Obviously, our generation, with their quest for their "15 minutes" has littered the Internet with "solutions" to the Voynich manuscript. Thus, in the future, if the internet or something like it stays "up," researchers could find these and take these into account (for better or worse).
But I realized, since I have never studied the history of science in anything more than a spectator's way, I did not know how would a potential solver at various times over the history of the Voynich go about disseminating their ideas.
I suppose you could look to other well known "decryptions" at different time periods and see how those were made known. I'll look into this (I imagine there is general scholarly work about this in the history of science field), but I would be interested in such parallels that other board members can provide off the top of their heads.
Are there times during the existence of the Voynich that such publication would be dangerous, suppressed, or otherwise result in no public disclosure? Perhaps for similar reasons that the manuscript might have been encrypted? But obviously not necessarily directly parallel, as I am looking for something in a different time period than during its creation.
This is clearly speculation, but can we be certain that all the places that a possible solution could be available have been completely tapped out?
Certainly there are both public and non-public places that haven't been examined . . . remember we don't have the "Voynich" key word to search on -- LOL.
I would circle back to my suggestion before -- IF there is a key that was not publicized, if it still exists, the most likely place for it would be someplace where the manuscript has been physically. That's why it is good to know.
Interested in hearing what others might have to say about this.
The age old problem of having a key as a separate book is obviously separation. That problem is eliminated by having the key in the book. It just needs to be hidden somehow. It might be disguised, broken up and/or encoded. So while 'linguistic modification' of any sort may not be a great barrier to interpretation, that process cannot even start until the proper text segment(s) are recovered.
If the meaningful content is only a page or so, the hidden text could be all there is and the rest could all be filler.
Or the hidden text could provide instructions as to how to understand the body of the text. The trick then becomes the discovery of the hidden text. For this we must rely on the illustrations. The traditional interpretation of these illustrations has been much inhibited by a two-fold problem. The representative elements of these illustrations have been variously disguised. The traditions themselves, which supply the representative elements, have become irrelevant, gotten lost, or have otherwise been situated outside the realms of many prior VMs investigations.
An investigator, who does not know the nebuly line, cannot recognize the nebuly line in the VMs or properly[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif] interpret the particular connotations attached by traditional terminology that serve to promote a more expansive understanding of the VMs cosmic illustration, for example. And this is an example of something so well known to the VMs creator that it is innately suited to its purpose. Yet to say things like this have baffled so many investigators is ludicrous, as it has taken such a long time just to recognize the mere presence of this [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]specific element and to reconnect the line pattern with its tradition.[/font][/font]
IMO, the VMs was constructed to be self-contained. Whether that is still true is another question. Exterior sources will not provide the key, but may help to recognize any significant clues that the VMs contains, as that much is on going.
Off the top of my head.
Boffins and brainiacs disseminated info via word-of-mouth, meetings and lots of letter writing and hand written manuscripts.
See Rene's site for comprehensive overview of who,what,where and when. You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view.
Marci's library would be very interesting to look through but thats long since vanished.
Actual physical locations of the known players might be useful , under floorboards, hidden cupboards and the like.
Any documents would be best but even if they stilll exist,after 500 years they could be anywhere in the world.
One could say that the press coverage that the voynich generates could be good in that somewhere somebody may be looking through some ancient documents and come across something and thinks 'ooh that looks like what i saw in a blog the other day'
(26-08-2020, 08:51 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One could say that the press coverage that the voynich generates could be good in that somewhere somebody may be looking through some ancient documents and come across something and thinks 'ooh that looks like what i saw in a blog the other day'
Oh my, Young One, you have much to learn about how the interwebs work.
Queue fakes in 3,2,1...
Who knows where time will take us?
Maybe a missing VM-drawing will actually turn up in another book.
Nothing is impossible.
I only have to think of the "Bella Principessa".
Originally the picture was once in a book. The binding traces even tell from which one.
You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view.
There was a time, when Voynich went public with the MS, that they talked a lot about Bacon. Perhaps that is what a solution would have looked like in those years: to be able to link it to a known historical figure.
(27-08-2020, 09:19 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There was a time, when Voynich went public with the MS, that they talked a lot about Bacon. Perhaps that is what a solution would have looked like in those years: to be able to link it to a known historical figure.
From the perspective of a book-seller, that was of course a good strategy.
However, in this particular case, Voynich was personally convinced that it was from Bacon, and it was not just a strategy. It led to comments between Nill and ELV, after his death, where they were wondering: 'How could he be so sure'. Unfortunately I could not find that quote again. It should be somewhere on Rich's blog.
I consider the attempt to associate the VMS exclusively with a historical person to be problematic. Of course it would be possible that such a connection exists, but on the other hand a very little known person as head of the project is also conceivable. I have no preference for one or the other possibility.
One can basically divide all historical persons into four categories, with fuzzy boundaries:
1. Well-known people, also to the (informed) general public. These include Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Hartlieb, Leon Batista Alberti, Edward Kelly, Giordano Bruno, etc. Many of them have appeared in Voynich-related theories.
2. Largely unknown people to the (informed) general public, but who are well known to historians and related researchers, from documents left by them. Since I am not part of that group, it is hard to give a good list, but people like Jean Ruel (1474-1537), Konrad von Butzbach (fl. 1425) are examples (and they are among the better known ones).
3. People whose names appear a few times in historical records, but we know nothing about them
4. People whose names are completely unknown, and have not appeared anywhere
The size of group 1 is vanishingly small compared to the others.
(26-08-2020, 04:16 PM)MichelleL11 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Are there times during the existence of the Voynich that such publication would be dangerous, suppressed, or otherwise result in no public disclosure? Perhaps for similar reasons that the manuscript might have been encrypted? But obviously not necessarily directly parallel, as I am looking for something in a different time period than during its creation.
Sure, Nazi Germany. Or 18th century Spain.
The danger of the document depends upon a) its contents and b) its surroundings.
If the contents are "dangerous" according to society, the scribe has to balance the danger of the content vs the danger of encryption. What sort of content would be more dangerous than making it illegible to the prosecutors? The imagination of the Inquisitor was probably worse than what was written down in cipher...