(20-04-2025, 10:45 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There's also a system to the parts that aren't strokes though. And even without that (pace Timm et al), this whole thing is much too structured to call it meaningless. Are Roman numerals meaningless because they repeat strokes?
I would argue that a text can be too structured to be meaningful.
Structure is necessary but not sufficient to determine meaning. For example, an empty table in a document is clearly structured — it has rows and columns, perhaps even labeled headers — but without any content, it conveys no meaningful information. With other words, structure refers to how elements are organized or arranged, whereas meaning refers to the significance, interpretation, or purpose conveyed.
Yet, even a grammatically correct sentence can be semantically nonsensical. A well-known example to illustrate this fact is Noam Chomsky’s "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." (see You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view.) Although the syntax follows the rules of English grammar, the combination of words creates a statement that defies logical interpretation, highlighting how grammatical structure alone does not guarantee meaning.
Gibberish doesn’t have to be random — and often, it isn’t. One of the most famous uses of structured gibberish is Lewis Carroll "Jabberwocky":
Quote:Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe
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Now, turning to the Voynich text: it clearly does not behave like natural language. Notably, it lacks recognizable word order, and familiar repeated phrases are absent. Yet paradoxically, the text is highly repetitive in other ways — particularly in its word forms and character as well as line patterns.
In meaningful human language, we typically observe a balance of predictability and variation — what information theory describes as
moderate entropy. Natural texts are neither too repetitive nor too chaotic; this balance allows for both
novelty, which carries new information, and
structure, which makes that information comprehensible.
Consider the extremes:
- Too repetitive (low entropy): "blah blah blah blah blah" — no new info.
- Too random (high entropy): "xq7z mL#@d vf%pq!" — structureless, hard to decode.
The argument for gibberish is basically that the repetitive voynich text lies closer to the low-entropy end. With other words, the low entropy of the text reflects low informational value — additional sections of the text provide little to no new information, suggesting limited semantic content.
Also the fact that Roman numerals use repetition within a formal, interpreted system doesn't mean that all repetition is meaningful. Repetition must be coupled with shared rules or context to convey meaning. Otherwise, it’s just structure without semantics — gibberish with a rhythm.
However, structure is a key indicator that a text is organized according to underlying rules or patterns that suggest intentional design. The more structured and repetitive a text is, the easier it becomes to identify and formalize those patterns. This is why we are often able to recognize and interpret number systems within texts written in otherwise unreadable languages. Similarly, because the Voynich text exhibits a high degree of internal structure, it is possible to systematically describe its patterns—even if their meaning remains elusive.
