The Voynich Ninja

(08-01-2020, 07:22 AM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.#

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Hope that helps R Sale

Is there a free version of this document for download?

@Mark

Happy birthday to you !

(08-01-2020, 07:37 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.@Mark

Happy birthday to you !

Thank you very much! That very kind of you to notice.

(03-01-2020, 03:01 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.These figures exist in many different forms, also with four parts.
It is just possible that the upper left quadrant in Oresme's figure is air rather than fire.

Having read the text of Oresme on the page with the illustration that Linda very kindly referred me to it appears that this illustration does indeed represent a map as best I can tell. As it refers the the top right quarter as representing the part of the earth that is most habitable. I don't see how the text says that the other areas represent air or water. It seems that according to the text the bottom half and top left represent other parts of the earth that are less habitable. It does not mention Europe or Africa or Asia explicitly, but given that we have 3 parts of the earth represented and the one where the author is can be found in the top right the standard T/O map interpretation seems not unreasonable. I would say that this would be a unfair representation of Africa and Asia, but from someone with a Eurocentric perspective not surprising. Maybe I have missed something in the text that someone else has spotted, I mean this genuinely.

(03-01-2020, 06:51 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Mark, you don't need a third-party "source" to know what these drawings represent. All you have to do is read the text next to the drawings. It says exactly what the sections represent, sometimes the label is on the drawing itself. It's not in code. What René said is correct.

Have you read the page?

My sense is that the idea that the diagram represents air/fire-earth-water is not based on the text, but rather on someone's interpretation of the drawing having briefly glanced at the text. It states that the top right quarter represents the most habitable part of the earth with the clear implication that the other 2 parts also represents other part of the earth. Note the most habitable part coincides with what we would think of as Europe which is not surprising from an European author. Maybe I have missed something, but this is my reading of the text.

(03-01-2020, 07:12 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(03-01-2020, 01:24 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My interpretation is that the water represents Asia, maybe the great expanse of ocean such as Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. The top right that corresponds to Europe should be self-explanatory. The top left is unclear as to what it represents (dessert??jungle??), but it corresponds to Africa. Sometimes different representative drawings are shown.

I can see that interpretation, but look at the text of Oresme in du ciel et du monde book 2 chapter 25, he states the habitable part of earth would be on the upper right, although you are right, he says it is the part where they reside, which would make it Europe as well.

I believe it is neither fire nor air in the keft top quarter, but a reference to the uninhabitable parts of earth.  Sacrobosco had said only one of the quarters of earth were habitable, the habitable part being in the north. It is a movement in thought from the earth sphere surrounded by the water sphere to a more complex understanding, involving whether the Antipodes could exist, how far the water was between Spain and India, whether it was nobler to be near the heavens, etc. Quire 13 to me is a travel of the ecumene by water, which pulls that all together into a realistic view.

Yes, having read the text I think it is a T/O map. The top right represents the most habitable part in the North. Europe is represented as being in the North on a T/O map. Africa is represented as being in the South and Asia is represented in the East. The author is from Europe and is arguing that Europe is the most habitable part whereas the other parts are not habitable. So each 3 parts represent geographical places on Earth and the top right represents Europe, so given existing experience of T/O maps and knowledge of geography this points to the bottom half representing Asia and the top left representing Africa.

I suppose one thing that is odd is the variability in the represents of the rest of the non-European world. With some drawings presenting Africa as having towns and cities and being remarkably developed and other showing it much less so or not at all as in the Oresme case. Maybe this was due to varying opinions as to what these places were like and maybe at times a very Eurocentric prejudice. To be honest Oresme doesn't come across as being very clued up on this matter.

I think we have to remember the ignorance of the rest of the world that European people had at that time. Just look at the Hereford Mappa Mundi.

I think you will find they knew where they were better than you think. The Hereford mappa mundi is a map of the ecumene, not of earth, as is the Oresme. It would equate to the habitable section.

Oresme's inverted TO is supposed to show a two sphere system using one flat circle. It is not important though to figure that part out (since it was wrong anyway), it is the depiction of the habitable world that is important.

You have to imagine:

A) the circle is a sphere, we are looking at the front half, the back half is also there but of course cannot be seen from a vantage point of head-on to the front.

Why is this the front? It is like the current date line, but instead of Greenwich, it was set just west of Spain. Thus it would include all land on the east side of the Atlantic ocean. Also the equator meets it in the middle. This was thought to be an inhabitable zone, and terra or aqua incognita to the south of that.

B) the habitable part encompasses the whole right side, so there is a half we cannot see because it is the back side. So the upper right is not Europe, but Europe and Africa, and you can just see a bit of Asia, the rest (China, for instance) is around the back.

This can be seen in d'Ailly's go at depicting the world, circa 1410, it is sort of the sideways view of that same sphere. What is interesting here is that he was considered the last of the medieval geographers and the first of the new and he became popular at the Council of Constance. (I think Lake Constance is featured in quire 13 also). His writings were used as a guide by Columbus (who would have run out of provisions if he hadnt reached land where he did). Ptolemy was just being translated at the same time, d'Ailly then read it and wrote more. 

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But here is another way to look at it. This helped me visualize it properly.



This is from above of the earth looking down with Greenwich mean time as the front (bottom), or center line of the circle of Oresme (except there it is west of Spain so includes everything landwise and does not cut it off). Right hand side is Eurasiafrica, to the equator. They knew where they were because of how the stars turned, or the earth turns, as we know it to be now. So that was basically the ecumene. If you cut off at about 3 o'clock to cut off the back side you cannot see when looking at it from the front, you end up with India as the back end, just as i have stated the ecumene to appear to me to be expressed in quire 13. And the equater cuts off at the juncture of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The left side is unknown to them in their time period but they suspected it was there, hence the wild greenery. So that wild area is North America. What you think is Africa is not, if it follows Oresme's scheme, which updates the TO map by placing it on a larger world and into its place in the Aristotlean scheme of the universe. Things are starting to come together.

But, through various errors they thought it was pretty close from Spain to India. The bottom half of the world was suspected by Oresme to be only water, for various reasons including gravity and religion. Oresme differed from others in that they thought there was 10 times as much water as earth, but he thought they were more or less equal. So we get water on the bottom half. It is not Asia, that is still on the northeast side, behind Europe and Africa at the front.

This is built upon other works as well, although the water on the bottom was often replaced with antipodes.




The ecumene has grown over time, Anaximander, Hecateaus, Erastosthenes are shown here.



So i see Oresmes' view to contain a similar ecumene to Hecateus, but superimposed on the spheres of the elements earth and water. Oresme thought the spheres of earth, water and air all turned together as one. After that, he basically followed Aristotle's view. Everything old is new again.

(09-01-2020, 07:33 AM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think you will find they knew where they were better than you think. The Hereford mappa mundi is a map of the ecumene, not of earth, as is the Oresme. It would equate to the habitable section.

Oresme's inverted TO is supposed to show a two sphere system using one flat circle. It is not important though to figure that part out (since it was wrong anyway), it is the depiction of the habitable world that is important..

I understand what you are saying, but I question whether it is correct. Take the other example that I gave of the T/O map in the the bottom right hand corner next to the German map of Europe. In this example the bottom semi circle is drawn just like we see on the Oresme example, as a big ocean, but both the top left and top right are drawn as what looks to be very habitable land, why the difference between this and Oresme?

Also, I have not noted in the text what you have stated. Neither does the text state what I have presented.

Initially I was told by others that the sections represent Air-Earth-Water or Fire-Earth-Water, however you seem to be stating a completely different interpretation much more similar to my own, though not identical.

Having looked at a number of knownT/O maps there appears to be quite a variance in the representation of different regions, which makes me wonder if this is just another form of representation.

If the habitable part is in the North then according to your statements then Oresme must be saying that Africa is in the North as it constitutes part of the habitable world.

It seems what you are postulating is that the T/O map is a kind of extended T/O map.

The habitable part of the world is the land part. It is not Europe.