(25-09-2022, 05:00 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So the above still stands.
I would assume that the reasons to buy a manuscript in the late Middle Ages were different than in the 20th century. The unique selling point of the VMS is the fact that it cannot be read (yet). This may have been the reason for Kraus to buy the VMS. His efforts to resell the manuscript for a profit failed (he finally donated it to Yale University in 1969). I think that in the late Middle Ages the practical use of a manuscript was most important. Creating a hoax in the hope of selling it for (a lot of) money in time would have been a pretty daring, not to say pointless, project. The "collector's item" practically immediately becomes a shelf warmer. I just can't figure out the target group for a possible, timely sale.
(25-09-2022, 05:56 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I would assume that the reasons to buy a manuscript in the late Middle Ages were different than in the 20th century.
I was just about to write much the same. Quite generally, it is dangerous to project situations between different centuries. This applies to two points that have been under discussion here:
- is it reasonable to spend a lot of time on something as apparently useless as a hoax
- would the MS be a sellable item
The second interests me the most.
There is no particular reason to doubt that Rudolf once bought it for quite a bit of gold. One can just be sceptical because there is no hard proof - quite normal for historical events.
Voynich did not manage to sell it, but he really wanted to have it translated first, and it seems that he did not try very hard to sell it.
Kraus undoubtedly really wanted to sell it, but he did not manage. The feeling I get from the correspondence about this is that the MS did not have the best reputation then, he was not eager to show it to too many people and he probably was asking more than the market could offer. He could not find a 'Rudolf'.
Nowadays, it would easily be sold for more than the equivalence of what Rudolf paid. There are plenty of Rudolf's around. The reputation of the MS is good again, and it is a prime example of a unique item.
None of these are in contradiction with each other.
(25-09-2022, 07:31 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I was just about to write much the same. Quite generally, it is dangerous to project situations between different centuries.
I'll just add for clarity that this is exactly the point I was trying to make. Comparing the original makers' situation to the Rudolf sale makes as much sense as comparing it to Voynich and Kraus' situation. It's simply a very weak argument. As well-researched and well-presented the video is, the arguments are all flawed or easily countered.
In his downplaying of the manuscript Justin Sledge resorts to the old quote from Mr Voynich that the work is an "ugly duckling", but the quote doesn't help Justin's case. As I recall, according to the tale the "ugly duckling" was in fact a swan. It only looked like an ugly duckling. I'm sure that was Mr Voynich's analogy. No one claims the Voynich MS. is a masterpiece. The claim, rather, is that its crude and amateurish (I prefer the word "folkish") character - its ugliness - is deceptive. It is more sophisticated than it looks.
Justin, I suppose, might reply, if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's a duck. Most of us who spend time investigating the work develop more respect for it and look beyond its crude presentation. If you look closely, you can see a swan.
For me, this is one of its mysteries. It is very folkish, but very quickly you realise it is not the scribbling of some half-educated rustic on a get-rich-quick scheme. The disjunction between naivety and sophistication is intriguing and one of its hallmarks. That's the sense in which it's an ugly duckling and why the analogy is apt.
(24-09-2022, 11:58 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The argument of "no corrections" is obviously also flawed. We can't read the script and we don't know which variations in glyph shape are meaningful. Who knows how many times one shape has been turned into another. Or maybe mistakes are simply left in, or maybe they swiftly copied from a prepared example. As long as we don't understand the text, I don't think a perceived lack of mistakes can be used as an argument.
Sledge uses the term corrections to refer to the absence of cross-outs or scratchings. See for instance You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
(24-09-2022, 11:58 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The best argument he used in favor of medieval hoax is probably that the text's statistics point away from simple substitution. If the text is encoded, they must have used a method unknown to medieval times. And still unknown to us. This is definitely something to keep in mind. But there is a flaw in that argument as well: if the text was generated, this was done by an equally unknown method!
Actually Sledge is referring to such a method. He also argues that this method would reproduce the statistical key properties of the Voynich manuscript. See You are not allowed to view links.
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(24-09-2022, 11:58 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So why would we assume that the VM makers could come up with a novel and highly efficient method of pseudo-text generation, and not a novel encoding method?
See the experiment executed by Prof. Bowern with 40 of her students to write some pseudo text. Bowern reports that after writing about just 100 words the students found it increasingly difficult to find ideas for new words. They now began to repeat themselves. Some systematically reused word components or modified words. For example, one student repeatedly used words that had similarities to 'kadaya' or 'gebuni'. So the reason might be that the author of the Voynich text had the same idea as Bowerns students. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
(25-09-2022, 08:03 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'll just add for clarity that this is exactly the point I was trying to make. Comparing the original makers' situation to the Rudolf sale makes as much sense as comparing it to Voynich and Kraus' situation.
Sledge point is only that even an unreadable Voynich manuscript would had some value in medieval times and would therefore had been worth some effort.
(25-09-2022, 08:03 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's simply a very weak argument. As well-researched and well-presented the video is, the arguments are all flawed or easily countered.
The main line of argumentation is based on text properties like the high number of repetitions, the network analyses for the Voynich text (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), the existence of statistical distinct dialects, the low entropy values, the binomial word length distributions etc. (see Timm & Schinner 2019). Did I understand you correctly that you dismiss all this statistical arguments as flawed and say that there is no need to talk about them?
I agree with the statistical analysis and the need to talk about them. However, I disagree with the conclusion. If I remember the video correctly, Sledge doesn't demonstrate that it cannot be a cipher. He instead argues that it is unlikely to be a cipher done by any of the known medieval methods, which is something I agree with. But from this, he infers that it is not a cipher, but something else. However, this something else is also unattested. The VM is novel and unique altogether, so saying "the cipher would be novel" is not a good argument.
Regarding Bowern's experiment with her students, I have said before in relation to a similar experiment I did with Marco, that it would be better if participants were not aware of the VM.
Still, the issue remains that if the makers of the VM developed a method of text generation, it would have been something new and unique. Moreover, they didn't invent it as they went along (even though the system evolves). The system stands from the start and immediately produces text with the remarkable properties we all know.
Regarding the manuscript's value, as we have been discussing this is highly dependent on context. We don't know if an unreadable manuscript would have had value in medieval times, or if that value would have been worth the investment of materials. Maybe a copy of the bible would have fetched way more. We simply don't know. Rudolf lived in his own time and context, much later than the makers of the VM.
Giving text repetition as a reason for a meaningless text is fundamentally wrong.
If you read old books in your native language, and also look at others, words and sections of text are quite often in repetition.
I read the books. There is so much paraphrasing, sometimes they just don't get to the point.
I remember "So nim ..... and nim ... , it has and will ....".
It's not a cipher of the time, is far fetched. I know other.
The Templars marked their alphabet with a dot. "From one make two".
If I am right with the "4", and there are really two of them, this throws a completely different light on the matter. "From one make two"
Combinations of characters is also not new. Nick has a whole list somewhere.
It's understanding what's possible and applying them in the VM manuscript example.
Questions:
Why can EVA "S" also be used as an ending. What does "@" mean and when was it applied. What connection does it have with "a8" and what about "c8".
If "a8 = at", then "c8 = et" would be.
In the Middle Ages, "@" was used as "ad". Comes originally from the Greek.
What I want to say, he has not even scratched the surface
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(26-09-2022, 07:15 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.We don't know if an unreadable manuscript would have had value in medieval times, or if that value would have been worth the investment of materials. Maybe a copy of the bible would have fetched way more. We simply don't know.
I always have to think of the way medieval swords are treated today. You buy them at auctions for a lot of money, catalog them and hang them on your wall or put them in a display case. Nowadays they have a high collector's value. In the Middle Ages, people put swords in a closed box and took them out when they were
needed. So they were "commodities" whose value was defined by their practical use. Whether they were books of hours, Bibles, medical tracts or whatever, they all had a specific purpose for which they were used. At most, they were kept in libraries to be retrieved when needed. A manuscript that cannot be read is practically useless and therefore, from the perspective of a potential customer in the Middle Ages, uninteresting. The idea of buying a collectible simply because it is unique is a modern phenomenon. In the Middle Ages there was something similar at most with the purchase and exhibition of relics. In the case of the VMS, we are probably dealing with an anthology that is largely about plants. Manuscripts of this kind existed in large numbers only with the difference that they could be read. Where would a possible customer from the time probably buy ?
(26-09-2022, 09:19 AM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A manuscript that cannot be read is practically useless and therefore, from the perspective of a potential customer in the Middle Ages, uninteresting.
Even worse, the absence of respect for any recognizable tradition (other than the Zodiac) does not inspire confidence in the authors' knowledge about the purported subjects. On the other hand, there was a huge thirst for *new* knowledge in the late middle ages, pushing the translation of Arabic and Greek works, also leading to the fabrication of many fakes (readable books attributed to authorities of the past: Hermes, Merlin, Albertus Magnus, etc.) so maybe the VMs was sold (with a good story, as something exotic, but not too exotic to be understood in some part of Europe) to someone who hoped that it could be deciphered by simple substitution, as many Voynichologists still believe nowadays, and reveal some amazing secrets. Books of secrets were all the rage, and what is more secret that an unreadable tome?
The video is pretty weak. Does not pay attention to the iconography and also despises the colors used in the images. I do not believe that the colors were applied without an intention.
For example, anyone who has counted it will have seen that more than half of the flowers are blue. This is somewhat surprising because the color blue is very rare in nature. I have read in a specialized magazine that less than 10% of flowering plants produce blue flowers.
Why this disparity with what we see in the Voynich? There may be several answers. I think it is to emphasize the relationship that the sky and its blue color have with plants, which is quite consistent with the cosmological part of the book.