The Voynich Ninja

(06-04-2024, 12:53 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.These three later datings are quite independent and so it is coincidental that they happen to be later.

Yeah, that might certainly be the case. It just struck me that I couldn't think of anyone who needed it to be, say, 1402, but several who would prefer a date in the 1440's. As you say, people's reasons for wanting a relatively late date are varied, so there is probably nothing intrinsic about the MS that prompts this. If anything, it may have to do with the changing times, perhaps more interesting figures becoming known by name, alchemy further developing etc.

@Mark
Why the Council of Basel and not the Council of Constance?
The years are close together. There must be a reason.


@Koen
Apart from that, I see the training university rather before 1400, at least one of the scribes.
But why 1412 in particular? I don't see any difference between 1380 and 1450 in the drawings.

(06-04-2024, 06:04 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.@Mark
Why the Council of Basel and not the Council of Constance?
The years are close together. There must be a reason.

Because the Council of Constance was in Konstanz and the Council of Basel was in Basel. Basel fits neatly as the final destination in my map analysis, but Konstanz does not. Konstanz is actually marked on my map, but not as the final destination. Also the Council of Constance was from 1414 to 1418 and Abbot Antonio Barbavara was not at the Abbey of Saints Nazzaro and Celso then and too young to have been involved in the writing of the Voynich. Basically the Council of Basel fits neatly with my analysis, but the Council of Constance does not.

There is evidence suggesting it was written over a period of time, perhaps even decades. If the author is not a wealthy man, and it is a private project, it may have been compiled as finance permitted. Different scribes were employed at different times for different sections, and importantly, the text system seems to change ('evolve") which suggests refinements made over time. The binding came later. 

How uniform is the vellum? I don't know. All the same source and same age? How old was it when the ink was applied? (Probably not too old.)

I'm inclined, anyway, to a later beginning within the window, largely because I think the work reflects East/West encounters and probably depends upon the Neoplatonism of Plethon and becomes more likely as efforts to reconcile the Greek and Latin worlds increase in the decades leading up to the Fall of Byzantium. The historical and intellectual milieu of the later 1420s and 1430s seems more likely to me. After the first seige of Constantinople in the 1420s.

(05-04-2024, 07:25 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I made this poll because I had a feeling that among people who are set on a certain date, most of those seem to "require" a later date. But as far as I know, nobody requires an earlier date. 

[...]

The only reason for people to vote outside of the broad range instead of inside of the narrow range is if they have something like a theory about authorship - which is fine. But it is remarkable that these tend to need later dates rather than earlier.

Putting a date on the creation of the Voynich MS based on an authorship hypothesis is not really a valid process,
and it is clear that Koen is fully aware of this.
Of course, if we knew the author, as is sometimes the case in readable manuscripts, then that is a completely different story.

What's more, this also explains why so many 'experts' got the date of the MS wrong, as exposed in Rich's recent blog post and related thread here. 
Dates based on some unproven hypothesis can simply be discarded, whether they be about the author (R.Bacon) or a tentative plant identification (sunflower).

That does not answer the question behind Koen's poll.
Why do people tend to favour later dates?
I can only guess that, due to the Renaissance, humanism, and some form of enlightenment in the 15th century, popular knowledge of that period of time increases sharply throughout the first half of the 15th century.

There are many variables related to the creation of the MS.

How long did the entire process (from conception, invention of the writing system, to writing the last word on the book that we now have) last?
If it was just a copy job, this could be done in a few weeks. Obviously, we are not talking about a copy job.

Was the parchment acquired at the start, at the end of creating a draft and doing the copying of the draft, or bit by bit during the entire process?
Given that the uncertainty of the date of the parchment is 30+ years, that does not seem to matter much, and the carbon dating also says nothing about this.

The following is important.
Dates after 1438 represent 2.5% of the probability, and so do dates before 1404. However, the range of dates after 1438 is strongly constrained by the C-14 calibration curve, meaning that dates after 1450 can be excluded.
This is not so before 1405, and the range there is about 100 years. At 2.5% probabillity of course.

My preference is 1420-1430 for other reasons.

(07-04-2024, 06:17 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Dates based on some unproven hypothesis can simply be discarded,

My preference is 1420-1430 for other reasons.

Why can't your preference simply be discarded?

I'm actually surprised that the poll currently stands at 8-3. I felt like a higher percentage of people had a preference for a later date.

I'm happy to have my preference determined by the narrower date range of the 1410's and 1420's. I see nothing in the manuscript that absolutely requires a later date. Nor an earlier one, for that matter.

Garments and fashions in the ms. suggest earlier rather than later I think, but then a later illustrator may have been following existing illustrations (poorly) rather than drawing from life.

It is notable that a whole range of proposals and enticing lines of study converge mid-century or a bit later, just beyond the Voynich window. Cryptographic scenarios are much richer from the 1460s onwards, for instance. There are things that look promising, but they are all a bit late. 

On the other hand, from the outset I've thought the map is earlier and separate and was possibly the place where the project began. (I originally thought the map was mid to late 1300s.)

As an aside to the question, When did the writing begin? is the question, Where in the manuscript did the work begin? With the 'Red Weirdos' on page one? Or written in sections and assembled later? I suspect the map might have been made first and the rest of the work has been assembled around it, and the map rests on prototypes from the 1300s.

(07-04-2024, 09:29 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-04-2024, 06:17 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Dates based on some unproven hypothesis can simply be discarded,

My preference is 1420-1430 for other reasons.

Why can't your preference simply be discarded?

Because the other reasons are not unproven hypotheses.
Of course, it can still be wrong.

(07-04-2024, 11:01 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-04-2024, 09:29 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-04-2024, 06:17 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Dates based on some unproven hypothesis can simply be discarded,

My preference is 1420-1430 for other reasons.

Why can't your preference simply be discarded?

Because the other reasons are not unproven hypotheses.
Of course, it can still be wrong.

What are the other reasons?