I was recently contacted by phd student Gerard Cheshire, who wrote a paper proposing an Italian language solution for the VM. Even though somewhat strangely there's no reference to the MS in the title.
The paper can be dowloaded here: You are not allowed to view links.
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I haven't had time to look at it yet but will comment later.
Seems to be the same good old Latin substitution, eh?
Here's a challenge.
Those who are proficient in medieval vulgar Latin can take the following passage (taken from p.20):
"Molor orqueina doleina dolinar æor domar om nar nar or æina, dolina ræina domor nor æina æina na nas omina eimina rolasa, nais oe eina domina domeina etna domar doma dolar dolina ro."
and see what they think this might mean.
After that, they are welcome to compare their own interpretation with that of the author (p.21).
I have just taken a look.
He thinks the ms. is not a ciphre and that he is able to read it which he is not, at least he gives no comprehensible reason why he reads the single letters the way he does. And what he reads has not the least to do with Vulgar Latin or, as far as I can judge with the precursors of the Romance languages
Not to mention that he calls the folios spreads
I am a bit surprised what PhD studies have come to
There are indeed problems with vocabulary. For example the word "homeopathy" is used several times. Already in the abstract: "It is a book offering homeopathic advice".
From the Wiki: "Homeopathy is a system of alternative medicine created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann"
I wonder how much research has gone into the paper if the author confuses traditional herbal remedies with homeopathy. The first (though often flawed) is the origin of modern medicine, the second is magic water.
(08-11-2017, 09:42 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Seems to be the same good old Latin substitution, eh?
Here's a challenge.
Those who are proficient in medieval vulgar Latin can take the following passage (taken from p.20):
"Molor orqueina doleina dolinar æor domar om nar nar or æina, dolina ræina domor nor æina æina na nas omina eimina rolasa, nais oe eina domina domeina etna domar doma dolar dolina ro."
and see what they think this might mean.
After that, they are welcome to compare their own interpretation with that of the author (p.21).
It's strange how this kind of thing seems to becoming more and more popular. I guess people are fascinated with Latin and the VMS but don't feel like really studying them.
This work is so carefully presented, that the same effort could have been used to make progress in one of the more serious linguistic approaches:
- That of Stephen Bax, working on labels and images and trying to correlate visual and linguistic data. Chesire doesn't try to systematically analyse labels. He does pick a couple of examples from different pages and interprets them with his "Vulgar Latin" i.e. an arbitrary mixture of largely unrelated languages like Croatian, Polish and Portuguese.
- That of Emma May Smith, collecting and analysing statistics from the main body of the text. Again, Chesire is happy to interpret EVA:p as Latin 'p', without commenting on the fact that this character almost exclusively appears in the first line of paragraphs. Where are the Ps in the other lines? Even more amazingly, he thinks that EVA:q is Latin 'd', totally ignoring that EVA:q almost exclusively appears before a single character (EVA:o) and only at the beginning of words. Words with non-initial d followed by different vowels (like quando, vidi, legenda, gradum) cannot exist. I attach the histograms of character position in words (word start left, word end right) for Latin 'd' and Voynich EVA:q.
"Molor orqueina doleina dolinar æor domar om nar nar or æina, dolina ræina domor nor æina æina na nas omina eimina rolasa, nais oe eina domina domeina etna domar doma dolar dolina ro."
(08-11-2017, 10:45 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- That of Stephen Bax, working on labels and images and trying to correlate visual and linguistic data. Chesire doesn't try to systematically analyse labels.
I know Bax is often cited for this, but isn't that the first thing everybody does... work out the images and try to figure out the "labels" next to them? Bax says in the video that he got the method from the books he cited in his video.
To me it's just common sense to try to relate the images to the text nearby—I'm sure it is to most people. If there were no images, how many people would be studying the VMS?
If one does a search of
Voynich labels on Google, prior to 2000, interpreting the labels (in relation to the imagery) is a frequently discussed topic.
From René Zandbergen in 1997:
"I am still pursuing these documents, but first indications are that the short labels near the stars in our zodiac do not match well with the names used in these two documents." (Sherwood also looked extensively at labels, Stolfi talks about them, and there are many more early references to label-image relationships.)
I would agree with you that it's strange that Cheshire does not appear to have done this (or at least doesn't mention it).
(08-11-2017, 10:14 AM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am a bit surprised what PhD studies have come to
Actually, this study is rather symptomatic of something else.
The guy is a science writer, and his postgraduate training is in Behavioral Ecology. He has no training in any relevant discipline.
It seems to me that this is a case of the "hard science" types (a biologist in this case) thinking that disciplines such as linguistics, art history, or manuscript studies are just "humanities", somehow inferior, and therefore something that real science people can simply improvise without any training.
Cheshire's study is a testament to the validity of that assessment.
I also note that by not specifying his department in the headers of his study, he is intentionally misleading readers into believing that he has some sort of linguistic qualification.
Well, at least Gerard Cheshire is not ramraiding through the Times or Ars Technica. As far as I understand he just wrote a paper and asked Koen to have a look, while Koen shared that with us.
The root of the problem is that authors in general, and evidently Mr. Cheshire in particular, who first come to the subject, do not have sufficient knowledge about the VMS research history and actual problematics, so they just repeat the most basic thing (substitution) again and again.
That can be explained by that there is no single scientific collection or source to borrow knowledge from, it's all mostly scared around the internet and disjoint. The books that have been there are now a bit out-of-date.
So, in the Voynich world, really the foremost thing to do when one wants to be up-to-date is to visit and participate in community discussions, such as comments in popular Voynich blogs, the Voynich mailing list or our forum.
Correct, VViews. I got his mail while I was in a rush at the airport and hence didn't have time to look into it, but my impression was definitely that:
a) he's a linguist and
b) the paper has something to do with his PhD studies
He doesn't claim these things, but still it's misleading.
Also, he writes that it's published and makes it look like it's in a journal, while actually it's just the name of his website?
Marco: I really love those graphs, they show so elegantly what's wrong with the proposal.
Edit: Anton: Just to be clear, I did ask him first whether he'd like me to share the paper here
And yes! A few days on the forum should really prevent anyone from coming up with a solution like this.
Actually, he started (like many others) by writing to the Beinecke. This was already in July.
However, he never showed any details of what he had done.
I advised him (like I advise everybody) to publish it on a web page or in academia.edu or something similar, and he found this way.
I also saw the details for the first time only a few days ago.