The Voynich Ninja

(16-09-2017, 11:19 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Note though that Stephen did not claim that those IDs were necessarily the right ones. What he did defend was his methodology - a slow and careful attempt to match some words and labels to names, and try to catch potential sound values that way. I agree that this method may prove succesful one day.

Now you have a point as well - and I hope Stephen will join us in this thread so he can debate it with us. What if a number of incorrect plant IDs caused you to match some completely wrong sounds with certain glyphs? Isn't there a point where you'd get so far down the wrong street that it's become impossible to turn back?

Thanks Koen for an interesting interview.

The point about the methodology is that it builds up step by step by trying to identify patterns. If one of the plant identifications is found later to be wrong (e.g. oror / juniper) then we would have to consider if the sounds which are found in that plant name (e.g. o and r) are still validated elesewhere in the scheme or not. This might cause us to revise them or reject them. This is exactly the way that Ventris worked when decoding Linear B in Crete. 

I have no doubt at all that some of what I proposed will need to be rejected or revised as we go - that is how the method works.

Stephen, I have read your work (including your paper on daiin) and I've watched the video three times.

It is not enough to look at individual parts of the elephant, even a systematic way. An elephant has the same tail as many other animals (rhinos, hippos, pigs) and can easily be mistaken for something it is not if one does not step back and look at the big picture (the textual PATTERNS) in conjunction with the details.


It is possible to take individual words in the VMS that translate to many languages. I can find dozens of Greek works, dozens of Spanish words, dozens of Latin words, and not just words on the same folio, these are sometimes words next to each other that make sense in conjunction with one other and it's done in a very systematic way.


But it is not a solution. When you have a text with tens of thousands of word-tokens, there will ALWAYS be some that correspond to a handful of words in some chosen language. If the text that is being "deciphered" is constructed such that it has a somewhat regular vowel-consonant balance (whether real or perceived), it's inevitable that it will map to a few words.


Looking specifically at the labels you chose...

You came up with a system that maps words like Taurus and Centaur/Centaurus and Coriander to Arabic, but those VMS words map NATURALLY to Latin. That "9" character at the end of daur9 is the Latin abbreviation for "-us" and thus one gets daurus/Taurus. The same for Centaurus. When the "9" is at the beginning of a word in Latin, it is variously con- or com- (or sounds that are similar to those) and when it's at the end, it stands for -us or -um, so 9daur9 maps naturally to Centaurum or Centaurus in Latin. No system needed. It already exists and was used by Latin scribes in the 15th century.

You chose the label for coriander as another example. Judging by the way it is drawn it probably is in the umbellifer family, which we also call the carrot family (umbellifers, in the group that includes parsley, carrot, parsnip, cilantro, etc.,, all look fairly similar if drawn by someone of average drawing ability). If we use the old Latin form of "a" (which is a double-cee shape), then that word maps naturally as well, to Karotas (carrot), a term that was used for many different edible umbellifers in the middle ages, not just the familiar carrot. The label maps more naturally to Latin carrot than it does to Arabic cilantro or coriander.

[attachment=1689]

So why choose Arabic, when they are already readable in Latin using an existing system?


Is the VMS Latin? Maybe small bits of it are loan words for Latin. It's possible. But the bulk of the text is not formed in the same way as the chosen handful of examples, and that difference has to be acknowledge if it is to be solved.

(16-09-2017, 12:14 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Stephen, I have read your work (including your paper on daiin) and I've watched the video three times.

It is not enough to look at individual parts of the elephant, even a systematic way. An elephant has the same tail as many other animals (rhinos, hippos, pigs) and can easily be mistaken for something it is not if one does not step back and look at the big picture (the textual PATTERNS) in conjunction with the details.


It is possible to take individual words in the VMS that translate to many languages. I can find dozens of Greek works, dozens of Spanish words, dozens of Latin words, and not just words on the same folio, these are sometimes words next to each other that make sense in conjunction with one other and it's done in a very systematic way.


But it is not a solution. When you have a text with tens of thousands of word-tokens, there will ALWAYS be some that correspond to a handful of words in some chosen language. If the text that is being "deciphered" is constructed such that it has a somewhat regular vowel-consonant balance (whether real or perceived), it's inevitable that it will map to a few words.


Looking specifically at the labels you chose...

You came up with a system that maps words like Taurus and Centaur/Centaurus and Coriander to Arabic, but those VMS words map NATURALLY to Latin. That "9" character at the end of daur9 is the Latin abbreviation for "-us" and thus one gets daurus/Taurus. The same for Centaurus. When the "9" is at the beginning of a word in Latin, it is variously con- or com- (or sounds that are similar to those) and when it's at the end, it stands for -us or -um, so 9daur9 maps naturally to Centaurum or Centaurus in Latin. No system needed. It already exists and was used by Latin scribes in the 15th century.

You chose the label for coriander as another example. Judging by the way it is drawn it probably is in the umbellifer family, which we also call the carrot family (umbellifers, in the group that includes parsley, carrot, parsnip, cilantro, etc.,, all look fairly similar if drawn by someone of average drawing ability). If we use the old Latin form of "a" (which is a double-cee shape), then that word maps naturally as well, to Karotas (carrot), a term that was used for many different edible umbellifers in the middle ages, not just the familiar carrot. The label maps more naturally to Latin carrot than it does to Arabic cilantro or coriander.



So why choose Arabic, when they are already readable in Latin using an existing system?


Is the VMS Latin? Maybe small bits of it are loan words for Latin. It's possible. But the bulk of the text is not formed in the same way as the chosen handful of examples, and that difference has to be acknowledge if it is to be solved.

You need then to tell Michael Ventris, who deciphered Linear B and identified it as Greek, that his methodology was wrong :-)

I am not sure from your description that you have grasped the underlying principles of what I was trying to do. 

And also you have definitely not understood how I was referring to Arabic. It is simply wrong to say that I "maps words like Taurus and Centaur/Centaurus and Coriander to Arabic"..... where did I map the word Taurus to Arabic? Or Coriander? I cannot see how you got to this interpretation.

(16-09-2017, 11:50 AM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'd suggest that you both have very valid points to make and it's a shame they aren't being discussed here. And to be frank, again we're falling into another tiresome Voynich he said, you did, they were influenced flame war.

David, as you know full well, voynich.ninja has specific rules about personal attacks which you and Koen seem to be consciously waiving in this instance.

If you genuinely want a level playing field, please edit the video you jointly published to remove all references to me, and then perhaps we can start afresh.

If the video included personal attacks on either of you, you wouldn't have uploaded it, so why am I somehow fair game?

Quite the contrary Nick. We put a very specific critique which you have made in the past to Stephen, and made it clear that we had taken the idea from your site. That is why your name was mentioned.
Apart from the tongue in cheek 'Voynich shock jock' comment Stephen made about you -and you certainly are not shy about making your feelings known about Voynich theories, in a way that is always amusing and insightful - I don't remember any personal attacks being made against you, or at least, none that aren't the same sort of accusations you make against Stephen.
Anyway, I suggested you made up with Stephen and you seem to be attacking me instead so I'm not sure where we're going with this.

David: I wasn't attacking you, I was asking for the forum rules to be properly applied. And now I'm asking again.

I watched the video and I did not percept anything as personal attack on anybody.

I would suggest to break the discussion of separate issues into dedicate threads (which mostly already exist). Otherwise this thread would become a mess, the scope is such that a single thread just is not fit.

What is most valuable is that those threads often discuss appropriate methodological approaches - something which Nick, Stephen and many others rightly put accent on.

Just to name a few:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - why the VMS is or is not a cipher (hence not plain text in a natural language)
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - why the text is meaningful or meaningless
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - word repetitions (with some examples of mine to show that repetitions can be valid not only as poetic embellishments, as Stephen suggests in the interview), also look here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

And many others... basically, just stumble through the "Analysis of text" subforum.

Anton: if you collectively can't tell the difference between attacking faulty reasoning and attacking a person, then you can stick your forum.

Good luck with your new BFF.

thank you Koen
thank you David Jackson
thank you Stephen Bax

for donating your time, effort and energy to create this.

ps. admins: may I suggest to move the discussion somewhere else here on the forum

Moved to 'news' forum.
Nick, you've said much worse things about Stephen, what was said in the interview shouldn't offend you. This much. Either way it would benefit the study if we could stick to arguments about the manuscript.