The Voynich Ninja

(15-10-2019, 11:59 PM)arca_libraria Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(14-10-2019, 12:48 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When you say:

"They simply did not invent things."

Then I can only conclude that it is amazing that the wheel of history has moved forward at all.

I would say that medieval people like modern people were highly inventive, why make assumptions about what they were capable of or inclined towards that you wouldn't make of modern people.

Try to think of it like this: imagine if I showed you 10 photographs taken all over the world in different decades of the 20th century, and each photograph showed a few people, a few buildings and a few plants, and I asked you to tell me approximately when and where you thought they had been taken. You would presumably look at the types of plants, the style of architecture, the clothing, and the general of the appearance of the people to offer your guesses about when and where the pictures had been taken? I think that's what people are doing when they are comparing the illustrations in the VMS to other examples in medieval art.

Or even just think about clothing - e.g. the shape of dresses, or trousers, or hats, or shoes over the past few hundred years - people copy things over and over again and make minor changes to the same basic forms, and every so often someone makes a big change and starts a new sub-fashion, but they are still using the same basic shapes.

History of the book and history of art rely on people making comparisons in order to understand what is traditional and what is innovative about each piece. Medieval people had a visual lexicon and visual archetypes, and so it's interesting when the VMS scribe(s) draws from that visual lexicon and when he departs from it.

Yes, sometimes people come up with comparisons that are not particularly strong, or that others might reject entirely, but that's why this place exists so we can all start a thread with our favourite weird fish-people/crossbows/sunflowers drawn from only the most obscure of central European archives for the delight/derision of the rest of the forum.

You say:

"Medieval people had a visual lexicon and visual archetypes, and so it's interesting when the VMS scribe(s) draws from that visual lexicon and when he departs from it."

I agree. The problem here is that in general there seems to be little acknowledgement that the author might depart from this. In fact it seems the assumption tends to be that the author never departs from this. I am much more inclined to the view that the author may often depart from this and in some cases quite significantly and not only in the case of the writing and the script.

I think there's a general agreement that the VM is a unique document. Nobody claims or even thinks that "the author" (a potentially problematic term) never departed from tradition or put their own twist on things.

To be perfectly clear, my statement was in reaction to your objections to relying on comparative imagery. Medieval Europeans did not invent things as in "conjure from thin air". But they were of course masters in translating, adapting, interpreting, commenting and so forth. This is what most Medieval texts and images are: there is always a relation to something that came before. 

So like it or not, until we can read the text (if it is possible), using other sources to inform us about the imagery is the best we can do. I'm not saying that any comparison is a good one, and I've certainly made some questionable ones in the past. 

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About your inventions, to be honest I was thinking about inventing as in "making up images or text without reference to existing material". But your examples do illustrate my point.

1) Clocks: timekeeping devices existed before the Middle Ages, were improved upon outside of Europe and perfected only after the Middle Ages.
2) Glasses: here's a fine section from the Wiki that perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about:

Quote:Scattered evidence exists for use of visual aid devices in Greek and Roman times, most prominently the use of an emerald by emperor Nero as mentioned by Pliny the Elder.

The use of a convex lens to form an enlarged/magnified image was most likely described in Ptolemy's Optics (which however only survives in a poor Arabic translation). Ptolemy's description of lenses was commented upon and improved by Ibn Sahl (10th century) and most notably by Alhazen (Book of Optics, ca. 1021). Latin translations of Ptolemy's Optics and of Alhazen became available in Europe in the 12th century, coinciding with the development of "reading stones".

Same pattern: start in Ancient times, transmission through Arab world, picked up and improved in Middle Ages, perfected and more widespread in Renaissance.

3) Wind mills: also reached Europe through the Middle East, time of invention uncertain.

4) Castles: evolution of fortifications. You don't invent castles...

5) Compass: First sentence of the Wiki on "history of the compass": The compass was invented more than 2,000 years ago.

6) Developments in weaponry are not completely novel inventions. And it's not like they discovered gunpowder.

7) Building techniques: same here, those are improvements upon existing things. Obviously there were evolutions, which is exactly why it is so extremely important to study and involve different sources. You want to know what evolved from what, what was the basis for this adaptation and so on.

8) "Overall many refinements/technical improvements to technology adopted from the classical world or arab world or the east" Yes! Exactly. But in those cases, it is important to know what came before.

So in summary, either not Medieval European inventions at all, or improvement of existing things.


Look, I've been arguing for over a year already that the clothing of the Zodiac figures can be reliably dated to within three decades (1400-1430). So I know things did change. But they did not appear out of thin air, and never in isolation. Medieval documents and art is always connected to earlier and contemporary examples, and it is our task to see which ones are most informative for the VM.

They had reading tubes and even eyeglasses in the 15th century (and earlier). I've blogged about this. It's documented in a guy's estate that he owned a pair of spectacles.

(16-10-2019, 11:33 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.About your inventions, to be honest I was thinking about inventing as in "making up images or text without reference to existing material". But your examples do illustrate my point.

1) Clocks: timekeeping devices existed before the Middle Ages, were improved upon outside of Europe and perfected only after the Middle Ages.
2) Glasses: here's a fine section from the Wiki that perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about:

.......

Same pattern: start in Ancient times, transmission through Arab world, picked up and improved in Middle Ages, perfected and more widespread in Renaissance.

3) Wind mills: also reached Europe through the Middle East, time of invention uncertain.

4) Castles: evolution of fortifications. You don't invent castles...

5) Compass: First sentence of the Wiki on "history of the compass": The compass was invented more than 2,000 years ago.

6) Developments in weaponry are not completely novel inventions.

7) Building techniques

8) "Overall many refinements/technical improvements to technology adopted from the classical world or arab world or the east" Yes! Exactly. But in those cases, it is important to know what came before.

So in summary, either not Medieval European inventions at all, or improvement of existing things.


Look, I've been arguing for over a year already that the clothing of the Zodiac figures can be reliably dated to within three decades (1400-1430). So I know things did change. But they did not appear out of thin air, and never in isolation. Medieval documents and art is always connected to earlier and contemporary examples, and it is our task to see which ones are most informative for the VM.

Of course, nothing in history appears out of thin air and every invention it could be argued has a precursor. Such as the computer which has a precursor in Charles Babbage's analytic engineer and earlier still the Antikythera mechanism; and the computer is the first modern technology that occurred to me. The modern airplane can be traced by to the Wright Brothers and inventions like the jet engine, but earlier still to gliders, air balloons, kites and so on. Da Vinci, I believe, had ideas about flying machines. The airplane was the second modern technology that occurred to me. I would say that each advance and improvement can be considered an invention in it's own right.

In the medieval period many enhancements and refinements were make to existing development. So for example, when I talk about spectacles, I am not claiming that glass was invented in the medieval period.

If you wish to get precise about clocks one could say that the mechanical clock using weights rather than water power was invented in medieval Europe. I am not suggested the notion of time was invented in medieval Europe. Of course simple water clocks/timers and sundials could be considered clocks and they greatly pre-date this, but that is something different.

Horizontal-axis wind mill, otherwise called vertical mills were invented in medieval europe. There were also advances in water mills.

In the 15th the Guttenberg printing press was invented. Now it is true that you can say that movable type printing was invented in China, but is not quite the same thing. Do you also think that there were no inventions in the 15th century?

Your other points can be addressed similarly.

As far as making up images or text. Think of writers like Dante. In terms of art you can think of the romanesque style or gothic style.

My concerns relate to a kind of cut and paste approach to Voynich research i.e. find a manuscript with a similar illustration then postulate a relationship. It is more difficult to ask given the influences of the time what would a creative thinker produce?

I guess I approach this from the view that the author(s) didn't merely copy from earlier sources, but added his/her/their own significant spin on his/her various influences.

If the Voynich is written in cipher then if it is merely a reproduction of other material and not in some way original there seems little point in enciphering it. Why encipher something that is available elsewhere in an undeciphered form?

(17-10-2019, 10:04 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
If the Voynich is written in cipher then if it is merely a reproduction of other material and not in some way original there seems little point in enciphering it. Why encipher something that is available elsewhere in an undeciphered form?

Access to books was quite restricted in the early 15th century. Not only could many people not read, but many of the manuscripts were in the private collections of noble families and unlikely to be seen outside an elite circle.

So... even if something existed elsewhere in undeciphered form doesn't mean it was available to other than a privileged few. It took from 6 months to a year to create many manuscripts, sometimes longer. Obviously, the purchaser would need deep pockets to pay the cost of the scribes.