The Voynich Ninja

(29-04-2021, 01:55 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Personal pronouns are not optional in Middle English, it's not Latin. But even if we interpret "young" as "the young one", there must be an article. Possibly also inflection like in modern German and Dutch: "jung, der Junge; jong, de jonge", but I do not know this for certain about Middle English. Either way, what you write makes no grammatical sense in any language, and this has nothing to do with a translation to Modern English.

I beg to differ. First of all, let's look at the two lines I have read and interpreted together:

"Spur soueth hotər : theiris son risəth o bimoueth"
"al-to siteth yong, hoting acme gatteething riteth"

We may read "son" as the subject not only of "riseth" and "bimoueth", but also of "siteth" at the beginning of the following line:

"theiris son riseth, o bimoueth, al-to siteth yong"

As for the article in "the young one", I believe I mentioned at some point previously in this thread that my current hypothesis is that the Middle English text of the Voynich ms was deliberately written without any articles. This was not my initial hypothesis, but one I arrived at after working through a few lines. In fact there is a tradition of such an abbreviated style of English: in more modern times it has been known as "headline English" or "telegram English", but it could just as well be considered more generally as "messenger English", using the absolute minimum of words necessary to convey the essential "headline" or "telegram" style message. 

In fact, the omission of articles is common in certain encrypted English text, specifically in order to make it more difficult to decipher by removing the most frequent words "the" and "a" from the encrypted text. The US Army Field Manual on "Basic Cryptanalysis" (1990) even discusses this possibility, providing a separate section on word and letter frequencies in "English telegram text" as distinct from regular English text. 

In the case of the "Yorkist cipher" that I hypothesize here, the indefinite article "a" was impossible in any case since the cipher omits the letter "a" entirely!! Once the cipher has gone that far, why not omit the definite article "the" as well?

Geoffrey

Geoffrey, allow me to make a suggestion. Your hypothesis is that the VMs is enciphered Middle English and has to do with Edward, Second Duke of York. Your null hypothesis, therefore, is that the VMs is not enciphered Middle English, and has nothing to do with Edward, Second Duke of York. Falsify this null hypothesis. If it’s not true that the VMs is not enciphered Middle English and has nothing to do with Edward, Second Duke of York, what might one expect to find? I strongly recommend inviting other researchers to help you with making a list of findable things in the VMs that one should expect to find, if your null hypothesis is wrong. Then go looking for those things. If you and/or other researchers readily find examples in the VMs of most of the items you listed, then reject the null hypothesis, and proceed from the assumption that against any appearances to the contrary, the VMs is enciphered Middle English, and has to do with Edward, Second Duke of York.

On the other hand, if your scavenger hunt doesn’t turn up much, that doesn’t mean your hypothesis isn’t true. But it does mean it’s probably too far-fetched to be worth pursuing further, barring you finding a multitude of things that resist any other plausible explanation.

But this is only a suggestion. It’s your project. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. ?

RenegadeHealer, I appreciate your feedback and your suggestion. But I'm not sure exactly how this would work. See, I'm afraid I don't believe a hypothesis about the possible origin and authorship of such a manuscript is so very readily "falsifiable" as a hypothesis in the natural sciences would be. This is not a theory of physics or chemistry or even biology. It doesn't necessarily have any grand universal application that requires a whole host of things to be true if it is true. Either there is or there is not sufficiently substantial evidence in favour of the hypothesis to support the likelihood of its being true, but there's not necessarily going to be any particular piece of contrary evidence that could prove definitely or certainly that it must be wrong. The closest thing I am aware of, which I just discussed in recent posts in this thread, is the analysis of the script that some scholars argue points to a more likely Central European origin. And I have addressed that. But beyond such things, which even themselves are not 100% definite, there are simply so few things that we know for certain about the Voynich manuscript, that I very much doubt that it will be possible to find a "negative smoking gun" that somehow proves that such a hypothesis must be wrong. I don't think theories about this manuscript work that way. I abandoned my previous theories because methodological problems were found: excessively great ambiguity in the letter values of the characters in one case; excessively poor and essentially non-meaningful text in the target language in the other case. But I'm not aware of any proof or strong negative, contrary evidence that they must be wrong; rather, it was found that there was simply an absence of any evidence that they were correct. Falsifiability works very well for hypotheses in the natural sciences; it has more limited application in a strange literary and palaeographic mystery puzzle such as the origin, authorship, and meaning of the text of the Voynich manuscript. 

That said, if someone thinks they can identify such features of the manuscript, of course I am always happy to listen and learn. I have done so already, and taken such observations, by Anton and by other scholars, into account. But on the other hand, just because somebody finds one detail that does not have an immediate explanation according to my hypothesis, I'm not going to be in a rush to abandon the hypothesis just because it can't explain one particular detail yet. Perhaps a perfectly logical explanation of everything will be found later, and I simply haven't been able to think of every good explanation of every detail yet. I believe I have found a strikingly substantial set of meaningful lines of text, with a consistent and not excessively ambiguous correspondence table of characters and letter values, along with a set of cipher rules that I have specified in precise detail. I consider that to be significant, substantial evidence. To be frank, I now consider the probability that the line "Spur soueth hoter: theiris son riseth o bimoueth" occurred by pure random chance coincidence from my correspondence table and cipher rules to be very extremely low. I cannot say exactly "how many sigmas" yet, but I dare say I think it is quite a few sigmas of statistical significance in that line alone, especially in the word "bimoueth" spelled backwards. Then there is the line after that, the first line of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , the center ring of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , the center ring of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , the three words of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , the two words on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and finally [otol] = "fous", which I found first of all before any of these other pieces of text. And all of those things express meaningful Middle English or in the case of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. meaningful French text, all with the exact same correspondence table of characters and letter values and the exact same set of precisely specified cipher rules as I have explicitly spelled out recently in this thread. I will be blunt, I think that is an awful lot of meaningful text in meaningful places in the ms!! 

So I would also like to pose the question in the opposite direction, and ask those who do not believe that there is Middle English text in the ms and do not believe that an English person or people could have written the ms, to please explain exactly how all of those examples of meaningful text, now getting more numerous than just a few words in a few places, could possibly be a complete and total coincidence? 

Geoffrey

I must apologize for the excessively strident tone of my previous post. I am aware that I have a lot more work to do, and I cannot claim to have a solution or deciphering of the Voynich manuscript text based on five lines and six additional words, no matter how significant and meaningful these five lines and six words may seem to me, if not necessarily to anyone else yet. For now, I must keep working, and my next task is to read and interpret the entirety of the text of folio pages You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , which I believe should continue in a similar theme as the two lines about "Hotspur" Henry Percy (Northumberland) and his son that I have presented in this thread so far. Of course, more than just two pages will be necessary in the final analysis, and alas, I may have to turn to the likely French "Language B" sections to read and interpret additional pages of entirely different sections of the manuscript text. This process will proceed more productively if I can find sympathetic colleagues who know Middle English, or French, better than I do, but until then the burden and the onus is upon me to proceed with this work. As always, I welcome any and all critical feedback, thoughts, and comments. Thank you to everyone on the Voynich Ninja forum who takes the time and effort to bother to read my posts about my theories, regardless of whether they are right or wrong, and regardless of how many times I have been wrong before. Thank you.

Geoffrey

No need to apologize, no offense taken. 

You make a good point, which is really the common refrain in VMs studies: such little context. Because that’s the thing: without enough firm connections to other pieces of culture, the odds of anyone retrieving any information from the VMs’ text that the author deliberately put there are vanishingly small. For a crude analogy, it’s the difference between solving an unwitnessed murder when there are probable motives and perpetrators identified, versus solving an unwitnessed murder where no one can offer any probable reason anyone would want to kill the victim. Which doesn’t mean these kinds of cases like are never solved, by someone acting on a fanciful hunch. But that’s very much the exception, not the rule.

The problem with looking for patterns in the VMs’ text is that we don’t even know what kind of information we’re looking for. And so far none of anyone’s guesses about what this information might be have led us anywhere. I can see the point of coming up with a hunch, and filtering your looks at the VMs through those hunches. What I’m afraid I miss the point of, is continuing to view the VMs through those same hunches, when the manuscript doesn’t start making a lot more sense pretty quickly.

If you just enjoy the exercise of fleshing out these quite possible but nearly unprovable connect-the-dots scenarios, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that if it makes you happy, and I’m sure you would find a receptive audience for this online, if you wanted one, albeit likely a different audience than Voynicheros primarily focused on solving the mystery. I wonder if you might enjoy writing a piece of hard science fiction about someone solving the VMs, or some similar kind of worldbuilding/ conlanging artistic project. Just a thought.

I appreciate your response, but I disagree about certain details. I have proposed a very specific logical set of rules to transform [dtor sheol qokor sharal ckhol sholar aiin sheoctham] on page f58r into "Spur soueth hoter: theiris son riseth o bimoueth". I have provided the correspondence table of characters and letter values, along with all of the very precisely and specifically defined cipher rules. That is not a "conlanging artistic project", that is a cryptographic cryptanalytic linguistic analysis of the actual characters in that line of text on that page of the manuscript.

I did not design that correspondence table and those cipher rules to suit this particular line of text; quite the contrary, I had developed the table and rules over the course of analysing possible function words, word frequency lists for Languages A and B, and then over the course of considering certain significant words and text that others, not me, already considered significant, such as [otol] and the two words on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . Then I applied those correspondences and rules to the three words on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , then to the center rings of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , and to the first line of text on f1r . The correspondence table and the cipher rules were thus already rather rigidly set in place before I ever looked at the text on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . Of course small details could and can still be amended, as the table and rules must be provisional at this stage, but I couldn't just go changing everything again to fake a line of good Middle English text on a new page. 

And with all of that rather rigidly set in place, I still found that this very real actual sequence of characters and words in the line of text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is read and interpreted as "Spur soueth hoter: theiris son riseth o bimoueth" according to the specific table and rules already set in place based on the previous text that had been analysed. I hope at least some readers can see the remarkable connections to my hypothesis present in this line of text: Not just "Spur" but "hoter", referring to the historical figure known as "Hotspur". The word "soueth", meaning "begets", referring to his surviving son after he was killed at Shrewsbury in 1403. The words "son riseth", which is both relevant to Hotspur's son, and even also represents an English play on words with "sonne riseth" (that is, "sun rises"), both then and now. And finally, most remarkable of all, the beautiful Middle English word "bimoueth", even found in the Wycliffe Bible, and quite apropos to the author's context from the author's perspective! 

Again, that is not fantasy or science fiction, that is not "worldbuilding" or a "conlanging artistic project". That is a cryptographic cryptanalytic linguistic analysis of the actual characters and words on the actual line of the actual page of the actual manuscript. The counter-argument is that the whole thing is entirely a pure random chance coincidence. Somehow, according to the counter-argument, it is a coincidence that the entire correspondence table and all of the specific precise cipher rules just happened to produce that meaningful line of Middle English text that is quite relevant to the context of the hypothesis that I had already proposed before I ever looked at page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . Well, I am happy to listen to the mathematical and statistical details of such a counter-argument, but I have not seen anyone here even attempt to present that argument.

I will be blunt: I believe my interpretation represents the real intended meaning of the characters and words of that line of text on that page of the manuscript. Of course I could be wrong, but I have not seen anyone here even begin to attempt to present a detailed counter-argument that could even begin to convince me that my interpretation could all be just a pure random chance coincidence. 

You mention the question of motive, and a situation "where no one can offer any probable reason anyone would want to kill the victim." One strength of my hypothesis is that it offers a very clear motive: The Yorks lost an awful lot when Henry IV overthrew Richard II. First of all, they lost their branch of the family's claim to the English throne, no minor detail for the Yorks and Lancasters in this period. Edward, 2nd Duke of York, seemed to adapt to the new political reality, but not without a significant amount of difficulties. You want more motive? Here it is: Edward actually presided as constable over a judicial dispute involving Henry Bolingbroke in 1398 that resulted in Bolingbroke being exiled: 
"However, on 28 September 1397, he received a large grant of Gloucester, Warwick and Arundel's forfeited lands. On 29 September, he was created You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a title that had earlier been granted to Gloucester on 3 September 1385. On 16 September 1398 Aumale presided as constable over the aborted judicial combat between Henry Bolingbroke, the future You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which ended with Bolingbroke and Norfolk being exiled by King Richard.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." (See the third and fourth paragraphs of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..) 
Edward had many, many motives for hostility toward Bolingbroke, which he had to suppress publicly, but which a secret cipher manuscript would be the perfect outlet for. As for Constance of York, her husband was killed as a result of losing the conflict with Bolingbroke in 1399-1400. What more motive can one possibly have? If there's one thing my hypothesis has in spades, it is motive, motive, and more motive for the creation of this secret script, cipher, and manuscript. I am not presenting this as historical fiction, I am presenting this as the actual motive for the actual creation of the actual manuscript.

But for now, I would just like someone to explain to me exactly what I am missing, and exactly how my correspondence table and cipher rules produced that perfectly fitting line of Middle English text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by pure random chance coincidence.

Geoffrey

Geoffrey, I couldn’t agree less about the standard of scientific evidence applying here. This is definitely hard science. We’re dealing with a phenomenon that is entirely measurable and testable, by all of us around the world independently, thanks to the digitalization efforts of the Beinecke Library.

If I encoded some unambiguous information with unambiguous symbols, then multiple researchers working entirely independently from each other should be able to retrieve that information, with only trivial differences. The same thing applies here. Someone else, given the same set of transformation rules and the same passage of Voynichese, should pull roughly the same information out of it. When I see that happen, I’ll believe that your system is on the right track.

(30-04-2021, 12:49 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Geoffrey, I couldn’t agree less about the standard of scientific evidence applying here. This is definitely hard science. We’re dealing with a phenomenon that is entirely measurable and testable, by all of us around the world independently, thanks to the digitalization efforts of the Beinecke Library.

If I encoded some unambiguous information with unambiguous symbols, then multiple researchers working entirely independently from each other should be able to retrieve that information, with only trivial differences. The same thing applies here. Someone else, given the same set of transformation rules and the same passage of Voynichese, should pull roughly the same information out of it. When I see that happen, I’ll believe that your system is on the right track.

I believe that is possible indeed. However, as it may possibly have been the case with Linear B, I also believe that it may require a cryptologically, mathematically, and linguistically talented and knowledgeable fellow researcher to spend as much as tens or dozens or scores of hours studying the complicated system of character/letter correspondences and cipher rules that I propose, in order to understand the logic of the system well enough to perform such independent confirmation of my results. So the challenge is to convince any other researcher to invest that necessary amount of time to understand my system in the first place, before such independent confirmation can be carried out in practice.

Also, not all writing is 100% "unambiguous symbols". Every language itself, certainly including English, has "ambiguous symbols". And yes, the cipher rules I propose do create a certain additional level of ambiguity in the possible reading of certain words. But not so much ambiguity as to make "bimoueth" spelled backwards be ambiguous or not recognizable! A three-letter or three-character word on the other hand may be enciphered with somewhat more possible ambiguity: For example, "mos", "mous", "mus", "som", "soum", and "sum", possibly with unwritten unstressed or almost silent e's at the end, would all be written as "MOs". Again, the motive is to make the "M" of "Mortimer" appear as the first letter of the word, and to make the letter "O" in "YORK" appear as often as possible. So yes, that is a certain level of ambiguity. But words like "bimoueth" spelled backwards help to reduce the amount and level of ambiguity of the reading and interpretation of the text as well!

Geoffrey

To all readers of this thread:

It has been impressed upon me that a mere visit to Heidelberg on embassy for a matter of weeks alone would not have been nearly enough time for an Englishman such as Edward, 2nd Duke of York, to have learned and mastered the ability to write in a Central European style of script as thoroughly as the primary author of the Voynich MS had clearly mastered its script. 

In order to support my theory, I will need to find historical evidence that Edward, or whomever I may propose as the primary author of the MS and designer of its script, somehow received extended teaching or training in such a script at some time during the period between his visit to Heidelberg on embassy in the late 1390s and the beginning date of the composition of the Voynich MS, which cannot have been earlier than 1404 in any case.

Naturally, it will require some time--probably more than a matter of weeks--for me to research this topic as thoroughly as will be necessary to corroborate, or fail to corroborate, my theory.

Geoffrey

Another necessary clarification and refinement of my hypothesis:

I have been convinced that it is unlikely that such a high-ranking aristocrat as Edward, 2nd Duke of York, himself could or would have done the actual physical writing of the text of the Voynich MS. 

Still, the Duke of York would have had no small number of scribes and clerks to perform all of his writing tasks for him, and I imagine that the kind of aristocrat who could have spent a substantial portion of 7 years (1406-1413) translating The Master of Game from French into English, as well as adding his own new English chapters at the end of the work, would have had a great interest in written communication in multiple languages, at a minimum English, French (both Anglo-Norman and standard French), and Latin. 

I see no reason why the Duke of York could not have had some of his scribes or clerks write the text of the Voynich MS at his behest. Maintaining confidentiality, privacy, and secrecy would have been simply assumed to be the sacredly sworn responsibility of a clerk in the retinue of the Duke of York! It is another question whether the clerks would have known the cipher rules and thus the meaning of the Voynich script text they were writing, or whether the Duke of York performed the cipher encryption himself and only directed his scribes or clerks to write the characters they had been trained to write, without understanding the actual meaning of the words they were writing. I suspect that at least one or some of the actual scribes or clerks must have had at least some understanding of the actual meaning of the text that they were writing at the Duke of York's behest. 

In this regard, it is interesting to me that some scholars who have studied the palaeography of the script of the Voynich MS believe it is possible that the handwriting could be from Spain just as well as it could be from Italy or Bohemia! Now Spain actually has a much more plausible connection to an English aristocrat in this time period than Bohemia or other places in Central Europe do. And the possible connection is especially plausible for Edward, 2nd Duke of York, in particular: He was appointed as the Lieutenant of the Duchy of Aquitaine from July 1401 until May 1403. He would have been stationed in Bordeaux during this time period, and in fact he would have effectively been the de facto ruler of this territory on an everyday basis, although technically he was Henry IV's Lieutenant ruling the territory on Henry's behalf. 

See the historical political map of southwest Europe in the year 1400 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Euratlas). (It appears that Euratlas's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. do not grant to myself or others the right to post the map itself as an attachment, so I have not done so.) You will see that England controlled not only the area of Aquitaine in the immediate vicinity of Bordeaux, but also an additional small area farther south, bordering Navarre and Aragon and seemingly practically touching a tip of the territory of Castile at a small point north of Navarre. 

I propose that it would not have been at all unlikely for the Lieutenant of the Duchy of Aquitaine in 1401-1403 to have among his retinue some number of Spanish-trained scribes or clerks. They could have developed a script such as that of the Voynich MS at the Lieutenant's behest, if he so desired. When he (Edward, 2nd Duke of York) returned to England in 1403, he could have retained some of these scribes or clerks, especially if he had a special interest in this unique style of script that only they had developed and been trained to write. They could have remained in the Duke of York's retinue in England after 1403 and during the time period of the composition of the Voynich MS. 

It still remains to explain the German marginalia in the Voynich MS. I suggest that perhaps only those were actually written by the Duke of York himself! Perhaps this also explains their poor quality and makes them difficult to interpret and understand their actual meaning. Again, the motivation would have been to have nothing in the MS that appeared to be of English or French origin, for security purposes in case it fell into the wrong hands of Henry IV or an official in his court. This would have created plausible deniability for the Duke of York, so that he could believably say that it wasn't his personal document or of his creation but rather just an exotic manuscript that he had acquired from elsewhere and that he had no idea what the script was or what the text meant. For this purpose indeed it was probably safer to use German as the language of the marginalia even rather than Spanish or Occitan or any language of that region. German would have appeared to be the least potentially "political" of the possible languages that could have been chosen for this purpose. Again, the Duke of York could still have claimed that he acquired the MS during his visit to Heidelberg in the late 1390s, if he ever needed an "alibi" to explain the document's origin. 

Some may claim that some parts of this hypothesis now seem far-fetched to them. I respond, is not everything about the Voynich MS itself far-fetched? Do we really expect that the actual explanation of the origin of the Voynich MS will seem "normal" or "ordinary"? I suggest not. It is a bizarre document. There will be some aspects of the correct solution of its origin that will appear to be bizarre.

Geoffrey
"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct." - Niels Bohr