Meanwhile there are works which refer directly to the publications of Cheshire. Here a paper as an example:
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Quote:This study made use of Dr. Cheshire’s work and analysis of Folios 1v - 6r in his ten paper series of the Voynich Manuscript. We would like to thank him for reviewing our paper and provide wonderful feedback.
One can hardly believe it.
(06-09-2020, 11:37 AM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Meanwhile there are works which refer directly to the publications of Cheshire.
Not only "refer directly" but rely heavily, indeed exclusively, upon.
Cheshire himself reviewed it and provided feedback.
He is referred to throughout as "Dr Cheshire" which to me is unique and distasteful in itself in an academic paper.
As you rightly say, I can hardly believe it.
(06-09-2020, 12:18 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When enough people jump on this kind of bandwagon, it becomes a self-fulfilling, self-affirming, and self-aggrandizing loop.
That is correct. The basic thesis is no longer questioned at all. The clear criticism from the professional world is simply ignored. That is unworthy of a scientific work.
I have a suspicion that Gerard Cheshire is a good and dedicated self-publicist. It is noteworthy that some "decipherments" attract much more publicity than others. The Ardics have a huge number of views of their decipherment videos. Whereas there are other theories arguably no less good which barely make a ripple.
"Carbon-dating shows that the manuscript was written during the Italian Renaissance in Italy despite the manuscript’s medieval art..."
Radio-carbon dating doesn't specify where a manuscript is from.
What do they mean by "despite the manuscript's medieval art"? Are they saying there were no medieval styles carried into the Renaissance?
There appears to be an assumption that the VMS is from Italy, which has not yet been proven. But even if it turns out to be from Italy, the Renaissance did not reach all communities at the same time and many medieval themes still existed.
"First, the botanical section includes illustrations of plants and herbs...
The pharmaceutical section includes medicinal plants and herbs."
An herb is a plant. There's no hard evidence yet that the small plant drawings are medicinal plants.
"Many of the images are wrapped in elegant writing from left to right."
It is average-quality calligraphy, not elegant- or good-quality calligraphy.
The authors write several times "it is theorized" until they reach Cheshire's invention about the Queen of Aragon and then they treat it as though it were fact:
"His studies show that the manuscript was a reference for the queen of Aragon and involves a guide on therapeutics."
Cheshire's studies do not "show" this. It's a theory and it's not very well supported by any of Cheshire's arguments.
"Also, he believes that MS408 is the only work written in Proto-Romance that has been discovered to date."
As Lisa Fagin-Davis quickly and rightly pointed out when Cheshire first published his theories, "Proto-Romance is not a thing".
"Dr. Cheshire was able to generate the most reasonable translations for the text surrounding the plant images, by using a technique known as array priority queuing."
This is nonsense. It's something Cheshire made up. Cheshire does not use "array priority queuing". He probably doesn't even know what an array is. He uses a simple substitution cipher with a large dose of subjective storytelling, and even with all the subjective interpretation leeway that he gives himself, the phrases are still not grammatical.
"He [Cheshire] had sourced the meaning of words through his extensive research, prior knowledge, and conversion of symbols in the manuscript to Italic symbols."
Cheshire did not convert to "Italic" symbols. He doesn't appear to know what that means. He converted to the Latin alphabet.
Also, Cheshire attributes a common letter in vulgar Latin (in his substitution chart) to one of the rare characters in the VMS, without any explanation of the linguistic discrepancy.
"Dr. Cheshire’s work on identifying plant species in the Mediterranean is the most useful to us as it provides a starting point for the algorithm and the mapping between Voynichese and another language. "
I've already critiqued Cheshire's plant identifications in another thread. It's abundantly clear from several blunders that he doesn't understand medieval plant drawings or plants. He mistook one species for another (this was not even the VMS drawing, but actual botanical drawings).
As for using Cheshire's plant IDs as the basis for further research? GIGO
"Initially, to translate the text in the manuscript to an Indo-European language..."
This is a muddle of concepts. They are assuming it's an Indo-European (Romance) language but then they are translating the text into an Indo-European language? Do they mean transliterate?
Regarding their method...
"For instance, the most frequent letter in Voynichese is mapped to the most frequent letter in one of the Romance languages; each succeeding letter in Voynichese based on frequency is mapped to the succeeding letter in one of the Romance languages, continuing for the rest of the character set..."
This is completely different from the way Cheshire did it, so why are they referencing Cheshire in several introductory paragraphs and then using a frequency-distribution algorithm that is unrelated to Cheshire's work? Were they simply name-dropping to try to give their research some credibility (if so, they chose the wrong name).
After this, it becomes hard to follow the method. On the one hand they say they are using frequency distribution to map the characters and then they say they are using Gerard Cheshire's (highly questionable) plant IDs to verify? or reference? the characters. These two approaches are not compatible.
"The Latin results were focused on in this study, as this language served as the source language for the Romance languages, increasing the likelihood that we would find significant results."
Again, this diverges from Cheshire's "proto-Romance" theory and Cheshire's actual mapping of the characters (which has nothing to do with "Proto-Romance", it's just something he made up). Also, trying to stack the deck to "find significant results" may be questionable in terms of research integrity. The method should arise from initial studies (those with some integrity or those done by the researchers themselves), not be imposed upon the results.
"Moreover, during medieval times, the language most commonly used was Vulgar Latin and many theories hold that the language of the Voynich manuscript could have been an attempt to write in Vulgar Latin..."
In the 15th century, which is the focus of the paper, vulgar Latin was not the most common language. Written manuscripts were still frequently in Latin, but by this time, there were also thousands of manuscripts written in the vernacular (French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Greek, etc.) and generally only scholars and some of the merchants could still speak Latin.
Plant IDs used to verify the "translation"
There are only three plants on Cheshire's plant list that have much botanical credence and they are IDs that have been proposed by many other researchers (in other words, they are some of the easier plants to identify because the drawings are more-or-less naturalistic). The others are questionable.
Then they committed a cardinal sin in research. They cherry-picked a word and invented a scenario to justify their speculative interpretation of this word:
"Within the Latin translation of the first page, the first word that was decoded was PIRE. The word pire in Latin comes from an unknown substrate but is very
similar to the Ancient Greeks’ apios, both of which refer to the pear tree (6). Moreover, in Vulgar Latin, a pear is translated to *pera, a variant of Latin’s pira, which is strikingly similar (7). This word is probably used as a part of the introduction to the botanical section as the pear tree is a common tree that thrives in the Mediterranean climate and continues to make Italy the second largest producer of pears (8)."
I couldn't read any more after reading this. Maybe by tomorrow I can step back far enough (from my horrified reaction) to look at the rest of it but right now it seems like a waste of time.
It sometimes worries me the time taken by some people to attempt to refute theories that are obviously already erroneous where time could be spent more productive on other research. This theory is built off Cheshire's theory, Cheshire's theory is wrong so it is pretty reasonable to think this theory is wrong. I think when a false theory reaches a certain public profile then it unfortunately becomes necessary to point out the problems with it, so that it does not become widely and wrongly accepted by the media, otherwise I think it can safely largely be ignored. I am inclined to the view, that others have expressed, that a correct theory will find its way with time to widespread acceptance.
(06-09-2020, 11:37 AM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Meanwhile there are works which refer directly to the publications of Cheshire. Here a paper as an example:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:This study made use of Dr. Cheshire’s work and analysis of Folios 1v - 6r in his ten paper series of the Voynich Manuscript. We would like to thank him for reviewing our paper and provide wonderful feedback.
One can hardly believe it.
Perhaps if you had actually *read* the paper, you would not have drawn that conclusion. It is hoped your scholarship is better that what is exhibited here.
(06-09-2020, 01:34 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."Carbon-dating shows that the manuscript was written during the Italian Renaissance in Italy despite the manuscript’s medieval art..."
Radio-carbon dating doesn't specify where a manuscript is from.
What do they mean by "despite the manuscript's medieval art"? Are they saying there were no medieval styles carried into the Renaissance?
There appears to be an assumption that the VMS is from Italy, which has not yet been proven. But even if it turns out to be from Italy, the Renaissance did not reach all communities at the same time and many medieval themes still existed.
"First, the botanical section includes illustrations of plants and herbs...
The pharmaceutical section includes medicinal plants and herbs."
An herb is a plant. There's no hard evidence yet that the small plant drawings are medicinal plants.
"Many of the images are wrapped in elegant writing from left to right."
It is average-quality calligraphy, not elegant- or good-quality calligraphy.
The authors write several times "it is theorized" until they reach Cheshire's invention about the Queen of Aragon and then they treat it as though it were fact:
"His studies show that the manuscript was a reference for the queen of Aragon and involves a guide on therapeutics."
Cheshire's studies do not "show" this. It's a theory and it's not very well supported by any of Cheshire's arguments.
"Also, he believes that MS408 is the only work written in Proto-Romance that has been discovered to date."
As Lisa Fagin-Davis quickly and rightly pointed out when Cheshire first published his theories, "Proto-Romance is not a thing".
"Dr. Cheshire was able to generate the most reasonable translations for the text surrounding the plant images, by using a technique known as array priority queuing."
This is nonsense. It's something Cheshire made up. Cheshire does not use "array priority queuing". He probably doesn't even know what an array is. He uses a simple substitution cipher with a large dose of subjective storytelling, and even with all the subjective interpretation leeway that he gives himself, the phrases are still not grammatical.
"He [Cheshire] had sourced the meaning of words through his extensive research, prior knowledge, and conversion of symbols in the manuscript to Italic symbols."
Cheshire did not convert to "Italic" symbols. He doesn't appear to know what that means. He converted to the Latin alphabet.
Also, Cheshire attributes a common letter in vulgar Latin (in his substitution chart) to one of the rare characters in the VMS, without any explanation of the linguistic discrepancy.
"Dr. Cheshire’s work on identifying plant species in the Mediterranean is the most useful to us as it provides a starting point for the algorithm and the mapping between Voynichese and another language. "
I've already critiqued Cheshire's plant identifications in another thread. It's abundantly clear from several blunders that he doesn't understand medieval plant drawings or plants. He mistook one species for another (this was not even the VMS drawing, but actual botanical drawings).
As for using Cheshire's plant IDs as the basis for further research? GIGO
"Initially, to translate the text in the manuscript to an Indo-European language..."
This is a muddle of concepts. They are assuming it's an Indo-European (Romance) language but then they are translating the text into an Indo-European language? Do they mean transliterate?
Regarding their method...
"For instance, the most frequent letter in Voynichese is mapped to the most frequent letter in one of the Romance languages; each succeeding letter in Voynichese based on frequency is mapped to the succeeding letter in one of the Romance languages, continuing for the rest of the character set..."
This is completely different from the way Cheshire did it, so why are they referencing Cheshire in several introductory paragraphs and then using a frequency-distribution algorithm that is unrelated to Cheshire's work? Were they simply name-dropping to try to give their research some credibility (if so, they chose the wrong name).
After this, it becomes hard to follow the method. On the one hand they say they are using frequency distribution to map the characters and then they say they are using Gerard Cheshire's (highly questionable) plant IDs to verify? or reference? the characters. These two approaches are not compatible.
"The Latin results were focused on in this study, as this language served as the source language for the Romance languages, increasing the likelihood that we would find significant results."
Again, this diverges from Cheshire's "proto-Romance" theory and Cheshire's actual mapping of the characters (which has nothing to do with "Proto-Romance", it's just something he made up). Also, trying to stack the deck to "find significant results" may be questionable in terms of research integrity. The method should arise from initial studies (those with some integrity or those done by the researchers themselves), not be imposed upon the results.
"Moreover, during medieval times, the language most commonly used was Vulgar Latin and many theories hold that the language of the Voynich manuscript could have been an attempt to write in Vulgar Latin..."
In the 15th century, which is the focus of the paper, vulgar Latin was not the most common language. Written manuscripts were still frequently in Latin, but by this time, there were also thousands of manuscripts written in the vernacular (French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Greek, etc.) and generally only scholars and some of the merchants could still speak Latin.
Plant IDs used to verify the "translation"
There are only three plants on Cheshire's plant list that have much botanical credence and they are IDs that have been proposed by many other researchers (in other words, they are some of the easier plants to identify because the drawings are more-or-less naturalistic). The others are questionable.
Then they committed a cardinal sin in research. They cherry-picked a word and invented a scenario to justify their speculative interpretation of this word:
"Within the Latin translation of the first page, the first word that was decoded was PIRE. The word pire in Latin comes from an unknown substrate but is very
similar to the Ancient Greeks’ apios, both of which refer to the pear tree (6). Moreover, in Vulgar Latin, a pear is translated to *pera, a variant of Latin’s pira, which is strikingly similar (7). This word is probably used as a part of the introduction to the botanical section as the pear tree is a common tree that thrives in the Mediterranean climate and continues to make Italy the second largest producer of pears (8)."
I couldn't read any more after reading this. Maybe by tomorrow I can step back far enough (from my horrified reaction) to look at the rest of it but right now it seems like a waste of time.
Then please, discard the paper & pursue your obsession with Dr. Cheshire without tarnishing other works which you clearly misunderstand.
(06-09-2020, 02:24 PM)asdrpradii Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps if you had actually *read* the paper, you would not have drawn that conclusion. It is hoped your scholarship is better that what is exhibited here.
Unfortunately I cannot take such a comment seriously. There is nothing more to say about it.