New article about the VMS: "You are not allowed to view links.
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The article is open access. The authors use fractal geometry to analyze the VMS alongside the Ernst Hemingway book "The Old Man and the Sea", and the Bible.
The authors conclude:
Quote:Our results indicate, that Voynich manuscript is likely written in some natural language because a) its fractal dimension set it among the Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea, analyzed in the same way in 120 languages, b) complex network maps, generated from Voynich manuscript is significantly different from complex networks maps based on random texts.
They make some really grave mistakes in interpreting the transliterations of the Voynich MS.
However, since they look at how words combine, and that is largely independent of this transliteration, it may not actually be a big issue.
I don't see (at all) how the conclusion 'meaningful' is proven by the data presented.
I don't see what is unconventional about using fractal algorithms to study linguistic patterns, but I do think it is a good idea to do it.
As for the conclusions, I don't think they are warranted by the data, which is quite narrowly focused, but I did enjoy reading the paper. Since my field is computer graphics, I'm always interested in anything that has to do with fractals.
(27-06-2019, 01:09 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't see (at all) how the conclusion 'meaningful' is proven by the data presented.
It is basically the same way of reasoning as in You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. or Smith et al. 2019. Like in Montemurro et al. the authors describe an aspect of the co-occurrence pattern for the VMS. The authors also argue that the text reveals a complex structure and is therefore significantly different from random texts. They also conclude "that Voynich manuscript is likely written in some natural language" (Zelinka et al., p. 13). Like other proponents of the language hypotheses they didn't consider basic counter arguments. But it must be said that they obviously didn't know basic facts about the VMS and were probably not aware of any counter arguments.
Such claims were criticized several times (see for instance You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view.). Just yesterday Gordon Rugg wrote "An answer lies in the framing, with the well-worn trope of 'baffled experts' versus the 'independent researcher' who solves the problem with common sense. It's superficially plausible, and it engages readers already fascinated for example by indecipherable codes in unsolved murder cases. But ignoring facts that don't suit you is a dangerous and fruitless road—not only in problem solving, but life in general" (You are not allowed to view links.
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To make any progress it is important in my eyes to know the research of the past and to discuss known counter arguments to a preferred hypothesis. It is important that we take the research of others seriously as well as our own research. It seems that only this way a productive discussion and in the end some progress is possible.
Torsten, I fully agree with all this.
My point was that, to me, the conclusion does not follow from the evidence, in a logical sense. However, I may be missing some information. In essence, to judge from the value of a fractal dimension whether a text is meaningful or not, one needs some criterium about possible fractal dimensions of meaningless and meaningful text.
For the present conclusion, one needs some confidence that a meaningless text cannot have, or is very unlikely to have, a particular fractal dimension. And that is not clear to me.
Montemurro (and Zanette)'s work is different since it uses a criterium that is a bit better understood, namely key words. However, in this particular study I have the problem that they ignored that Herbal A and Herbal B have the same illustrations but completely different key words, so also their conclusion is for me not on such a strong footing.
It is a very different story if a conclusion is clearly formulated as a statement of opinion of the authors. If there is no claim to have demonstrated anything, there is much less to be challenged.
All the stuff about the tropes of bungling experts vs. bright newcomers, or the delving into people's (overt or hidden) motivation is only distracting, and while it can be annoying, it is best ignored as much as possible.
Haven't read the article yet, but I wonder how, working at word-level, one would distinguish between natural language and cipher.
At word-level, there is no difference between natural language and natural language enciphered using a monoalphabetic simple substitution cipher.
But anybodying proposing that Voynichese is written in a monoalphabetic simple substitution cipher is wrong in numerous different ways.
(28-06-2019, 02:10 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Montemurro (and Zanette)'s work is different since it uses a criterium that is a bit better understood, namely key words.
This is basically the same observation. Within the network for a text using natural language "nodes that become a local or global centre of the network" stand in fact for the key words. They even argue this way: "The word the is in a class of lexical items called function words [22]. Function words are the glue that binds content words together in sentences. These include articles, conjunctions, temporal and causal connectives, and prepositions. We may hypothesize that the most frequently occurring words in the VM - as in other natural languages - are function words" (Zelinka et al. 2019, p. 6). Like Montemurro and Zanette, they didn't realize that for the VMS the key words did change from page to page, from quire to quire, and from Currier A to Currier B (see Timm & Schinner 2019, p. 5 and You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. on github.com). Montemurro as well as Zelinka are arguing that words co-occur with other words whereas I argue that words co-occur with similar ones.
I am intrigued by the comparison to random texts, because human beings are very bad at random.
So even someone who tried to make a random text would unwittingly create patterns in their text.
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And of course the classic example:
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Torsten, is there any open source software which can be used for network studies and graphical representation with words? I'd like to make a custom study with maybe an own transcription (eventhough it'll take a lot of time to set the transcription up, and I'll be busy with my Undergraduate degree exams for the next 2 months)