Elias Schwerdtfeger has blogged some speculations on the plant on f3r – essentially that, based on its lack of flowers and various other features, the plant depicted on f3r appears to be some kind of “Nacktsamen” (which I think is German for Gymnospermae, the plant group which includes conifers [fir, spruce, etc], cycads [the sago palm and others], and ginkgo biloba [a plant all on its own]). As normal with the VMs, this is good observation and inference, marred (as he indeed notes) only by the problem that no such plant actually exists.
In general, what’s good about Elias’ readings is that he tries hard not to be fooled by the layers of paint: but for any rationalist reading, even if you strip back all the later paints to reveal that-which-was-originally-drawn, the innate mystery of what-was-being-depicted still remains, and perhaps even intensifies. For f3r, as indeed for nearly all the VMs’ “plant” pictures, we don’t know what is going on: is it a trance drawing, a hallucinogenic conjuring from the depths of a proto-botanist’s subconscious? Or were the two plants on facing pages originally “visually anagrammed”, a tricky decoding situation turned into a cryptographic catastrophic by the subsequent shufflings of the bifolios?
As yet, we simply can’t tell, which is why discussions of the herbal pictures can quickly descend into he-said-she-said bitchfests and yeah-but-no-but-yeah-but conflicted monologues. My contribution to the herbal debate (discussed at length elsewhere) concerns the structural differences I noticed between Herbal A pictures and Herbal B pictures, and my suspicion that the latter group “visually enciphers” certain types of machine contemporary to the mid-Quattrocento. Of course, you can argue with this (and if it would make you happy, go ahead, knock yourself out): but what would be the point?
Ultimately, we would like subtler types of information to resolve key unknowns in a more definitive way: for example, Raman imaging and/or multispectral imaging might help distinguish the materials used and layers of accretions, to the point that we might be able to reconstruct what the original raw “alpha” state of each page was. Furthermore, such kinds of imaging might well reveal non-visible (or non-obvious) contact transfers between pages: this might lead to being able to reconstruct many (if not all) of the original page ordering and gatherings. Being able to group vellum bifolios by individual animalskin might make it possible to reconstruct gatherings too. Then, being able to place individual pictures as part of an original sequence might reveal an informative pattern or sequence underlying them all…
But these are rational dreams, of using pure science for pure knowledge, and for now we don’t have this level of smarts to build upon: and so our destiny is to build castles not in the air but on sand, cunning architecture destined not to soar but to sink. Oh well! 🙁
I have been thinking about the purpose of the small plant/root/leaf drawings. It seems clear that the purpose of the large plant drawings are to help the reader to identify a specific plant. So, why do we need small plant/leaf/root drawings?
Here are some possibilities that occur to me:
1) Purely artistic, but not necessary.
2) To illustrate specific aspects of a plant, such as the leaves or root in more detail than in the large drawings. (However generally it doesn’t seem like these drawings are any more detailed.)
3) To have illustration there for quick reference whilst studying the associated text which could contain recipes or other instructions/general information. This would save time browsing for the specific herbal page.
4) Some other purpose
The reason for asking what the purpose of the drawings are is to shed light on what the nature and purpose of the small plant herb labels are. My natural and default position is that it makes most sense if they are plant names, but then the question is that it would then seem reasonable to find that same name in the text relating to the large plant in the herbal section. The extent to which this happens is hard to determine. (I am still matching up small plants, leaves and roots with the large plants). Of course essentially the same word could have a different spelling due to it having different word endings or being abbreviated in one instance or being homophonic. It is striking how many small plant labels are rare words. I wonder if anyone has compared the statistics for different types of labels. I wonder if there are a larger proportion of rare words among the botanical labels than amongst say the astrological labels.
It would seem to be expected that labels are rarer words and more so the case with plant labels.
Mark: the difficulty here is that you’re implicitly applying something along the lines of a ‘simple language’ model to the labels (in the hope of finding a crib) even though all the available evidence (and the knots linguists tie themselves in to try to resolve all the non-language-like behaviours) strongly indicates otherwise.
Without understanding even 5% of what is going on in Voynichese, we cannot usefully apply an interpretative value judgment such as (‘rare’) to the apparent ‘words’ (we believe) we see.
Nick: My hope with the plant labels is not necessarily in finding a crib as I have made no effort in identifying the plants or studied other people’s plant identifications. I have no idea how easy/hard it is to identify the plants and if there are a variety of possible names that a plant could go under. However, of course, if it is possible to generate any kind of crib from plant labels I would be very happy with it, but that is not my current focus. Rather at the moment I am interested in how botanical labels relate to other text in the manuscript. To me they are the most interesting labels, possibly excluding the rosette and f68v3 labels.
I am not quite sure what you mean by a “simple language” model and what you are assuming that I am assuming. You have used this kind of terminology before, but I am never quite sure what you mean by it I.e. what you view as a complex language model that I have overlooked.
I think we can apply to the word ‘rare’ as a descriptor; a rare Voynichese word/vord being one that occurs in frequently in the manuscript. Of course it is theoretically possible that through some homophonic or other mapping a rare Voynichese word could map to a common real word which has multiple different Voynichese spellings.
It seems to me if we can say that we have a drawing and we have a Voynichese glyph sequence which we believe to be associated with that drawing then we can ask what object or concept or meaning is associated with the drawing and what meaning is associated with the text. Then we can consider the question of how the meaning of the text and meaning of the drawing are associated.
By looking at interrelationships and patterns we might be able to understand more than 5% of what is going on with Voynichese.
Mark: the point I’m trying to make is that we have ample proof that the Voynichese text is sufficiently unhinged / non-obvious that the kind of sensible / rational stuff in your head is extraordinarily likely to yield nothing of value. If we can’t find useful text patterns over 200+ pages of text, cribs aren’t going to work. 🙁
Mark,
On the images themselves – the ‘root and leaf’ section includes leaves and roots, certainly, but other types of object, too.
As for the larger plant-pictures, there’s a real problem with assuming a connection between them and the various ‘one plant one specimen’ works normal in the medieval herbals, though in most secondary Voynich writings that assumption was retained from its origin in 1912.
As I understand it, the first to suggest some type of structured composite was John Tiltman, to whose passing comment (ignored thereafter) I was referred by Nick when I hesitated to publish my own studies, having reached a similar conclusion but anticipating antipathetic reaction unless I could quote some precedent from within the ‘Voynich’ arena.
Mark wrote: “It seems clear that the purpose of the large plant drawings are to help the reader to identify a specific plant.”
While this may seem obvious, this is a modern concept of the intention of illustrations. One cannot apply this to medieval drawings. Of course, there is a transition period, and by the times of Brunfels and Fuchs it was becoming the norm.
However, even this simple assumption is based on a number of other assumptions that we simply cannot take for granted.
1) the book is meaningful
2) the plants are real plants
3) the book is instructional
It’s possible there are combination plants, but if so, it becomes very difficult to have productive conversations about them because subjectivity greatly increases when people start assuming what has been combined with what.
There may seem to be an over-riding theme (just as the text may seem to have subsitution-like patterns when first viewed by someone who hasn’t studied it in depth), but that impression is highly dependent on which parts one chooses to associate with others.
It may seem logical to a particular viewer that the combined plants have something in common, but there’s no guarantee that plants are related by shape. They may be related by habitat, use, or any number of other traits that would not be obvious to someone judging by visual characteristics alone.
Rene: Of course it is based on the other assumptions that you described, but I have taken those assumptions as a given, both as I think the arguments that they are the case are very strong, but also as working assumptions for the purpose of exploring a line of thought. I, obviously, have reasons why I believe the book is meaningful overall, but this is a much longer topic. (I am not sure that all of the drawings of naked ladies have a meaning.) Being meaningful largely implies the plants are real plants, though it is possible the illustrations have no relationship to the text. I guess the question to ask is what the function of the plant illustrations are amongst contemporary herbals; it seems not unreasonable to assume that the Voynich illustrations would most likely serve the same or similar purposes as their peers.
I think here is an instance where I think the assertion that there are “unstated” assumptions being made can rather inhibit discussion or thought. So whenever I make assertions of this kind I could list assumptions such as “the Voynich manuscript is meaningful”. As in the 3 cases you list I have opinions as to the truth of those assertions so have not seen those as a block on thought. Certainly it is possible that my opinion as to whether the Voynich is meaningful could change.
I think it could be easy to spend forever discussing whether the Voynich is meaningful and never getting around to looking at what its meaning might be.
Rene: In one sense I addressed some of the issues that you raised when I said “1) Purely artistic, but not necessary.” in my first comment above.
In my experience of treating the plant-pictures, the most important thing is to keep in mind is that they are pictures of unknown origin. The manuscript as such has a provenance, but the images don’t “speak” European.
So the key isn’t logic, or speculation, or the adoption of arbitrary assumptions as basic premises. It’s to study – until you’re able to identify the time, region and community which spoke that visual language.
That might sound a bit arcane, but it’s actually what we do all the time. It’s how we learn to distinguish between tenth-century Irish, twelfth-century English and fourteenth-century Byzantine imagery.
If all you know is Irish, you can’t ‘logic’ Byzantine; if all you know is medieval European custom, you couldn’t ‘logic’ the form and meaning of ancient Egyptian expressions in art. It isn’t wise, either, to presume you know enough to begin from assumed first premises.
I’ve been trying to put off publishing an article about the psychology of perception. It is horridly dull, and most adults suppose there’s no such thing as the equivalent of being ‘tone deaf’ when it comes to pictures so they tend to bridle … at first.
But I think I will write up something, after all. It seems to me lack of awareness of how we process images has been a major hindrance to past efforts to read these images. I’ll try to do it soon.
Rene: Of course on the subject of meaning I still inclined to the view that there are a preponderance of null words and so I think some labels probably have no meaning, but similarly I think there are many labels that most probably have a meaning. So whilst I believe the Voynich is meaningful as a whole I am perfectly happy with the notion that some text and some drawings may be meaningless. (The drawings of naked women on flying machines seem to me to likely be meaningless, though I am open to the idea that there could be a meaning there.)
Why do I think the Voynich is not meaningless? (Briefly)
Clearly without deciphering the text one cannot say with certainty that it is meaningless. However one can consider the likelihood.
1) It seems to me that whilst some of the text could possibly be generated by a Rugg/Timm style process there are other words which could not be and so would have to be generated by a completely different process; these words would be those with the more distinctive or unusual spellings. Of course some kind of random word generation procedure could be used to generate the more distinctive words, but two distinct processes of text generation operating alternately seems to me unlikely and even then would I think not adequately address what we see.
2) The possibility of a purely mentally produced nonsense text(without the use of some kind of tools) is harder to analyse as it requires quite a deep understanding of the brain’s mental processes to predict what the outcome of a purely mentally generated 200 page nonsense text would look like. One can also ask what a text produced by someone mentally “unhinged” would look like; even text produced by a madman writing gibberish I would think should have clear structural aspects as human beings cannot practically generate without tools purely random text. So some of the structural aspects of the text could be a function of neurological processes rather than intrinsic meaning. Nevertheless it is clear that there is some complex structure to the text and that structure implies to me mentally generated meaning more than mentally generated meaningless.
3) There appears to be a logic to most of the drawings/diagrams and they seem to have some commonality to contemporary texts, so they don’t seem to be a product of pure fantasy.
4) Then we enter the area of a precedent for such a meaningless text and the purpose of such a meaningless text. Unless the product of a rich lunatic or for sale as a hoax why would it have been produced? This is another fairly deep topic, but one which again leads me to doubt that it is meaningless.
5) There are other aspects to the Voynich, some quite specific, which make me doubt that the images and/or text as a whole is meaningless. There just appears much purpose and reason to the manuscript where things fit together and drawings make sense in the context of each other which I don’t think would be there if it was a hoax or the product of a madman. There is possibly the seemingly unlikely situation where the text is say some kind of diplomatic or other document concealed in an alchemical style manuscript as we see with Trithemius, but for a variety of reasons that seems problematic.
So overall my assessment without proof is that the text is much more likely to be meaningful overall than meaningless. This is why I have made this an implicit assumption amongst the comments that I have made. Who knows one day I may feel that I have reason to believe that the text is meaningless? Anyway exploring the hypothesis that it is meaningful could one day demonstrate it is meaningless, so that would be a valuable research avenue in and of itself.
Nick: In one sense I think there is a case to say that you are right. Given that a vast number of approaches have been applied to decipher the Voynich and it remains, as yet undeciphered, then the odds that any new, different or variant on an existing approach is likely to succeed looks to be small. However this could be used as an excuse for inertia. Why try to decipher or understand the Voynich when so many have failed and therefore statistically one could argue that the likelihood that any one person will succeed is small?
If I find the kind of textual relationship that I expect then great, if not then it forces me to ask the question why not? Considering answers to the question “why not?” could take me to interesting places and spawn different investigations.
I know some efforts, though probably not big efforts, from what I have seen, have been made to look at shared word cross-distribution within the manuscript in very general terms. This is a valuable exercise, but I fear that sometimes these macro studies can miss the wood for the trees. I think there is a case for working with much specific subsets of Voynichese words. I am generally interested in “rare” words and also words with distinctive spellings and also labels, which often overlap with the other 2 categories. I think there is a case for working with more restrictive subsets satisfying certain specific criteria chosen on the basis that they may provide better insights.
I have a suspicion that once completed I will have identified significantly more plant matches and possible matches than anyone else who has made their work available publically; this is a tedious process as it can sometimes require one to stare very closely to the details of the scans. Anyway more matches means more possible textual relationships to consider. So I think there is value in doing original research, which this is if nobody has yet done it in this detail from what is publically available; one can never know what research has been done that is not public.
Mark: what I’m saying isn’t anti-research at all, rather it’s that I think we have to be much smarter in our choice of research targets if we are to make genuine progress.
For example, Alice Kober’s assault on Linear B superficially suggests that the right approach is to start purely from the script without any kind of theory. But at the same time it was clear to all the experts that Linear B was a syllabary, and that’s a kind of basic defining step we have yet to take for the Voynich.
But there is a lot of basic work that has yet to be done. For example, if the text for a section (say, Herbal A, or Q13A) can be modelled reasonably well, the ‘tell’ would be to examine unusual words where the model fails to apply satisfactorily.
The way that these stand-out words are structured might be the equivalent of the Rosetta Stone’s cartouches.
Mark, regarding Torsten Timm’s ideas about the text, it’s probably not a good idea to lump them with Rugg’s ideas by writing “Timm/Rugg” (better to say Timm or Rugg to main a separation between them).
They differ in some important ways that are worth acknowledging.
They may seem the same because both are about generating the text, but Timm’s theory is far more plausible than Rugg’s. Rugg’s is based on a system of generation that ignores the VMS structure. Timm’s theory examines the VMS structure.
Mark I mapped every token in the VMS (both rare and common) in terms of relationships (think of mindmap diagrams) and their positional characteristics, and even their proximity-to-other-VMS-token patterns. This includes the labels.
The document describing this is more than 1100 pages (and those are just my rough notes, not a pretty-printed version that would be comprehensible to an audience), plus I created an extensive database documenting the statistical properties, location, and beginning and end patterns for every token. My breakdown of sections is more fine-tuned than the usual VMS categories. It took years.
The patterns of similarity, proximity, and positional relationships one would expect if these were “words” in any linguistic sense are simply not there. Either the glyph order and spaces have been manipulated in some way or they are not words-and-letters, they are something else (numbers? symbols? references? anagrams in some rational repeatable way? text with a lot of modifiers and markers mixed in? dummy text?).
Even after this long concerted (and disappointing) effort, I am still not convinced that it is auto-generated (although I believe auto-generation is possible) or that it is null text, because I can still think of a few ways meaningful text could be manipulated to come out like this.
A few years ago I wrote both a Perl script and a Python script to generate VMS text and could get something that was about 85% “legit”, but it’s the other 15% that has me baffled. It’s difficult to tell if the odd-ones-out represent mistakes (they don’t feel like mistakes), or they were introduced to make it look more like real text, or if they represent a level of sophistication that speaks against auto-generated text.
Mark, there are two things going wrong here.
1. That medieval herb illustrations were rarely (if ever) meant to help the reader recognise the plants in question is not the result of the three bullets I listed. It is the result of analysis of historical herbals. The three bullets listed are points in addition to that.
2. If you are happy to assume that the text is meaningful and the herbs are real and meaningful, without any evidence, then you are making some major assumptions, and the question you are trying to answer (difference between the large and small herb drawings) is a minor point relative to that. It becomes almost a meaningless argument.
To elucidate: if the drawings are in the MS just to make it look prettier or more interesting, any argument about the difference between the large and small pictures disappears. And this is a perfectly valid possibility, among the range of possibilities.
Rene: I find it shocking that I am accused of making assumptions that other people such as yourself make readily. You have made all sorts of statements here and elsewhere assuming that the text is meaningful and yet when I do it I am making an unwarranted assumption. I have provided an idea here as to why I think the text is meaningful, it is true that I could provide a much more detailed discussion of the points I listed and maybe I will at some time, but I have considered seriously the question as to whether the Voynich is nonsense or not.
Rene – to clarify,
when you say
“If you are happy to assume that the text is meaningful and the herbs are real and meaningful, without any evidence..”
did you mean, “if you are happy to assume that the text is meaningful and that ‘herb’ LABELS are real and meaningful without any evidence…”
The idea that the plant-pictures are ‘herbs’ is another item still without any intelligent argument in its favour. What we see is the 100-yr old assumption adopted, and then efforts made to support it afterwards with nice clips from herbals next to nice clips from the ms – none of which explain anything at all about the labels or text and most of those ‘pairings’ fail analytical scrutiny.
It is also less than true to say that there is no evidence for the plant-pictures’ being meaningful, though I suppose if you mean that you’ve never been able to accept any argument or evidence on that matter, then it’s a fair statement.
Anyone can express their own view of the research done to date. It might be a good idea to keep clear, in your comments and website, the difference between ideas of your own, and statements which can be proven so.
I’m sure that if Fr. Petersen were still alive – and that current writers such as Sherwood, Scott, Velinska and others – they would debate your assertion that there is no evidence for the plant-pictures’ meaning to represent real plants – and you can hardly dismiss all their work which they, at least, would describe as evidence.
And if the pictures are meant to represent one, or more, real plants, then the implication is that the labels are ‘real’. As so often, it may be the basic assumptions, and runaway theorising, which is the problem – not the primary evidence.
Mark: considering possibilities is all very well, but figuring out how to make progress testing any of the extraordinarily basic hypotheses is quite another.
And these can be unbelievably basic: e.g. what is the difference between o- words and qo- words? I pointed out (in Curse?) that we only really see qol and qor in sections where we get l- words and r- words (e.g. Q13), so I don’t believe that qo- is the same as q- + o-.
One point that I think is quite relevant at this point in the discussion, is the importance of the questions one asks. Sometimes asking the right question(s) is a more significant step than even the process of answering those questions. We inevitably ask questions based on our reasoning. So asking the question of what is the relationship, if any, between the botanical labels and herbal text where the associated drawings appear to match is just a question and has no assumptions within it, however one only asks that question if one thinks there might or ought to be a relationship between the two. So one can dodge the assertion of making unproven assumptions by claiming to only be asking questions, but ultimately I think this is a fudge as one is only inclined to ask that question if one has made certain assumptions.
Ultimately, we all make assumptions that we haven’t justified. Generally we don’t justify assumptions unless we think there is a reasonable chance that they may not be true. So for example I make the assumption that the Voynich manuscript exists even though I have never seen it with my naked eyes(assuming I can rely on my vision.) and cannot validate the truth of the claims of having seen it by others. However I am not prepared to spend time justifying that assumption even though philosophers and conspiracy theorists might tell me that I should. My point is that we make a vast number of assumptions, but it does not make sense to list them all when discussing the Voynich. And even when assumptions are more subject to doubt, I think one can infer that I am implicitly making some assumptions that I think very likely to be true or are provisional assumptions for the purpose of exploring a line of argument.
I am not a chess player, though I have some interest in Go, but in games like these it is normal to explore what if questions i.e. if I were to move piece X to position
Y then what would be the consequences for subsequent moves. This is like saying what if I assume statement A then what are the implications for subsequent arguments. We all do this and it can be instructive to see what the consequences of certain assumptions might be even if those assumptions are as yet unproven.
Nick: I agree that figuring out how to make progress is a problem that we all face. It would be probably be a good idea for me to read the book about the decipherment of Linear B that you suggest. However I should say that I am not confident that there is an off the shelf procedure that we can employ to decipher the Voynich. For one Linear B is not a cipher, but a language, so the parallels to Voynichese may be limited. As an aside have you compared how Kober/Ventris approach was similar or different to the decipherment by Champollion and other Egyptologists of Hieroglyphics as well as the decipherment of other languages. Are there methodological generalisations that we can really make?
The avenue of research that I am currently exploring, I am doing as I think it an interesting one that has the possibility of leading to some interesting conclusions, though it may not. I think the study of labels in general is an interesting area as I think that labels provide a simpler basis for looking at Voynichese.
JKP wrote:
“Timm’s theory is far more plausible than Rugg’s”.
I daresay that that is a matter of opinion. Both seem to fail to explain the Voynich MS text in a sufficient manner, so it may be a moot point. However, in my opinion the Rugg method has some advantages, the main one being that it attempts to explain the word structure in the text, which the Timm method does not. (It is somehow a by-product, but it would really require strong constraints on the method).
Also, it is straightforward to set up some tables that would allow generation of a number of pages using the Cardan grille method. (But I hasten to point out that that is not a criterium – it is purely reverse engineering).
One can derive some quite interesting considerations from the Cardan grille method, and one day I may write it down.
Nick: I was thinking as an example your block-paradigm approach seems methodologically sound to me, the difficulty lies in finding a reliable large block-paradigm. If you can find one then I think it could be an incredible useful basis for tackling a decipherment. Likewise if one can construct a reliable crib based on a variety of separate Voynich words, whether they be a mixture of plant names or stars or whatever then that would be a great basis for approaching a decipherment, the problem is if one can create such a crib. So I would argue that there are a variety of possible approaches in addition to those described that one could employ, but determining in the current situation which is likely to be most effective seems far from obvious to me. I have my own ideas, particularly where I view labels as being broadly speaking a potential key even if not necessarily producing a crib.
Rene: some of the most interesting results of Timm and Rugg’s models are those places where they abjectly fail to predict Voynichese’s behaviour.
In fact, this is probably a general principle, that we learn most from a model in those places where it fails to apply as universally as the modeller hoped.
Nick: I can concur with that regarding Rugg and Timm.
Of course I might suggested that for these meaningless/null text models the explanation could be that the areas that they are good at predicting might be indicative of some kind of nullity within the text and the areas where they are poor at predicting might be indicative of some genuine meaning. I know you don’t agree with that, but that is clearly the explanation that I find most satisfactory at this time.
Nick: As an aside from what little I know of the subject the Behistun Inscription was vital in the decipherment of cuneiform, the Rosetta Stone was vital to the decipherment of hieroglyphics and as discussed the list of town names was important in the decipherment of linear b. The Behistun Inscription and the Rosetta Stone were essentially what you term block-paradigms whereas the Linear B towns constitute a crib, though really a block-paradigm is a macro-crib. I don’t know what role cribs played in the decipherment or decryption of other languages or cipher texts, though I wonder whether it is realistic to suggest that the Voynich can be deciphered without the use of a crib.
Mark: you’re being a bit literal there. The reason I proposed the block-paradigm method was that it offered a way of decrypting the Voynich Manuscript without having to assume any prior external theory. In a way, it is nothing more than a known-plaintext attack (KPA)… but a fairly subtle one, nonetheless. 🙂
Nick: I was just wondering what we can really say in general as far as successful methods employed to decipher languages or decrypt ciphertexts and what we can tentatively point to as the commonalities between the methods employed successfully as part of this process. Obviously just because techniques were employed successfully in the case of other languages or ciphertexts does not mean that they will work with the Voynich, but they can be a useful point of reference. Maybe the approach that I am currently using will yield useful information or maybe not, but I think people exploring different research avenues is not such a bad idea.
Mark: for Linear B, I guess the answer may well depend on whose account of the decryption you read. The story that Margalit Fox presents is that Ventris only started to make genuine progress at the point where he put aside his long-standing Etruscan preconceptions / theories to look much more closely at what Kober’s rigorous methodology had previously yielded: and even though I think that Fox is basically correct in this reading, it’s probably inevitable that others will disagree. :-/
Mark, you write: “Rene: I find it shocking that I am accused of making assumptions that other people such as yourself make readily.”
I am not assuming that either the text is meaningful or the plants are realistic representations of existing plants. It’s possible. but I don’t know this at all. It is also entirely possible that some plants refer to real plants and others not. In the case of the alchemical herbals, some plants are clearly identifiable and others not. Either the connection has been lost or it was never there.
With respect to Rugg’s and Timm’s approaches, indeed they both have severe issues, so again it is probably a moot point which one is worse/better. And it is a matter of taste.
@Rene
You write “In the case of the alchemical herbals, some plants are clearly identifiable and others not.”
Based on the old books where I have read in German, I have to ask myself, where does alchemy begin?
Alchemy, making something else out of something that exists.
For example: plants, grapes=wine, grain=beer, roses=oil, etc.
Do I have to eat camomile as a salad, or am I allowed to make tea from it before I have to call it alchemy.
I think the transition between plants is very smooth, in contrast to minerals or metals.
Peter M.
I am not sure what is meant by “alchemical herbals”.
A type of manuscript dubbed by Aldrovandi, who collected them, ‘herbals of the alchemists’ was investigated years ago, on the first mailing list, and as Philip Neal says, were found to have nothing alchemical in, or about them.
It is possible that some evidence has been found since then to counter that earlier conclusion, but if so I’ve never seen it or seen it cited. Nor has anyone been very clear about what A. meant by ‘the alchemists’.
Rene wrote: “However, in my opinion the Rugg method has some advantages, the main one being that it attempts to explain the word structure in the text, which the Timm method does not.”
The Rugg explanation of the text structure is simplistic and WRONG, wrong, wrong.
The VMS text is not based on a prefix/root/suffix system in the way that he proposes. His entire idea revolves around this basic concept and that is why his system generates non-legit VMS text.
Timm is at least STUDYING the text structure. Forget the part of about “auto-copying”, I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusion, but I DO BELIEVE wholeheartedly that Timm is studying the text structures far better than Rugg. Rugg proposed an idea that shows he didn’t really look at Voynichese and then left it at that. The idea is fundamentally wrong.
Yes, that’s my opinion, but Rugg’s proposal is NOT how VMS text is put together (and his examples do not generate anything close to VMS text, there are large numbers of invalid tokens that can NOT be “fixed” by fine-tuning the basic concept).
Yes, I have data to support my contention, and I can get much closer to legit text than Rugg’s proposal, it’s just incredibly difficult to find time to finish writing it up (I have many pages written, but without the complete description and numerous examples from the original text, it can be misinterpreted or simply not understood and I’d rather hold onto it until I can finish it properly rather than post something half-explained onto the Internet).
Mark wrote: “I am not a chess player, though I have some interest in Go…”
I’m an ex-chess player. Once I discovered Go, I no longer had any interest in chess. I find Go to be more lively and varied than chess. What a great game.
Unfortunately, I knew nothing about Go when I was young (or even when I was in college), and it’s the kind of game one should learn when young, but better now than never. 🙂
René Zandbergen wrote:
“the main one being that it attempts to explain the word structure in the text, which the Timm method does not.”
Please note that we give an explanation for the rigid word structure in our paper: “The rules to modify a source word normally don’t affect the order of the glyphs. This is one reason for the observation that the words in the VMS share the same rigid word structure” (Timm & Schinner 2019, p. 9).
With other words, the scribe used a limited set of rules to modify the source words. This is the reason that it is possible to describe the vocabulary of the VMs as network of words similar to each other: “the resulting network, connecting 6,796 out of 8,026 words (= 84.67)” (Timm & Schinner 2019, p. 5).
It is easy to verify the self citation method. Start with a given word or phrase and copy previously written words while replacing at least one letter with a different one. Try to invent a new modification rule every time you copy a word. Then do it a second time and reuse modification rules already invented. It is far more efficient to reuse rules. Isn’t it?
Torsten: by reconstructing a “limited set of rules used to modify the source words”, you think that you have explained Voynichese to a degree that should satisfy doubters (such as Rene and me). But you haven’t. Insofar as your method and Rugg’s method go, they both seem to me to be exclusively concerned with the question of how to construct a simulacrum of Voynichese – “what limited set of rules can I devise that will allow me to construct something that superficially behaves like Voynichese?”
As far as producing a superficial simulacrum of Voynichese behaviours goes, I applaud you both.
But as far as producing a proof for how Voynichese was actually produced, I can’t see that you’ve even begun. Proof is hard – unbelievably hard – and I can’t even see a faint outline of a proof in your papers. I can see your fiery, burning belief, sure: but that’s not proof, not even slightly.
Nick: My approach was to describe the rules for the writing system. This is what Alice Kober had done for Linear B and this is what I have done in the case of the VMs. To learn the rules for a writing system and to hope to find this way a clue pointing to the language behind the writing system is the only option we have. It is in fact possible to study the decipherments of the past in order to learn the method! Therefore I can only encourage you to read more about the theory of decipherments. I would recommend to start with “Methods of decipherment” by Ignace J. Gelb (1975) and “Zur Theorie der Entzifferung” by Gunther Ipsen (1954).
Our paper only argues that we describe a “possible text-generator algorithm (the ‘self-citation’ process), easily executable without additional tools even by a medieval scribe” [Timm & Schinner 2019, p. 1]. This way we argue that our description for the rules of writing system is comprehensive.
Two weeks ago in your article about Alice Kober you wrote “For me, the oddest thing about Voynichese is that even though modern researchers now know a vast amount about its inner workings (for example, you could hardly fault Torsten Timm’s diligence and persistence), they remain steadfastly unable to figure out the next step forwards.” This way you already accepted my claim that I describe a vast amount of rules for the inner workings of the writing system and that every step forward has to start with this rules. If you also accept my conclusions or not doesn’t matter.
Nick: On the subject of decipherments and cribs. The following important decipherment of the Ugaritic language may be of interest:
Like the famed Rosetta Stone found in 1799 in Egypt, whose parallel texts in Greek and hieroglyphic Egyptian enabled scholars to decipher the latter, cuneiform tablets turned up at Ugarit with parallel texts in Ugaritic and Akkadian.
By comparing the proper names in them, which were the same in both languages, it was possible to figure out the Ugaritic characters — and in doing so, it became clear that Ugaritic was a language of the northwest branch of the Semitic family and that it was much closer in phonetics, vocabulary and grammar to Phoenician and Hebrew than it was to eastern-branch Akkadian. Since Phoenician and Hebrew were known tongues, Ugaritic usually could be figured out with their aid, though scholars often disagree to this day about exact meanings.
Peter M. seems somehow to have gotten away with his self serving quasi literal interpretation of the word alchemy in order to connect it with the most unlikely of alternative useage. I note with no surprise that he also succeeded in getting a pass on a flippant put down of my recent f80r pelvimiter post based more as likely as not, a complete disconnect with its intended obstetric purpose and design concept of 1789. In that case I’m thinking he his getting the device confused with the oft suggested and more era convenient, delivery forceps or even a pair of ice tongs.
@D.N. O’Donovan
“I am not sure what is meant by “alchemical herbals”.”
Me neither.
But I imagine that you can make more different things from some plants than with some others.
Example: Moss is used in wound healing, but I don’t know any extract where moss is made from.
Rubber tree, rubber, car tires.
We make an eraser from dandelions. Always popular with toddlers.
Corn, ethanol, motor fuel ( alchemy ? )
Cow farts, metan gas, heating fuel. Is this now an alchemical cow, or a biogas plant.
I have no idea what the standards are.
The only thing Rugg demonstrated is that a grille can be used to quickly generate unmeaningful text.
He didn’t elucidate anything useful about Voynichese (in fact, he appears to have muddied the waters in terms of proposing a method that looks plausible on the surface but does not actually generate anything particularly close to Voynichese on either a token level or on a “phrase” level).
Torsten: I don’t have any problem with your observations – the difficulty I have in reading your papers (and I’ve read plenty of unbelievably complex papers and books) is simply because I find it almost impossible to unpick your theory of autocopying from your presentations.
The point of papers is to form a coherent argument where the steps of the reasoning from evidence to analysis to synthesis to conclusions are exposed. But is far as I can see, all the nitty gritty details of the ways that you have had to adapt the whole concept of edit distance in order to replicate a good number (not all, not by a long way) of Voynichese’s features are embedded not in your papers but in your code.
I’ll be the first person to praise your keen eye & observations, but I’ll also be the first person to say that I don’t think you’ve yet formed an ‘open book’ argument, let alone a persuasive argument.
I’m not sure what is meant by alchemical herbals either, but I can make an educated guess…
The alchemists pursued the mythical philosopher’s stone with vigor, and the possibility of turning inexpensive materials into gold had a strong appeal, but… experimentation and measurable results versus elusive ones can change your viewpoint about how to profit from alchemy.
As the alchemists learned more about distillation and preservation, the processes for creating alcoholic beverages were refined and expanded into new products.
These new opportunities probably stirred interest in plants on a wider scale. Fortunes were being made in the 16th century (and perhaps also in the late 15th century) by selling new categories of distilled products (both recreational and medicinal). Since certain plants are more appropriate for tinctures and drinks than others, enterprising alchemists probably sought out herbal/arboreal reference materials.
But it wasn’t chemistry yet… alchemy was still heavily dependent on myth and symbology, so herbs like “lunaria” were probably especially appealing.
And guess what… the “alchemical” herbals are the ones that particularly emphasize “lunaria” (not to be confused with real plants called lunaria, of which there are several). Some of the medieval manuscripts describe a “glow-in-the-dark” lunaria that no one has been able to ID as a real plant, and where is it especially emphasized?… in the so-called “alchemical” herbals.
Nick: This are a lot of meta level arguments. It seems that you hope that your and René Zandbergens opinion is enough to dismiss my work.
Ants and ant.
Many places in the manuscript write : I write in Czech. Or Czech words.
This tells Eliška what language she wrote in this manuscript.
So what are you still trying to find out ?
Language and encryption ??
Language is clear and encryption is substitution. the so-called Jewish numerology system. So dont´be crazy.
I bet with every scientist and ants about $ 10 000.
Torsten: when you can form an argument about Voynichese that moves towards autocopying rather than proceeding from it, we will start to make progress.
Is that non-meta enough?
@john Schleifern
“Peter M. seems somehow to have gotten away with his self serving quasi literal interpretation of the word alchemy in order to connect it with the most unlikely of alternative useage.”
First of all you have to know what alchemy is, and secondly you are in my field.
Alchemy, today divided into pharmaceuticals and chemistry.
And me 30 years working in the pharmaceutical field.
There are about 170 medicinal plants where somehow and somewhere in a book. But none is called alchemistic. Whether it cures or kills someone.
Alchemy, is what you make of it.
If you think you can date the VM to the 1800 century with your pliers, you have come to the wrong place.
By the way, with similar pliers you have already pulled logs from forests in the 1200 century.
End of the announcement.
@Josef
Sorry, but the dollar is sick. But I take Euros, British pounds and Swiss francs.
Torsten, the most important thing you have done is describing what you see. Most of the self-proclaimed “solvers” are too lazy or too eager for quick results to look at the structure of the text or to describe it (in fact, they’d probably rather NOT do this because it might contradict their assertions). The number of people doing what you are doing is incredibly small, so keep doing it.
On the other hand, speculating on how the text is assembled, even though it is obviously related (seemingly inseparable) involves interpretation. The interpretation really should be separated out from the more specific observations because it’s possible to be right about one and wrong about the other. Science is FULL of examples of breakthroughs that were correctly recorded but incorrectly (or only partially) interpreted and then re-interpreted by someone else later.
If you maintain a separation between observation and interpretation, it also makes it easier for your audience to understand that observation and interpretation are different issues, so they will talk about specifics and not write off the whole idea because of a few disagreements.
I realize this may be difficult if you have a wholistic vision of the text, but in the long run it actually gives you more flexibility to fine-tune your interpretation without having to go back and change all the parts that are empirical observations.
It just occurred to me.
Not to mention the mythic department.
Protection from all kinds of things. Wild garlic root, man shield, and probably the most famous … garlic.
I don’t know if it’s always been topical, or if it first appeared in the novel Dracula.
2Torsten
I may have written it elsewhere, but if you want to prove not only that VMS is compatible with your generation method, but that it was written with your method you have to do a bit more. For example to prove that there are no other ways to generate Voynich text.
I think that’s extremely difficult task. It would be much easier to prove that it’s written in some language…
It’s interesting how people continue to associate themselves with either Kober or Ventris. Ones dream about collecting tons of stats and then producing the solution out of them on some Thursday, others dream about success despite completely amateurish approach:)
It was always interesting how modern Kober would look like? It may well be that with all excellent transcriptions of VMS we may do all statistical work in minutes or even seconds – while it took probably years to her. What would modern Kober spend the remaining time on?
And it appears that Ventris was not so amateurish (not speaking about Chadwick) – he knew dozen of languages, at 14 attended Evans lecture, at 18 had article published, spoke on the radio… What do modern amateurs have in their portfolio?
In any case the decoder of VMS will be Kobtris – knowledge in different areas, ability to collect and process data, ability to find detail which will collapse general stats into concrete theory – all of these is required.
Peter M.
It really doesn’t matter what we make of alchemy or what we make of any other matter. What matters is that what is said must be demonstrably true of activities and objects from a given people at a given time.
Proving that link without resorting to theoretical-fictional scenarios of the “it might have been” type, without using anachronism, or careless ‘comparisons’ is the real job. Not that this has anything to do with the subject of Nick’s post. Apologies.
Peter M’s profound arrogance and ignorance is not unexpected, firstly by his silly insulting address, next by his wacky pelvimiter comparison to a 12th century log puller and finally by reference to his own admission of being involvolved in the deceptive practice of alchemy for thirty years (hardly flattering). As far as the claim that I’ve come to the wrong place with my alternate views; that worries the old Sclleifen (Sandyman) not one iota.
John, Peter didn’t say he was in alchemy. He said chemistry and pharmacy evolved from alchemy (which is essentially correct) and that he’s in a field that was born from this evolution.
@Diane
To get back to the real issue. If I compare VM-plants with other drawings of same time, they seem to be drawn realistic.
The longer we compare in appearance and application, the less likely a combination of several parts of plants becomes. Some are unmistakably real.
So why should you do it. Here the reason is missing.
It can’t be alchemy either, because I can do the same thing with every plant in a basic way.
As long as there is no obvious reason, or something similar demonstrably available, I will not go into such a theory.
@ john sanders
I’m not arrogant but I ignore nonsense, I just don’t let any nonsense get to me.
Maybe you should think of other options before you write anything.
Here’s an example:
Pytagoras has already worked with that.
https://german.alibaba.com/product-detail/measuring-tools-vernier-and-rule-depth-gages-for-wood-50042279847.html
Nick: One thing that I think is interesting is how the Mayan script was deciphered. I wonder whether there was anything like a Rosetta Stone or crib as I guess it is unlikely that there was another indigenous American language script that would have been known to Europeans. From what I have read the decipherment was a long complex and gradual process over the 20th century. However I have not really studied this subject, but it might be of relevance to Voynich researchers.
Mark: you do know the Friedmans were (as I recall) both very much into Maya stuff?
Nick: Proto-Elamite remains undeciphered, but I believe scans are available for download online for people for whom the Voynich is not enough. Personally, one undeciphered script is enough for me.
I don’t know whether scans of the complete Linear A documentary record is available.
I would imagine that unlike the Voynich there must be a huge number of texts to scan for Linear A and Proto-Elamite, so I wonder whether these could all realistically all be available online at this time.
@Mark
There are some records of missionaries from that time.
I’ve seen some, but I don’t know where to find them today. You probably have to speak Spanish.
“Ticcisimi in Blas Valera’s manuscript”
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu
Here is another chronicler
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waman_Puma_de_Ayala
Mark: The last step in deciphering a writing system is indeed to find something like a Rosetta Stone in order to link the script to something already known.
Gunther described this step as: “Nur wo gelingt, das Unbekannte durch Entzifferung an Überliefertes anzuschließen, kann der Schritt zum Verlauten getan werden. Was heißt Anknüpfung an Überliefertes? Es heiß zuletzt, daß die Kunst der Entzifferung darin besteht, dass sie ein Gespräch wieder aufnimmt, das man hat fallen lassen. Sie mischt sich unter die Schatten derer, die gewesen sind, und nennt einen beim Namen. Doch ist sie dieses Namens nur mächtig, weil das Gespräch der Menschheit mit sich selbst niemals ganz abgerissen ist, sondern die Kunde des Vergangenen fortträgt in Zeit und Raum. Das währende Gespräch der Menschheit macht die Entzifferung möglich” (Gunther Ipsen 1954, p. 423).
In the case of the Maya hieroglyphs a link to something already known did exists. This were some notes also known as the Landa alphabet. Diego de Landa Calderón described in his notes the Mayan writing system. Landan had asked Mayan speakers about the meaning of the symbols but due to communication errors his description was not always correct.
It is important to note that Knorosov was only successful in deciphering the Maya script since he was able to determine the maya writing system as a mix of logographic glyphs and glyphs representing syllables. Also in his case it was necessary to understand the rules for the writing system before it was possible to decipher the script.
Torsten: Interesting so there was some kind of parallel to a crib even in the Mayan case.
Nick: How significant a role have cribs played in the deciding of ciphers I wonder?
The Rongorongo script from Easter Island has not been deciphered. I guess in this case no obvious Rosetta Stone exists. Though strictly speaking I guess you do not need a Rosetta Stone just a way of connecting text to something tangible outside of the text. Something like town names only found on specific tablets as in Linear B.
It does seem that things are quite hard going without some kind of crib. Though in theory that should not be difficult with the Voynich as text can be connected with the drawings throughout the manuscript, so there are very many possible tangible links to be made as of course people try to do so. Just imagine how hard it could be if there were no drawings in the manuscript and only 200 pages of solid text with nothing to relate it to.
Another 2 undeciphered scripts are the Indus script from the Indus valley civilisation in India/Pakistan and the Olmec script which predates Mayan script.
I just found a list of undeciphered writings systems:
Linear A, Voynich manuscript, Rongorongo, Codex Seraphinianus, Phaistos Disc, Old European script, Singapore Stone, Quipu, Cascajal Block, Indus script, Rohonc Codex, Byblos syllabary, Jurchen script, Khitan scripts, Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, Proto-Elamite, Liber Linteus, Tărtăria tablets, Southwest Paleohispanic script, Isthmian script, Cypro-Minoan syllabary, Cretan hieroglyphs, Basarabi Cave Complex, The Starving of Saqqara, McClelland Sherd, Dispilio Tablet, Linear Elamite, Gradeshnitsa tablets, Kaymajarvi Inscriptions, Youra Potsherds, Banpo symbols, Jiahu symbols.
So when we have cracked the Voynich there is plenty to keep us busy.
Peter M
When you say, “To get back to the real issue. If I compare VM-plants with other drawings of same time, they seem to be drawn realistic.
The longer we compare in appearance and application, the less likely a combination of several parts of plants becomes. Some are unmistakably real.
So why should you do it. Here the reason is missing.
Who you mean by “we” isn’t specified so I’ll read it as if you’d said “I”.
I’ll take that to be your own impression.
There are different way to approach drawings – and the constant and major failing which runs through the history of Voynich studies from the beginning is this failure to stay conscious of the fact that what is on each of these pages in is a *drawing*, not a plant.
If you have a problematic pre-modern drawing, you don’t presume that it was first enunciated in the time and place that you find the drawing. (Otherwise if someone were to discover the Codex Mendoza in Italy, they’d say its drawings were a product of renaissance Italian culture).
The first thing to consider is what you want to know about the picture in question: are you asking where this present image was made, or are you asking where and when, and in what cultural context it was first enunciated?
These are different questions – you can get a copy of the Mona Lisa painted today in China. Are you trying to determine the date and origin of the present object or the ‘visual language’ spoken in the context it was first made?
And as a general caution, in Voynich studies – considering the past century’s efforts – I would also say that there is not sufficient reason to build fictional-theoretical scenarios from a presumption that Europe is the world, or even that it was the centre of the world at the time the Vms was made. We don’t actually *know* that the primary document was produced in Europe proper, though the binding’s stitch supports indicate that it was bound in Latin style – which is also Armenian style after the Crusader period.
The book by Janick and Tucker is, in my opinion, the perfection of all the bad habits which mark the traditionalists’ approach. Theory-first; pre-emptive range to the research; anachronism; assumption of literalism in the plant-pictures; assumption of medical purpose.. persistent refusal to admit the existence of (let alone to absorb) contrary evidence; failure to *test* the theory against the body of external (non-Voynich) scholarship… constant confusion between an internally-consistent historical fiction and historical studies.
And those were both fully qualified and very competent botanists, entirely competent in the traditions of European botanical science.
They just forgot that a plant is not a drawing and not every vegetable image is meant to be literal, a specimen, or medicinal.
Peter M.
Ersatz is an option that comes to mind Peter, usually associated with coffee derivitives developed by profit driven Swiss/Jewish alchemists in the depression years; selling dirt cheap across the border at around ein hundred thousand reisch marks a kilo and being of quite acceptable taste but in short supply…The Marshall plan airlift of Maxwell House freeze dried into West Berlin saved many a greatful German tastebud whose past reliance on Pythagorus brand ‘cafex’ from Crete was becoming intolerable. It had been a gift of the humble Greeks in gratitude for their liberation by the Liman Von Sanders parachute regiment in ’41, having as it’s main characteristic, an aftertaste of burnt olive husks with cork wood trimmings, and being long past it’s intended use by date at that…….The moral to this slightly guilded yarn being, there can be no substitute for the real thing including coffee or even well substantiated theory, and to be weary of any substitute offerings by self serving charleton alchemists and their offshoot ilk.
Diane: Janick and Tucker demonstrate beyond all doubt that those “bad habits” are just as applicable to New World / non-European theories as to Old World / European theories.
@Diane
I do not look at a drawing of the plant as a single item. For me it is a detail of the whole, a concept where the book represents
If there is too much unrest in the whole, then something is usually wrong.
Both plant pictures. My work is subject to a standing change. Sometimes it happens that somebody has a hint where, on closer inspection, it comes closer than before.
In terms of future knowledge, I have chosen the word “we”. ( What we will discover, not me ).
-Janick and Tucker are off the table for me. At the most they get a tired smile from me.
-The Mona Lisa was a bad example.
-Too much “if and but” is more of a hindrance than a help. A wrong way will vanish into thin air anyway.
@john sanders
I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.
D.N. O’Donovan wrote: “And those were both fully qualified and very competent botanists, entirely competent in the traditions of European botanical science…”
We don’t know if they are competent or “very competent” botanists, or even if they are botanists (I think one of them might have studied agriculture).
At least one of the plants they identified doesn’t even grow in the area they pinpointed for VMS plants. It is a temperature-sensitive plant with a very limited range.
They also used a very atypical photograph to illustrate one of the plants. It looks more like the VMS drawing than a normal form of the plant, so perhaps that’s why they used it, but it’s an oddball and not really appropriate for any kind of plant identification.
As for European botanical science, they might not know anything about European plants (except for those that are circumboreal or have been recently introduced to North America). Not every botanist (or agriculturalist) studies plants outside a certain region.
Peter M.
I’m not at all surprised that the black arts would play such prominant role in your scholastic pursuits, to the exclusion of modern miliary history, which you would undoubtedly find irksome and somewhat deflating.
I understand you better and better. You’re already number one bye me, but keep it up.
A 19-century birthing wrench and a patent on pipe couplings from 1960.
Modern stock exchange trading on coffee and a German general from World War I.
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/liman_von_sanders_otto_viktor_karl
And all this on the subject of the Voynich manuscript.
You’re a real case for Dr. Freud.
JKP
Before deciding whether the authors were competent in botanical science – that is, the western tradition – I read some of their writings in their own subject. I should think anyone hypothesising that Janick, especially, is other than a thoroughly well-qualified and competent botanist, would do well to tread carefully.
Peter M.
I doubt that I would be considered an interesting candidate for good Dr. Freud’s assessment; I’m certainly no ‘dream merchant’, being more into nouveau realism, particularly in the case of our Voynich Manuscript, as opposed to those fantastic ‘Freudulent’ medieval pipe dreams that you are wont to pedal.
John, you mean “all is in fluxus” .. or “that’s a wrap?” 🙂
I read their writings in botany also, and a lot of it is highly questionable.
Diane, I daresay I probably have a stronger background in plants than you and I have spent the last 12 years intensely studying medieval plant literature as well (not only the illustrated texts but also some of the nonillustrated texts) and I see the Janick/Tucker plant research as hasty and full of statements that can be strongly disputed.
Diane: I much prefer the Hiraclitas idiom to any Hollywood like terminology just so long as there’s no discent from Peter M.
With the Janick / Tucker theory it is not the plants where I have to think.
There is a C14 analysis, which alone makes the theory questionable. There is also no graphical reference to America.
No attempt was made to adjust the theory based on the data since 2009 in any way until today.
There is even an attempt to sell something in 2019 through a book and newspaper article that can’t be there.
These are the reasons why I cannot take them seriously anymore.