The Voynich Ninja

(09-12-2025, 01:10 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is no good evidence that there is a language, as far as I know.

Not categorical evidence, which will probably only come with a full and coherent decipherment.  But all the uncountable statistical and structural tests applied to Voynichese have been consistent with that theory.

Quote:As for the ink there is fairly good evidence that it's original in that in the text there are very few places in the manuscript where different strokes are overwritten on one another.

Not "few", but hundreds.  Name any page.

Quote:I'm not sure what's so exceptional here. New alphabet? An encryption scheme? Anticlerical doctors?

Well, name an example of such a community that actually existed and actually created something like Voynichese and the VMS.

On the other hand, there are dozens of known cases of European travelers to "Chinese"-speaking lands who could have been the Author according to the Chinese Theory.  And probably thousands like them who just did not leave a historical record.

Quote:As for the ink density variation, there have been other examples of medieval manuscripts posted here that show a lot of variation in ink density. Even if not at the scale of the Voynich MS, this was certainly something that did happen.

There are definitely many cases of ink and trace weight variation due to re-inking or re-sharpening of the quill, variations of had pressure, vellum finish etc.  There are also cases where the Scribe himself probably went back and retraced some glyphs or strokes that he had just written.

But there are many cases where these explanations don't work.  Like when the retraced glyph is clearly a misreading of the original. 

Quote:my interpretation is that the scribe chose or had to write/draw the symbols and images the way they turned out for reasons that we don't know, because we have no idea what these images should have depicted and how this text should be read.

But anything that is puzzing in the VMS can then be explained by "reasons unknown" -- and then there is nothing more to investigate, is there?

Retracing can be invoked as an explanation only under very limiting constraints.  The addition of spurious details was only a thing of the Boobs Retracer, who used a very dark ink and had rather narrow and stereotyped "artistic" goals.  Otherwise, something having been wrongly retraced is plausible only if there could plausibly have been a faded original that could be misread that way.

Quote:[The MRT and COT] don't have good easily testable predictions. One condition under which I can accept a doubtful theory as some kind of a working hypothesis, is if it offers a way to quickly and definitely settle it by following it through and checking the result.

Could you please name one testable prediction of the "All Ink Is Original" theory?  Or "The Language is Not Chinese" theory?  Or "The Contents is Random Gibberish" theory?

One testable prediction of the MRT is that the artifacts that would be created by retracing (extremely faded traces, faint mousetail tails emerging from under thicker strokes, plumes traced with thick strokes in the wrong direction, "wrong" glyphs and figure details, etc.) ,  can be found on every page of the VMS.   So far I have looked for those signs in only a fraction of the pages, and aways find them.

One testable prediction of the COT is that the words will have limited length and a fairly rigid structure with at most half a dozen slots, each of which can be filled with a specific set of alternatives.  A consequence of that prediction is that Sukhotin's algorithm would fail.  The COT also predicts that there are no words in Voynichese that seem to work like articles or prepositions. It also predicts the rough size of the Voynichese lexicon, and that Voynichese will obey Zipf's law; and therefore it predicts the entropy per word.

All these predictions were tested 25 years ago, and the COT passed.

Quote:I don't think MRT or the Chinese theory make any predictions that could be tested in reasonable time (say, a week or two) to get a definite yes or no answer.

That is much more than what the Scientific Method asks for.  To be "scientific" a theory need only make some predictions that could be tested and found to be false.  The theory need not make a prediction that would prove it is true, because in general there is no such thing.  And the test may require a lot of work and many decades.

All the best, --stolfi

Back to the topic of this thread, the "Paint Is Original" theory made one testable prediction: that the folio number on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. would be on top of the green paint.   That prediction was finally tested at the Folgers workshop, and found to be false.  Supporters of that theory now have to argue that the test did not quite show what it is said to show...

Back away from the topic, another prediction of the MRT is that very high resolution images (3000 dots per inch or more) will clearly show original ink peeking out from under the Rt1 ink, like (A1,A2,A3) in this McCrone image:

[attachment=12869]

All the best, --stolfi

(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:As for the ink there is fairly good evidence that it's original in that in the text there are very few places in the manuscript where different strokes are overwritten on one another.

Not "few", but hundreds.  Name any page.

I'm only aware of two occasions at the beginning of a line, both consistent with the scribe starting a line low on ink, and fixing immediately thereafter. Both brought up by Bluetoes101, if I'm not mistaken. When some real retouching happens, it's quite obvious at the magnification provided by the scans.

(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:I'm not sure what's so exceptional here. New alphabet? An encryption scheme? Anticlerical doctors?

Well, name an example of such a community that actually existed and actually created something like Voynichese and the VMS.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Could you name one manuscript written in a made up alphabet to represent the sounds of a foreign language? +100 points if this manuscript wouldn't contain any notes in the original language of the author.

(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But there are many cases where these explanations don't work.  Like when the retraced glyph is clearly a misreading of the original.

This argument would totally work if you somehow produced the original of the Voynich Manuscript, in its unretraced glory, to compare to. Up until then it's just an interpretation of which glyphs are "good" and which ones are "bad", and our interpretations of this clearly differ.

(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But anything that is puzzing in the VMS can then be explained by "reasons unknown" -- and then there is nothing more to investigate, is there?

But I have no intention of "explaining" it. Either there is some verifiable way to uncover the meaning from the manuscript, if it is there at all, or not. The "explanations" for me are only as good as they are able to advance us on our way of achieving this. The explanation that maybe a considerable portion of the manuscript are some doodles and scribbles unrelated to the original text is not helping here, unless it bears some strong evidence. Which for me is not there. At least not yet.

(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Could you please name one testable prediction of the "All Ink Is Original" theory?  Or "The Language is Not Chinese" theory?  Or "The Contents is Random Gibberish" theory?

No, but for the first two there is some good evidence: visible total lack of retracing in the text and clearly European background of the manuscripts, both images and provenance.

As I said before, a theory to be useful to me should either have some specific evidence or make some easy to test predictions.

(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One testable prediction of the MRT is that the artifacts that would be created by retracing (extremely faded traces, faint mousetail tails emerging from under thicker strokes, plumes traced with thick strokes in the wrong direction, "wrong" glyphs and figure details, etc.) ,  can be found on every page of the VMS.   So far I have looked for those signs in only a fraction of the pages, and aways find them.

Has this been independently confirmed/verified?

(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One testable prediction of the COT is that the words will have limited length and a fairly rigid structure with at most half a dozen slots, each of which can be filled with a specific set of alternatives.  A consequence of that prediction is that Sukhotin's algorithm would fail.  The COT also predicts that there are no words in Voynichese that seem to work like articles or prepositions. It also predicts the rough size of the Voynichese lexicon, and that Voynichese will obey Zipf's law; and therefore it predicts the entropy per word.

I'm not sure these are specific enough. Certainly not in a way to unequivocally confirm the Chinese origin of the text. I was talking about predictions that can reasonably quickly let us identify if a theory is correct or definitely not.

(07-12-2025, 09:28 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-12-2025, 06:49 PM)davidma Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I find it interesting that on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there is a massive painting instruction that was obviously ignored. The most likely explanation to me seems that the painter simply forgot to paint it.

Another simple explanation is it's no painting instruction at all. 

Isn't an explanation something that tentatively explains what the characters are and their function? Sure, giving up on finding an explanation is "simpler" than any possible explanation itself, but it’s not very enlightening in my opinion.

Alain Touwaide and Rene Zandbergen may be wrong about the color annotations, but it's a clear, well documented hypothesis, with excellent late-medieval parallels and supported by two very knowledgeable researchers.

(26-12-2025, 08:02 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(26-12-2025, 07:20 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.We don't know that™

We don't know anything.  

But in this case we have one bit of direct evidence (the paint over folio number on f42r) and lots of indirect evidence. Such as the fact that may plants had their leaves painted in alternating colors, in a non-naturalistic way. Or the brilliant red leaves of f16v. Or paint obscuring details that the Author should have cared about, like the leaf outlines of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (making each 5-leaf bundle look like a single leaf with 5 points), the tail and two legs of the "otter" on f79v, the label on the jar of f102v1...

Whereas the opposite theory -- that the painting follows the Author's intent -- does not have any supporting evidence. Has it?

All the best, --stolfi

I still think a phrasing like "(some of) the colors may not be original" better describes our current state of knowledge. 

Also, I wonder how one could prove that all or some colors are original. We can all agree that the colors were added after the drawings were made. That's usually how artwork is done. But how could one prove that x or y color was applied by one of the original makers?

As said before, the apparent mixing of ink and colorants in one water damaged spot is not evidence, it's an observation that elements of the paints can be seen on the surface where the number was written. This can be because the paint was later there, but also because of the mechanical movement of the pen, the properties of the writing ink, or even the water spill that took place there.

I don't know if it was discussed before.

It is often said on this website that the painter had no clue what he was doing and was using totally random colors.

But for me the case of Gemini shows that sometimes he knew what he was doing:







There is apparently some line of tradition that in Gemini man is green and woman is blue and he follows this tradition.

So either he knew it or he was looking at the original inspiration just like the man who drawn the lines. Or he was the same man.

Koen Wrote:What's the evidence that the colors were added later?

I find it hard to imagine that certain illustrations should have looked like this:


[attachment=13180]

Quote:I find it hard to imagine that certain illustrations should have looked like this:

This looks unfinished.

And again don't know if it was discussed but here and for example You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there are some parallel "stripes"



They are only partly coloured and look like unfinished rainbows to me:


I am not sure if the artist:
- didn't know it is a rainbow
- didn't care to colour it properly
- lacked paint or time
- other

But what did seems consistent for me with other referrences

(26-12-2025, 11:10 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not sure if the artist:
- didn't know it is a rainbow
- didn't care to colour it properly
- lacked paint or time
- other

Medieval rainbows are weird. It's normal.

Red between green and blue is correct according to Roger Bacon's Opus Majus:

Quote:There are five principal colors, namely, white, blue, red, green, black.

(26-12-2025, 11:47 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(26-12-2025, 11:10 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not sure if the artist:
- didn't know it is a rainbow
- didn't care to colour it properly
- lacked paint or time
- other

Medieval rainbows are weird. It's normal.

Red between green and blue is correct according to Roger Bacon's Opus Majus:

Quote:There are five principal colors, namely, white, blue, red, green, black.

Since the top rainbow on the page is red and yellow, and the bottom one green and blue,
They do follow the correct order from top to bottom lacking the orange, indigo and violet.
I guess it sort of suggests the colour was applied with some reasoning some of the time.