The Voynich Ninja

What are the most plausible theories that could explain the purpose of the Voynich manuscript, and what evidence supports each of them?

Ah, this old chestnut.

First of all, I think it is not always easy to determine why anybody does a thing. Why do some people love to watch sports and why don't I?

So sometimes assigning a purpose to a thing is difficult. What was or is the purpose of "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion" by Henry Darger?

It is even possible that the motivations of the Voynich author(s) changed from what they were initially.

Anyway, here are some motivations of the top of my head:

1) Practical Application. The author(s) may have secretly compiled information useful to their work in the Voynich, so the Voynich may have been intended as a very practical text of say medieval medicine. Maybe the author wanted it to be secret, so as to protect their status as a healer from their knowledge being stolen by rivals.(Again this would tie in with a motivation of status and possibly financial reasons.) The manuscript could have been intended for use purely to treat oneself.

2) Financial. This could be to sell either as an original document or as a hoax. There is no evidence as to whether the Voynich was successfully sold by the author(s) or not. Even if it was never sold by the author that doesn't mean that it wasn't the original intention.

3) Career. (I suppose this is linked to a financial motivation, but also status.) It is often suggested that the Voynich was written to impress someone and thereby obtain some advancement.

4) Personal interest. I think it has been suggested that medieval people were not motivated by such things, I am inclined to doubt that as I don't regard medieval people as quite so different from modern people. So this would mean that the writing of the Voynich was understaken as a project of 1 or a group of people for personal interest.

Of course it could be a mixture of some or all of these motivations.

I am sure that there are other possible motivations.

What do I think?

I think the motivation was most likely a combination of practical application and personal interest.

(01-04-2023, 05:34 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What are the most plausible theories that could explain the purpose of the Voynich manuscript, and what evidence supports each of them?

I like the second part of the question, and I am much more curious about that part.
I think that one would have to allow a wide scope of possible 'purposes', covering also: 'no useful purpose'.
(And of course 'useful' is subjective).

Encrypted (or otherwise obfuscated) meaningful information is just one general category.
Supporting evidence: not a lot. This is something that was done, but only very rarely on long texts.
Contradicting evidence:
1) we can't decipher it, and this should have been relatively straightforward for an encrypted text
2) the general appearance of the writing is not that of an encrypted text

The VMs never had a purpose in this sense of the word, it is a collection of notes bound together as we have loose leaf books. It is similar to a private copybook, comparable to the Kopialbücher of chanceries, hundreds of them are in European archives. It  is written in a medieval shorthand, that a non-medievaliist can't read it is not surprising, as a matter of fact I have reason to believe there are other examples, somehing I have to check and that makes it likely that someone like Kircher could read it.

(02-04-2023, 02:29 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Supporting evidence: not a lot.

That could almost be a general statement regarding the Voynich manuscript. And would apply to most if not all hypotheses.

(02-04-2023, 02:29 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.only very rarely

Again this would apply to most if not all hypotheses as, of course, the Voynich is a very rare object in and of itself.

(02-04-2023, 02:29 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.we can't decipher it, and this should have been relatively straightforward for an encrypted text

But of course if it were enciphered if we could decipher it then it would cease to be of interest to so many people and therefore this kind of conversation would be much less to occur. It is a very rare object and so it makes sense that if it were an enciphered manuscript then it would be a very rare enciphered manuscript.

(02-04-2023, 02:29 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.2) the general appearance of the writing is not that of an encrypted text

The general appearance could mean visual appearance e.g. style of script characters. I would argue here that there are plenty of the same or similar characters in cipher scripts of the time. On the question of whether the structure of the text is consistent with an encrypted text, I would certainly be happy to see a proof that it is not.

On the subject of the "Supporting evidence" and "Contradicting evidence" approach one could easily end up demonstrating that the Voynich manuscript could not exist. However we know that it does exist and has been dated. However for any hypothesis there is very limited supporting evidence and certainly evidence that might seem to count against that hypothesis.

(02-04-2023, 12:31 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.one could easily end up demonstrating that the Voynich manuscript could not exist.

In fact on the basis of all the evidence, we now have external to the Voynich manuscript from before the time of Emperor Rudolf et al, the Voynich manuscript should not exist. And yet it does exist.

In this respect it is like the Antikythera mechanism that should not exist on the basis of what we know from all other historical evidence.

This is a fact which makes so much reasoning about the Voynich difficult as we have no really good precedents for it as a whole. But it didn't emerge out of a void, it is a physical part of history and therefore must fit within history.

Of course, the Voynich is a very unusual document, so there could be a very unusual purpose behind it. Or it could serve a not unusual purpose, but merely have a very unusual means of realising that purpose. So the author may have had some very rare or very unusual knowledge which they made use of to achieve their goal.

When it comes to determining purpose I think we are way off that yet, but still it is interesting to speculate.

Motivation can only be deduced from the evidence. The VMs consists of words that cannot be read and images that disguise. It's interesting to speculate, but more useful to focus on those areas where interpretation is supported by historical investigation relevant to the VMS era.

Relevant historical information is the first difficulty, but the situation in the VMs is further complicated by the use of intentional trickery in the illustrations, as best shown in four examples. The trick is to combine two disparate and seemingly incongruous elements into the same image.

This occurs in the VMs cosmos, in the VMs zodiac (White Aries), in the VMs mermaid, and in the VMs critter. These hybrid representations are strong indicators of intentional trickery.

I thought I would make a further comment on inference from rarity:

The Voynich is a very rare and unique document. It is tempting to try to infer things from this. However I think here we often encounter problems.

For example:

If the Voynich is a hoax it is a very rare and unique hoax for the time. So on this basis can we conclude it is a hoax, I think not.

As another example:

If the Voynich is written in an unknown language or just an unknown script then it is a very rare and unique example of such. This is as we know of no other example of anything written in this language or script. So on this basis can we conclude it is written in an unknown language or script, I think not.

A further example:

If the Voynich is written in some kind of shorthand then it is a very rare and unique example of such. So on this basis can we conclude it is written in shorthand, I think not.

And this applies to all hypotheses. In short whatever it is, it is a very rare example of such, though it may be rarer in some cases than others.

So anyone using an argument of rarity against an explanation for the Voynich is not really producing a very strong argument. It is also very important that one of the reasons we are interested in the Voynich is its rarity and uniqueness, so it's rarity is an implicit assumption in our research. If it wasn't so rare and unique most of us wouldn't be studying it and therefore would not be seeking to explain its existence and therefore this argument would not arise.

Of course, one day we might discover a similar document and so then the Voynich will not be so rare.

Recognizing the VMs as unique is just stating the obvious. Uniqueness is of no benefit. It reveals nothing. It is only through comparison that connections can be made. The written text remains unreadable. And for any visual comparison of the illustrations, relevant historical information is needed. Considering the VMs C-14, Europe before 1450 seems most reasonable. The limitations of such investigations are imposed by the knowledge of the investigator. Over the last decade or so, various VMs researchers have made discoveries related to illustrations on particular VMs folios. The combined results of these investigations are best seen in four examples: cosmos, zodiac, mermaid, and critter. Each representation is an example of intentional trickery by the artist. Each is a puzzle solved by combined efforts to rediscover and make known the relevant details of historical information. If the reader does not know the historical references and see how they have been used by the VMs artist, then that reader has been played and deceived.

Uniqueness reveals nothing. Pairing in the VMs offers the possibility of intentional construction, especially when it is reflective of historical facts.