The Voynich Ninja

In my opinion so much time & energy is wasted on the 129 pages of herbals and the 20 pages with roots that someone has to try to stop the waste of human energy resources.

Me too, yes, I am guilty too of spending much time of trying to solve the Voynich puzzle by identification efforts of the herbal pages.
All that, has been proven is a total waste of time.

The basis assumption that we see plants is wrong.
Why we think we see plants, with a stem, root , leaves and flower is based on the details we see.
But if you look really well, you will see that in every drawing there are things that do not match with the real world !

I could show an example here, but then the discussion will continue as usual: energy will go in the discussion of the details of the given example and a never ending discussion will start.

Because we recognize existing parts and details it does not mean it is a plant.

It is like the first time people saw an aircraft: "it's diabolical", "people are not meant to fly by God, otherwise he would have given them wings".
It is in the nature of humans, that they will always try to identify things. Was it not Aristotle who wrote:  "if you want to analyse something, invent a name for it; because without a proper name, you can not identify it".

It is my belief that the author of the Voynich is into medieval Aristotelian wisdom,  and wants to create a mood within he can tells us something. 
This has only sideways to do with the herbals you see.  

Searching for the exact names or identical brothers or sisters in the kingdom of plants, will therefore always remain fruitless. 
The herbals are only illustrative and are not drawn to be identified as real existing plants.

Save the world and please stop wasting your energy ! 

David: what I wonder is, why would anyone draw hundreds of plants only to set a mood? How do you know these plants have anything to do with medieval Aristotelian wisdom?

Quote:But if you look really well, you will see that in every drawing there are things that do not match with the real world !

That is true, but that does not mean that the plants do not match with the real world. What does not match, is their depiction, not the plant behind it. The very reasonable explanation for that is the mnemonics concept. Provisionally applied, it gives very promising results.

Quote:Searching for the exact names or identical brothers or sisters in the kingdom of plants, will therefore always remain fruitless.

This assumption is a bit outdated. See e.g. the discussion in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread.

Of course, as in any medieval herbal, there may be imaginary plants there, but there are literally no reasons to suppose that all plants are imaginary.

Quote:It is my belief that the author of the Voynich is into medieval Aristotelian wisdom,  and wants to create a mood within he can tells us something.

If you look at the label density in the botanical folio space (available on voynichese.com) you probably will agree that, with this apparently conspective nature, there is no way for the botanical section to be a philosophical narrative.

You ask me to provide proof?

The proof is based on historical facts and findings.  600 years people have tried to link Voynich pictures to real plants. They did not succeed.
Comparing the plants with real plants did not result in one single match. 
Millions of hours must have been spend during that quest.


So you belief that the herbals represent a real plant.  
Where is your proof that these plants exists in real life?


I am not convinced by any thread or example or any book of 400 pages full of indirect detailed characteristics of plants
that have an "almost identical match" with the plants in the Voynich.

We just had people agree on the ID for Carthamus tinctorius in the other thread...

And I'm not asking for proof, I just wonder what in the plants makes you think that they are just there to create a mood so the author can tell us about Aristotelian wisdom? What links the plants to Aristotle? What kind of mood are they supposed to convey?

Quote:The proof is based on historical facts and findings.  600 years people have tried to link Voynich pictures to real plants. They did not succeed.

That's no strong argument. Likewise one could say that since in 600 years noone managed to decrypt the VMS we should drop that.

Quote: we should drop that.

I will not tell you what to do, but this is a discussion forum. Let's discuss.

The fact that no one has fallen off the flat side of the earth, for 1000 years (or more),  as we know, makes it plausible that the earth is not flat.
Makes an historical fact a very strong argument.

The cold war.
The fact that it could happen that a nuke war, would destroy the earth is so strong, that this ended the cold war.
There was no nuclear war, but the fact that the threat is real made us realize that some day it easily could go wrong.

Historical things that did not happen could still give a very strong signal.

The fact that the PLANTS in the manuscript do resemble, but have never been matched fully with any existing plant, 
for over 600 years, is a very strong argument, that is very likely that they do Not represent real plants directly at all.

Quote:And I'm not asking for proof, I just wonder what in the plants makes you think that they are just there to create a mood so the author can tell us about Aristotelian wisdom? 
What links the plants to Aristotle? What kind of mood are they supposed to convey?

None, because Aristotle did not explicitly use plant names that way. 

I wrote:  "It is my belief that ..". And i invite you to reread this posting of Vviews: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.


>>What kind of mood are they supposed to convey?
In due time I will publish the entire story, but not now because it's not finished.

That post was from when I had only recently entered Voynich studies, I don't longer consider it relevant.

And I don't think asking for at least some concrete examples (not even evidence) in a thread entitled "stop energy waste on herbal research" is being too demanding... If you want to convince anyone you'll have to produce something first.

Koen, it is simply my contribution. That is what I produced.

Anyway, as I wrote, 
Aristotle did not explicitly use plant names that way. So you are asking an impossible thing.

The arguments I already mentioned and I am not going to repeat it.