The Voynich Ninja

It seems like there hasn't been much going on in Voynich research in recent months.

It feels like Nick Pelling's interests have drifted away from the Voynich.

There don't seem to have been many "it is written in" **HISTORIC LANGUAGE** theories presented recently, which I am sure many would suggest is a good thing.

And there don't seem to have been any other discoveries recently.

I have my own research ideas and lines of enquiry; though unfortunately I have been busy with other things of late.

I wonder if there are other research ideas or plans afoot or that others are embarking on.

I think there is plenty of research out there that could be done, though I think that involves specialising on a specific area of Voynich research.

I'm just about to finish a new blog post (later today) comparing the script of the various marginalia.

Apart from that, I agree with the overall sentiment that there appears to be less research posted, at least volume-wise. There are some exceptions, like Rene's efforts to refine the acquisition timeline etc, but overall it feels like there is less going on.

I wonder if we have entered a new stage in the field, where publications will be focused around more serious events like the Malta conference. In that case, we will see longer intervals between publications, but the overall quality should go up.

Amazon is now listing meta-data for Voynich Reconsidered, to be published by Schiffer Books of Atglen, Pennsylvania. This is my second book in the series that I like to call "Great 20th Century Mysteries".

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We have scheduled the release for the spring of 2024.

(20-09-2023, 02:04 PM)dfs346 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is my second book in the series that I like to call "Great 20th Century Mysteries".

I am curious as to why you have chosen to classify the Voynich as a "20th Century Mystery". Wouldn't it make more sense to consider it a  "15th Century Mystery" or a "21st Century Mystery"? Or maybe "Medieval to Modern Mysteries"

I think some people may just be getting on quietly with research in the background.  Like you, I've been doing a lot of research but have found work this summer to be far busier than expected.  But I hope to share some thoughts soon.

(20-09-2023, 08:36 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am curious as to why you have chosen to classify the Voynich as a "20th Century Mystery". 

Many thanks for your message. My first book in this series was D. B. Cooper and Flight 305 (Schiffer, 2021), wherein the mystery dates from 1971, when a nondescript man hijacked an airliner and escaped by parachute, never to be identified. The third is Mallory, Irvine, Everest: The Last Step But One (Pen and Sword, 2024); here the mystery dates from 1924 when George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared on Mount Everest. 

In the case of the Voynich manuscript, it seems to me that the mystery dates either from 1912 (when, as per Voynich's narrative, he rediscovered the manuscript), or from 1921 when Voynich presented his narrative in Philadelphia.

(20-09-2023, 07:32 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wonder if we have entered a new stage in the field, where publications will be focused around more serious events like the Malta conference. In that case, we will see longer intervals between publications, but the overall quality should go up.

I hope you are right as the Malta conference was of excellent quality with new (at least for me) ideas. Possibly and hopefully some of those ideas have created new line of research that just takes time to complete.

In my opinion, and I am just a fellow traveller not a researcher so my opinion is just that, that the VMS research is in kind of standstill.

The statistical and computational techniques have brought us tons of results but much without conclusions, interpretations or explanations - what they really mean. More like mixed results, contradictions, uncertainity.
I see Julians heroic computational attacks and fight agains VMS, but VMS seems to be Julian's windmill - resilient and unwavering. Tons of results we cannot comprehend nor explain.
I see lot of others doing the same, entropies, fuzzy, ngrams, homophonic, edit distances, genetic algorithms, great visualizations of different properties of vords/glyphs and their positions, conjectures; LAAFU, CoreCrustMantle, wheels, autocopy.
We will see "AI's" take on VMS soon, I believe. I read Emma's fight with grammar and text analysis, I get the grove words and the rest. I respect all you of what you have done and are doing and in no way am I trying to deprecate your work. No. I praise it.
Not to mention the glyphs and the graphics. That is still another story where this time botanists face their windmills.

But in my mind, after all read and sometimes even understand, there is this question: Why doesn't all this tons of trying, dissecting, calculating, analysing, visualizing - lead to somewhere?
Is there something wrong in the approach or why all this information and understanding produced doesn't seem to lead anywhere. In 40 years we have little on anything that look like facts, invariants and rules (BNF of VMS would be nice) but are based on great assumptions. What is it in VMS that defies statistical and computational analysis so badly, among other things. It is a samall sized binded collection of parchment folios that commonly is called a book and commonly in a book you will find writing, information. Still that little device called book defies everything.  

I have no idea what another approach or novel way to look into the VMS would be or look like, and possibly I am wrong with this. I have my idea of what VMS is and how it is written, as most everyone, and I am as much lost as any other enthusiast.

I hesitated to add to this discussion. Is it possible that part of the reason we're not seeing more research and more discoveries on the VM is that the research is being done deliberately away from the public forums?

As Scarecrow said, everyone has their VM windmills they're chasing. A better analogy may be to call this our white whale, our Moby Dick. It is difficult enough for us to continue our VM research, amateur or professional, today when we know great researchers have already tried and failed to solve this mystery over the past 100+ years since Voynich and even longer when considering the efforts of Baresch and Kircher and who knows how many others in the ownership timeline that we also haven't solved.

Now add to that how everyone has their own theory and when others present a different one, we tear it apart.

Don't get me wrong. This is what should happen: soliciting opinion from other researchers so we can find the flaws in our work so we move it along in the best direction in the hopes of finding truth and a resolution.

But it can be discouraging and the process itself, given the lack of progress over the years, may be causing some researchers to go underground, as it were, or simply give up. It's bad enough that we work hard at paying jobs all our adult lives that have us longing for retirement and umbrella drinks on a warm beach somewhere in the tropics. But VM research is a choice and it's all volunteer work. Nobody will earn that equally elusive retirement as a result of the work they do trying to solve even a part of the VM.

It's not all doom and gloom though. Published research may be slow right now but interest is not. Humans love a good mystery and the press and social media, not to mention the discussion boards, keep the VM in the public eye more than enough to keep churning interest and curiosity so new VM researchers are being added all the time.

And we should all regard the journey as its own reward. I think we're fooling ourselves if we think anyone is going to solve the VM anytime soon, let us alone that it be one of us. But we shouldn't give up because, regardless of success or failure, what we learn in the process - about science, about history, about humanity, about ourselves - is worth more than actually solving the VM.

For myself, and I am only an amateur researcher and a VM newbie at that, this is what keeps me going. I never expect to be more than a participant in the process. I fully expect to have many theories of my own and to have most, if not all, of them proven wrong. That has already happened. But even in the short time I've been researching the VM, I have learned so many fascinating things, my knowledge expanded. And for me that is more than enough justification and reward. I hope it is for everyone else involved as well.

New discoveries and more published research will happen as we gain access to improved tools and processes and digitized reference materials. We just need to be patient and give it the time it needs to happen. And keep researching while we wait. Some things will always remain a mystery but I truly believe the VM will be solved...eventually.

I feel similarly about these things. A lot of good work is being done and new insights are gained, but these all feel like we are just scratching a bit at its armor. Like digging a hole in the ground which is tiny in comparison to the mantle of the earth, and does not even get close to its core. I know that the efforts of many people in many different areas have been tremendous, and countless hours of work have produced actual results. But still it feels like we are working in the margin. The largest gains are made in areas that are adjacent to the core mystery.

I used to think (many years ago) that not as much progress was being made because researchers didn't cooperate enough and potential solutions were not being investigated enough. But the reality is that every theory that ventures into "solution" territory is simply wrong.

Maybe this simile describes the best how I feel about the state of the research: we are erecting lots of scaffolding, but don't quite manage to get any of the actual building done.

This doesn't necessarily mean that we are approaching it the wrong way - it just means that the mystery remains unsolved for now.

As for AI, I don't think the current generation or its evolutions will help us. What we have now is a huge database that manages to sound like a person, but thinks like a computer. We will need to move closer to "real" AI first.

(21-09-2023, 05:52 PM)merrimacga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Now add to that how everyone has their own theory and when others present a different one, we tear it apart.

I hope that we will continue to be open to new theories. There should be no development that is basically against new theories (according to the motto: Everything seen before, always the same mistakes). Even obviously inadequate theories can always provide an unexpected thought-provoking impulse. Criticism, especially of the theories of new forum members, should be formulated as sympathetically as possible. This gives them the opportunity to develop and prevents one from becoming a "closed society" in the long run. That would certainly be detrimental to Voynich research.