’s no guarantee of this.
Computational attacks sometimes zero in on specifics (like specific topics, word groups, or patterns) but, for the most part, the text is analyzed as a whole, and c. 200 folios is a pretty big whole.
Voynichese has some shifts and clusters of patterns, but overall it’s very similar from beginning to end. Moreso than one would expect if the wording were very topic-specific.
Nick: Yes, I think it is very sound methodologically to look for block paradigms as whilst I don’t think the manuscript is a wholly unoriginal reproduction, I also doubt that it is wholly original either. Having said that, I think individual crib words could have their place in addition to a block-paradigm or more; ultimately it is about having a sufficient quantity of identifiable text to work with however one assembles it. Anyway I think you are right, one block-paradigm match could crack the whole thing open.
Re-reading these comments today, I’m reminded of two things –
First that I understood cryptographers assume that enciphered texts must use some sort of standard orthography and that the person who enciphers intends another person at some distance and/or time to be able to decipher them by an agreed and consistent method. Have I got that right?
But what if those are wrong assumptions? Say, if the text was spelled phonetically and ‘badly’, or if it was never meant to be read by anyone but the person who first wrote it and perhaps some particular person – say an apprentice – to whom that person would first read it? I’m putting this badly, I know but I’m thinking of pre-Chaucerian English where the number of its ‘y’s and ‘e’s isn’t that of later English. If your block-paradigm is to work, wouldn’t you have a clear idea of the period and region of composition to allow for such things as altered othography and so on?
The second thought is that I doubt any full history of Voynich research can now be written, because since the end of Jim Reeds’ mailing list, it has almost become official ‘policy’ of the online community to make no distinction between an original contribution – even a seminal study – and what are vague ‘ideas’ or hypotheses.
When Rene utters his inaccurate description of a seminal study as ‘nothing new’ because someone once vaguely floated a similar idea, it’s equivalent to saying that there’s no need to mention the radiocarbon dating, or say where it was done and by whom, because back in 19… whenever, someone is on record as saying they had a feeling the ms might possibly be ‘early fifteenth century’.
Conflating unresearched ‘ideas’ with the end-results of detailed study has now been normalised, except among those doing statistical tests on the written part o of the text. And while cryptologists do quite naturally and properly feel it’s ok to first float an idea that is otherwise baseless, and only research whether or not it works, it’s not at all the way to approach a medieval manuscript. People forget that tens of thousands of manuscripts were accurately dated and provenanced in by competent people last century. It can be done by researching first and drawing conclusions afterwards.
Nick do you remember a comment from SirHubert?
“.. breaking ciphers is all about testing hypotheses and finding *the* consistent solution, of which there will be only one. Historical research doesn’t admit of one neat solution and works very differently.
“SirHubert” ( comment to Ciphermysteries, December 10, 2013
Solid, verifiable, and honestly attributed information is what newcomers need in order to test and check what has gone before. That’s the whole reason, as well as saying thanks, for admitting that the information we relate was, or wasn’t a product of our own investigations.
I’ve still never found any paper or article, or blogpost (sorry) where the person proposing a connection between the Vms and the ‘Balneis’ made an argument in the way one normally would about the origins and antecedents for imagery in a medieval manuscript. I’d happily read any that had substance.
Yours snarkily as ever. 🙂
Diane: given that we can neither read a single word nor definitively understand a single drawing of the Voynich Manuscript, we’re clearly “operating under uncertainty” here. What this means in practice is that we’re all travelling in the opposite direction from normal: so, rather than inferentially proceeding forward from (and hence building on) small certainties, we’re instead trying to move backwards to small certainties that seem to be highly elusive.
As a result, the conventional toolkit we would otherwise use here isn’t really a lot of help to us.