Comments for Cipher Mysteries

Comment on German skeptic conference… by nickpelling

nickpelling — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:25:21 +0000

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Comment on German skeptic conference… by Rene Zandbergen

Rene Zandbergen — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:27:24 +0000

Ouch!

A Voynich MS presentation in my back yard and
I find out about it 8 months or so too late :-/

René

Comment on Voynich Manuscript soundtrack…? by Brian

Brian — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:08:05 +0000

did you ever consider that the VM may indeed be music? Before the scale lines were invented, there were many ciphers which indicated musical notes as symbols. That would also account for each page having repeating themes and “words”, much as music does. No way of knowing what symbol means what, but ususally each note played one at a time and for a set length, though similar symbols may donote a change in note length or sharps or flats.

Wouldnt it be ironic if the VM is a playbook for either chants or a simple musical notation and you are looking for a soundtrack for it! Each monostary often used its own notation, and if you look at sheet music, now and then, it often had tangental images filling in the blank parts of the pages.

Comment on Voynich Research 2.0 by nickpelling

nickpelling — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:01:14 +0000

Currently, I would predict that even a very good palaeographer would have little better idea about the age of the script and the internal connectivity of the strokes than we already do. What I think would instead be useful would be something approaching forensic palaeography: a dissection of each letter in terms of the stroke directions and pressure, particularly for the various Currier hands. I’d like to know what kind of quill was used (eagle?), at what speed the text was written (brisk, not breakneck?), what physical size the author’s hand was (medium sized?), and perhaps even the author’s age: but, as I understand it, these are all on the forensic borders of palaeography. Note that I’m not talking about “graphology” per se, but rather what we can learn from the forensic physicality of the handwriting.

Can you see the kind of shift over from palaeographic extent (Voynich 1.0) to forensic intent (Voynich 2.0) I’m talking about?

Comment on Voynich Research 2.0 by Dennis

Dennis — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:42:33 +0000

Hi Nick! I should have been clearer about palaeography. I meant that it would give us much-needed insight into what does and does not constitute a character/grapheme/glypheme. A truly expert palaeographer could tell us which strokes likely do and do not connect to form a glypheme; s/he could also comment on your idea on the length and position of tails being significant or not. Such things had precedents, and in some cases were codified during the time period in question, so we wouldn’t have to rely as much on statistics and outright speculation. Once again, this is where an academic could really help.

Comment on Voynich Research 2.0 by nickpelling

nickpelling — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:43:16 +0000

Hi Dennis,

At its strongest, palaeography gets us (following Sergio Toresella) to 1460-1470 in Milan, and all the 15th century quire numbers are prima facie palaeographic evidence too - but this is basically as far as this kind of evidence can carry us, and we need to go further.

I’ve done what I can with the Beinecke’s scans, but once again we need to go further. Even a multispectral scan of the (apparently emended) marginalia would be a good start, particularly the original back page text.

As for your cryptographic hypothesis: it’s perfectly sensible, but I think that if we can nail the history, a lot of the unknowns will disappear from the equation.

Cheers, ….Nick P….

Comment on Voynich Research 2.0 by Dennis

Dennis — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:10:51 +0000

At first glance it looks good! I agree that it will be harder. Also, I wouldn’t write off paleographic analysis. The problem there is that we haven’t got anyone who’s genuinely qualified to look at it. That where the academics at the party could really help.

As to multispectral forensics, could we do any of that with the images we’ve got, or would it all have to be done at the Beinecke?

Finally, I think some work with an honest cryptographic hypothesis would be worthwhile. My hypothesis at the moment is that the Voynichese system is a nomenclator, where the prefixes, stems, and suffixes are the coordinates in the nomenclator, and that some sort of word or phrase transposition is then made of the resulting nomenclator “words,” thus giving the line structure and word pair permutation analysis statistics we see.

Comment on Voynich and PhD people… by Luis

Luis — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 06:05:40 +0000

Keep up the good writing, Nick.

Comment on Voynich and PhD people… by Luis

Luis — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 06:03:54 +0000

“He [Roger Bacon] was the only man on earth possessed of a good microscope, and he relies upon it as a part of his apparatus of concealment. I have long known the fact that his letters were built up out of significant elements and had been using an ordinary reading glass to help resolve them, but only about four months ago, when it occurred to me to turn a pretty strong microscope upon them, did I discover that nearly all the letters which I had been taking as wholes were really perfect nests of tiny characters.”

~Phd William R. Newbold

Comment on Review of “The Curse of the Voynich”… by nickpelling

nickpelling — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:21:28 +0000

No no no, I’m still very interested in the VMs - rather, it’s just that the Filarete / Averlino path I’ve been tracking for the last few years has looped back on itself, and I now have to reassess what the next big step will involve… and whether I’ll be the right person to take it. We shall see…

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….