I think one key to moving the ball forward in Voynich research is to uncover more relevant documents from the archives. Only a limited number of documents are digitised and are online.
I wonder if there are specific documents whose existence is known that researchers think would be valuable to see.(Maybe they aren't able to visit the archive in question, but know of the document from an inventory.)
Of course I have heard tales of the Spanish Inquisition but I have never studied it. What do you think their reaction would have been to discovering a document like the Voynich Manuscript? Would they have burned it? What would they have done to the authors, scribes, and artists who created the work? What would they have done to the people who had a copy sitting on a shelf?
Although I think Mark is referring to documents not yet available online that would be directly related to the VM, whether research related or provenance, I think it will also be invaluable to have more medieval and other manuscripts available online for comparison to the VM. For example, so far I haven't run across any that have folios even remotely like the Rosettes but that doesn't mean such isn't out there to be found or found but not yet digitized. Time will tell.
(28-03-2024, 10:59 PM)merrimacga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although I think Mark is referring to documents not yet available online that would be directly related to the VM, whether research related or provenance, I think it will also be invaluable to have more medieval and other manuscripts available online for comparison to the VM. For example, so far I haven't run across any that have folios even remotely like the Rosettes but that doesn't mean such isn't out there to be found or found but not yet digitized. Time will tell.
That is precisely right.
(29-03-2024, 10:53 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (28-03-2024, 10:59 PM)merrimacga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although I think Mark is referring to documents not yet available online that would be directly related to the VM, whether research related or provenance, I think it will also be invaluable to have more medieval and other manuscripts available online for comparison to the VM. For example, so far I haven't run across any that have folios even remotely like the Rosettes but that doesn't mean such isn't out there to be found or found but not yet digitized. Time will tell.
That is precisely right.
I agree that finding such lost treasures would be wonderful but I think it is unlikely to happen. I can't imagine many people will bother to look unless you did something like The Vesuvius Challenge and it would take money to do that.
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(29-03-2024, 12:20 PM)pjburkshire Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (29-03-2024, 10:53 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (28-03-2024, 10:59 PM)merrimacga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although I think Mark is referring to documents not yet available online that would be directly related to the VM, whether research related or provenance, I think it will also be invaluable to have more medieval and other manuscripts available online for comparison to the VM. For example, so far I haven't run across any that have folios even remotely like the Rosettes but that doesn't mean such isn't out there to be found or found but not yet digitized. Time will tell.
That is precisely right.
I agree that finding such lost treasures would be wonderful but I think it is unlikely to happen. I can't imagine many people will bother to look unless you did something like The Vesuvius Challenge and it would take money to do that.
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Searching in archives is serious work, and
this is done all the time, by competent researchers. Voluntarily. Even eagerly.
One just does not hear about it a lot.
Don't ever expect to go to an archive and be the first to search any part of it. Or to be among the first 20.
From my limited personal experience, as a marginally competent novice, I can only advise that researching in an archive, even 'just' a library, in order to find a specific and desired item, is the wrong approach.
The first thing is that one should be prepared to spend a lot of time.
The second is that one should have a broad background knowledge of the materials.
This is because one has a good chance of finding interesting, yet 'unexpected' gems. These will not be recognised without this background knowledge.
Searching for a specific piece of evidence creates a bias that will hinder finding such gems.
(29-03-2024, 12:47 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (28-03-2024, 10:59 PM)merrimacga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although I think Mark is referring to documents not yet available online that would be directly related to the VM, whether research related or provenance, I think it will also be invaluable to have more medieval and other manuscripts available online for comparison to the VM. For example, so far I haven't run across any that have folios even remotely like the Rosettes but that doesn't mean such isn't out there to be found or found but not yet digitized. Time will tell.
I can only advise that researching in an archive, even 'just' a library, in order to find a specific and desired item, is the wrong approach.
Don't ever expect to go to an archive and be the first to search any part of it. Or to be among the first 20.
I can only disagree on the basis of my experience, particularly with respect to cipher research. If one finds a reference to a specific document in a text or online that has not been digitised then it makes sense to either contact the archive and request a photoreproduction or visit the archive oneself whichever is most convenient and cost effective. Yes, in an ideal world one would search all archives for anything, but this is not practical. Certainly it makes sense to search a specific archive for relevant documents when one has reason to believe it might have such documents.
I have collected all the specific ciphers from the late 14th and early 15th century whose precise location I know about, except for a 14th century accounting cipher that I have not bothered to track down. Now certainly more documents could be found by searching specific archives, my best guess is there might be cipher materials in the Vatican archives from this time that I am not currently aware of as the materials from there that I have seen are quite limited. In so far as my cipher collection is biased it is really biased towards those ciphers that have been referenced somewhere in books or online or I have heard about from someone else and I don't think that is a problematic bias, though certainly seeing more than those would be great. Searching all the archives in Italy is not practical, so one needs clues.
I note that Koen has listed on his website some manuscripts that have not been digitised that he would like to see with reference to his research into Diebold Lauber etc.; I am not sure if I think they are worth pursuing or not as I haven't yet studied his writing on that. However it makes sense to try to track down certain documents.
Certainly one is very unlikely to be the first to look at any archive; the archivists will have looked through the archive. However one may be the first to look for a specific kind of document. I know that archivists can't always recognise what a cipher, from the time that I am interested in, looks like.
(29-03-2024, 01:52 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I note that Koen has listed on his website some manuscripts that have not been digitised that he would like to see with reference to his research into Diebold Lauber etc.; I am not sure if I think they are worth pursuing or not as I haven't yet studied his writing on that. However it makes sense to try to track down certain documents.
One thing I can add here is that knowing which manuscript you would like to see requires digging deep into a particular subject. At the moment I don't even remember why I wanted to see those manuscripts, and it would take some mental effort to get back into the mindset where I actually wanted to see them. There is a subjective passion required to drive one to find undigitized documents. There needs to be a specific research question, a curiosity to have particular questions answered by these missing documents. This is why, when someone asks which documents I'd like to see digitized, I find this question hard to answer. This is often dependent on one's current research.
One of the problems I have noticed, and surely everyone else here has as well (it would be really difficult not to), with VM research is the tendency to go down the proverbial rabbit hole. It will certainly be an interesting journey but one can lose sight of their original purpose along the way as well as forget where they found items of specific and relevant interest to that purpose. Having and maintaining a strong focus is key to any line of research as is documenting everything well so you can easily and quickly reference back to any particular part of it as needed. And yet we are so easily distracted so much of the time. Such distractions are often worth us documenting separately in some way so we can come back to them later, so long as they don't derail us from our focus and purpose of the moment. With everything, there are pros and cons. Ultimately, the more manuscripts and other potentially relevant data to VM research that there is known, accessible and even digitized will benefit VM research but sifting through all of that with single-minded purpose will certainly be a challenge. Not to mention that all the breadcrumbs we leave for ourselves on our trail, both the one for our current purpose and the distractions worth coming back to later, we risk circling back on eventually again and again and again. This has happened so often on this site. It isn't just the danger of rehashing, which is not always a bad thing, whether it be our own efforts or those of others. It is also the risk and actuality of finding that gem of a needle in the proverbial haystack and then losing it and having to search for it again. We may find it again or it may be lost to us forever. Or our minds may play tricks on us and we may think we found that gem and lost it when we may never really have found it at all.
Regardless of how it turns out, it will still be an interesting trip down the rabbit hole. Anything and everything we learn from the effort will still have merit and enrich us, even if we don't achieve the original intended goal and no matter how often or how much we lose our way.
(29-03-2024, 02:47 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (29-03-2024, 01:52 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I note that Koen has listed on his website some manuscripts that have not been digitised that he would like to see with reference to his research into Diebold Lauber etc.; I am not sure if I think they are worth pursuing or not as I haven't yet studied his writing on that. However it makes sense to try to track down certain documents.
One thing I can add here is that knowing which manuscript you would like to see requires digging deep into a particular subject.
There is a subjective passion required to drive one to find undigitized documents.
There needs to be a specific research question, a curiosity to have particular questions answered by these missing documents. This is why, when someone asks which documents I'd like to see digitized, I find this question hard to answer. This is often dependent on one's current research.
A few years ago, I enquired if there were any undigitised documents in the Bodleian Library in Oxford that people would like to see, as I live in Oxford it is relatively easy for me to go there and take photographs. There is an undigitised herbal manuscript that was suggested to me and which I duly photographed and that I shared with Nick Pelling and other Voynich researchers on Ninja. This herbal manuscript is the kind of document that I am referring to. In fact I expect there must be other undigitised herbal manuscripts from the 14th and 15th century that would be worth seeing, though I don't know of them specifically as it is not a topic I have focused on.
Deeper digging into a particular subject is certainly something I support. I only tend to explore a subject connected to the Voynich deeply or not at all. I tend to choose a subject to focus on if I believe there is the possibility that by exploring it will bring one closer to a decipherment of the Voynich. I fundamentally think Nick Pelling's project of locating what he likes to call a "block paradigm" is a sound approach, though not necessarily an easy one.
For example, one might choose to locate all surviving works of Diebold Lauber that one can find references to.(There may be works of his that one doesn't locate as they are not referred to online or in books or known to other researchers.)