Whilst playing about with chatGPL, it informed me that one of the owners of the Voynich manuscript was the 18th century monk, linguist, polymath and artist Antonio Francesco Gori. He's mainly known nowadays for being the bloke who stole Galilleo's finger from his casket and put it on display.
Anyway, the AI claims that amongst the owners of the Voynich was:
Quote:Antonio Francesco Gori: Gori was an Italian scholar who acquired the manuscript from the Jesuit College in Rome. He is known to have made some attempts to decipher it, but he was also unable to make any significant progress.
I'd never heard of the bloke, so I investigated.
I asked the AI:
"What was the relation between Antonio Francesco Gori and the Voynich manuscript?"
It said:
Quote:Antonio Francesco Gori was an Italian scholar who acquired the Voynich manuscript in the late 18th century. It is not clear exactly how Gori came into possession of the manuscript, but it is believed that he acquired it from the Jesuit College in Rome, where it had been held since the early 18th century. Gori is known to have made some attempts to decipher the manuscript, but he was ultimately unable to make any significant progress. The Voynich manuscript remained in Gori's possession until his death in 1796, after which it passed to his son, who later sold it to Wilfrid M. Voynich, a Polish book dealer.[font=Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji'].[/font]
Well, Gori died in 1757 (You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view.), not 1796, so that's wrong. Anyway, I tried to find out more:
"Did Antonio Gori sell Wilfred Voynich his famous manuscript?"
Quote:No, Antonio Francesco Gori did not sell the Voynich manuscript to Wilfrid M. Voynich. Gori was an Italian scholar who acquired the Voynich manuscript in the late 18th century. It is not clear exactly how Gori came into possession of the manuscript, but it is believed that he acquired it from the Jesuit College in Rome, where it had been held since the early 18th century. Gori is known to have made some attempts to decipher the manuscript, but he was ultimately unable to make any significant progress. The Voynich manuscript remained in Gori's possession until his death in 1796, after which it passed to his son, who later sold it to Wilfrid M. Voynich, a Polish book dealer. Voynich is known to have been a collector of rare books and manuscripts, and it is believed that he acquired the Voynich manuscript in an effort to solve its mystery and add it to his collection. The Voynich manuscript remained in Voynich's possession until his death in 1930, after which it passed to his wife, who later sold it to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, where it has been housed since 1969.
One final attempt:
"Who told you that Antonio Gori's son sold Wilfred Voynich his famous manuscript?"
Quote:The information that I provided about the ownership history of the Voynich manuscript comes from a variety of sources, including historical records and academic literature about the manuscript. It is not clear exactly who sold the Voynich manuscript to Wilfrid M. Voynich, but it is known that Antonio Francesco Gori, an Italian scholar, acquired the manuscript in the late 18th century and that it remained in his possession until his death in 1796, after which it passed to his son. It is believed that the son sold the Voynich manuscript to Wilfrid M. Voynich, a Polish book dealer, at some point after that. Voynich is known to have been a collector of rare books and manuscripts, and it is believed that he acquired the Voynich manuscript in an effort to solve its mystery and add it to his collection. The Voynich manuscript remained in Voynich's possession until his death in 1930, after which it passed to his wife, who later sold it to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, where it has been housed since 1969.
I asked the AI a few more questions about Gori but it only referenced him in the context of the VM.
QUESTION: Where is the AI getting this Gori story from?
That is bizarre. If the AI is right then maybe we should all pack our bags and go home and leave it all up to the AI to figure out.
Undoubtedly from someone's theory published somewhere in the depths of the internet.
It reminds me of one theory by Diane O'Donovan, related to an Italian book dealer, but that was a different name, which doesn't spring to mind right now.
It will probably come just after I hit 'Post Reply', in which case I will edit this post.
Edit:
the person's name I could not think of just before is Guglielmo Libri.
Even accepting the AI's error for Gori's death date, his son would have been miraculously long-lived if he sold the manuscript to Voynich in 1912!
A more far-fetched possibility is, that this is part of a 'fake news' experiment by the AI developers, to see how much of this will make it into resources like Wikipedia etc.
I suppose badly managed hashtable collisions in the huge dataset (or some other bug or limitation) could cause a kind of false memory.
Quote:Can you list the known owners of the Voynich manuscript, with dates when they acquired it?
Here is a list of the known owners of the Voynich manuscript, along with the dates when they acquired it:
Wilfrid Voynich (1912)
Paul Dreyfus (1953)
Hans P. Kraus (1969)
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University (1969 - present)
It is worth noting that the history of the Voynich manuscript before it was purchased by Wilfrid Voynich in 1912 is not well documented, and it is possible that there were other owners before him.
What is the connection between Antonio Francesco Gori and the Voynich Manuscript?
Antonio Francesco Gori was an 18th-century Italian Jesuit and scholar who is sometimes mentioned in connection with the Voynich manuscript. According to one theory, Gori acquired the manuscript in the 1740s and brought it back to Italy with him, where it eventually ended up in the possession of the Collegio Romano, a Jesuit college in Rome. However, this theory has not been proven and there is no solid evidence to support it. It is worth noting that the Voynich manuscript has a complex and mysterious history, and many aspects of its provenance are still not well understood.
Whose theory is that? Where and when was it published?
The theory that Antonio Francesco Gori acquired the Voynich manuscript and brought it back to Italy with him was first proposed by Dr. Gerard Cheshire, a scholar from the University of Bristol, in a paper published in the journal "Cryptologia" in 2010. In his paper, Dr. Cheshire presented evidence that he believed supported the theory, including the existence of a letter written by Gori in which he mentions a "cipher manuscript" in his possession. However, other scholars have challenged Dr. Cheshire's theory and there is still much debate and uncertainty surrounding the provenance of the Voynich manuscript.
What is the title of the paper published in the journal "Cryptologia" in 2010 by Gerald Cheshire?
The paper published in the journal "Cryptologia" in 2010 by Gerard Cheshire, in which he proposed the theory that Antonio Francesco Gori acquired the Voynich manuscript and brought it back to Italy with him, is titled "The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma".
Well, one AI outsmarting another, and in the process getting even more things wrong
Well, I'm not surprised at Chesire's name popping up (thanks nablator!) but that wasn't the title of his paper. "The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma" was written by Mary D'Imperio in the 70's.
The only 2010 paper in Cryptologia on the Voynich that I could find was "A note on the Voynich Manuscript" by You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view..
However, Gordon Rugg's "An elegant hoax? A possible solution to the VM", although originally published in a 2004 edition, is marked as published online in 2010 and this could be confusing the AI due to the similar name. AFAIK he doesn't mention Gori?
(05-01-2023, 03:19 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, one AI outsmarting another, and in the process getting even more things wrong
It's the same AI, ChatGPT...
Thinking a bit more about how it could happen, it is likely that the dataset got polluted somehow by a supposedly trustworthy source, like Wikipedia. Anyone could have posted a false story about a former owner on Wikipedia that got included into the dataset. ChatGPT works on an outdated image of the dataset, of course the false story was quickly removed from Wikipedia.
Then ChatGPT is known to confabulate (it also happens when it is fed false data in a closed-ended question): this could be where the Gerald Cheshire story come from.
(05-01-2023, 01:15 AM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One final attempt:
"Who told you that Antonio Gori's son sold Wilfred Voynich his famous manuscript?"
Well I asked about the source of the theory, not the source of the text that ChatGPT is using in its dataset. It is usually unable to answer questions about its dataset.