(11-11-2025, 10:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Rich, I don't think that Voynich's political/revolutionary activities can tell us whether he would dare to commit serious fraud in his business as antiquarian. But on the other hand, what I have read about his deals in that job shows that he was quite capable of that. He clearly had not a bit of scruples about tricking people into selling very valuable books for a pittance. On the contrary, it seems that he was proud of such exploits. I don't see much distance between that and forging provenance or even antiques.
And, as I said before, dishonesty seems to be an almost necessary personality trait for antiquities dealers.
On the third hand, I give practically zero probability to the Modern Forgery Hypothesis.
Not because Voynich would not be capable (morally and technically) of forging and selling an old book: I believe he would.
Not because the external paper trail (catalogs, papers in boxes, letters) excludes that possibility: I believe it does not.
I agree that none of the "paper trail" excludes forgery. It has been an uphill battle to explain this to people, because the popular belief is that, for instance, there IS a "paper trail" clearly showing the Voynich existed in the 15th century. It is not true. Any of the available records are at best very thin, and at worst work against the Voynich existing in the past, at all.
Yet it is often related that we "know" the Voynich is genuine, and old, based on "the evidence". In fact I have been rejected by Histocrypt twice on the basis that there is "overwhelming provenance from the 15th century", when everyone here... whatever their belief about the Voynich, and whatever they think of the Carteggio mentions as evidence or not... knows full well there is actually zero "15th century provenance". Maybe that screener was making a simple mistake in definition, and had confused the C14 test results with provenance (of course they are entirely different), but I think it was worse than that: They just don't know. They hear and read the unfounded claim that we "know" the Voynich is from that era, and so, mistakenly believe that provenance must exist from then. Ironically this caused, in my case, and probably others, to stop my ability to speak about the real situation, what we really do know, and what we don't know.
It is a vicious cycle: Opinions stating 1420 and genuine are given as facts; others repeat and believe they are facts, and not just opinions; then any information, opinions or facts to the contrary will not be heard; and the next group of people only hear and then believe "Opinions stating 1420 and genuine" are facts. Round and around it goes.
Quote:But because of internal evidence.
Well we will disagree here, and do, because I feel the opposite: That the internal evidence overwhelmingly points to modern, or forgery, or both. Here's the thing: All of the dismissals of the many anachronisms and anomalies are rejected, primarily on the basis (paraphrasing), that, "We know the Voynich must be 1420 and genuine, so this problem and that problem are added later, or not what people think they are".
To counter that, I argue each of the many cases... or, when I argue several, the response it to cherry pick one of them, and try to rebut that. But the thing is, for old and genuine to be correct,
each and every one of them must be incorrect. So I intend on creating a master list of these issues (I'll post it here when I finish it), and making that point. One cannot respond to such a list and say, for instance, "Well the armadillo is a pangolin", while ignoring two dozen, or more, other plants, animals, styles, characters, techniques, construction methods, materials, elements and compounds, and on and on.
Each and every one of these serious problems must have a rational and satisfactory answer, because if even one of them is not explained away, then the Voynich is either post-Columbian, or more modern, and probably fake. That is, my theory is not based on every point of evidence I use being correct, and does not need to be, logically, to be correct. It is, instead, and overwhelming circumstantial case, which, at the same time, only really needs one or a few elements of it to be correct, for it to be 100% correct.
Quote:I can't imagine that Voynich, once he decided to forge a "Bacon Lost Book", or even just any valuable manuscript, would end up creating something like the VMS. Something that has many obscure properties of natural languages, but in other ways it is so unlike any known language. Which has hundreds of illustrations, but not one that would entice a buyer to write a million dollar check.
It would be like the forger of the Vinland map, instead of forging a pre-Columbian map of the Americas, had forged a 13th century floor plan of a house with 217 bathrooms and no kitchen, with a windmill in the cellar and a moat with portcullis around the pangolins's cage in the second floor...
But think of what you wrote in this context: As an explanation as to why nobody bought it. I think you are correct, and whatever Wilfrid hoped for the book... how he may have wanted it to be perceived, what he hoped to sell it for, and so on... he failed miserably.
Put another way, I often hear is said what an amazing creation the Voynich is, and that therefore no one would have made a forgery like this, putting all that time and effort and skill and money into making it; but then, on the other hand, it is so poor that he would have done a better job, if a forgery, after putting all that time and money and so on, into it...
The two may actually be true to some extent... he could have done a better job, and a worse job in some ways... but none of that matters now. The Voynich is stuck in a strange limbo... not good enough to be known to be real, not bad enough to have definitive clues to give it away as an obvious forgery. So I actually think it very similar, in concept and execution, to your parody alternative, "... forged a 13th century floor plan of a house with 217 bathrooms and no kitchen, with a windmill in the cellar and a moat with portcullis around the pangolins's cage in the second floor...".
I mean, I see it that way, as a mess. A jumble of styles from several centuries, made with the wrong materials, from the wrong eras, that is only accepted as old or genuine on the basis that people want it to be old and genuine, and who then incorrectly state "we know" it is old and genuine.
Rich
I can actually see Wilfrid Voynich being very similar to the fictional Corso.