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| A and B plants |
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Posted by: Oocephalus - 27-01-2016, 04:06 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (13)
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It is well known that the Voynich herbal pages can be classified into two distinct groups based on the characteristics of the text, termed the Currier A and B languages. I know there is no sharp division but rather a continuum, but the herbal pages seem to group at both the two extremes of it rather than in the middle (see René Zandbergen's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on this). There also seems to be a correlation with the appearance of the handwriting.
However, I haven't found anyone mentioning consistent differences between the plant illustrations on A and B pages. So this is a paradox, where sections that appear to refer to the same subject have text with very different properties. The only explanation I've seen is that of Nick Pelling, who claims in his book that the B plants look much less naturalistic (which may be true, but is hard to quantify, and many A plants are not very naturalistic either), and suggests that they are actually hidden drawings of machines. However, this seems not very convincing, and I don't think it has been generally accepted.
I think I've found a feature that differs between A and B plants. Namely, in many plants, the stem is separated from the root by a horizontal line. This occurs in "grafted" plants, where the stem is placed on a much thicker root that appears to have been cut off (but not in all of them), but also in ones where the stem and the root have the same thickness. With one exception, this only appears in plants where the text is Currier A.
The following pages have "grafted" plants with such lines: f3v, f6r, f7r, f9r, f11r, f13r, f14r, f16r, f16v, f19v, f22v, f23r, f36r, f37v, f44v, f45r, f45v, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (?), f54v, f57r, f90r2, f93v. With the exception of f54v, these are all Currier A. Not that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is quite exceptional anyway, as it is on a bifolio (autocorrect thinks I mean "buffalo") that includes both herbal and text-only pages, which I think is unique.
In the following pages, the plant does not look grafted, but the line is there: f5r, f5v, f7v, f8v, f13v, f27r, f28r, f30v, f32v, f38r, f38v, f47r, f47v, f65v, f87r, f87v, f90v1, f90v2. These are all Currier A.
In the following pages, the plants are "grafted", but there is no line separating the stem(s) from the root: f26r, f39r, f39v, f48r, f55r, f65r, f95r1, f95r2, f95v1. These are all Currier B.
There are of course non-grafted plants without such a line, which occur in both A and B.
So this doesn't resolve the paradox, Herbal-A and B pages still both depict plants, but there seems to be at least a difference between them. Has anyone else noticed this, or other differences? If so, I would be interested to know.
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| Narration structure as the tiebreaker between cipher & (synthetic) language |
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Posted by: Anton - 26-01-2016, 12:21 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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If the text in the VMS is related to the pictures therein contained (which is not definite but quite reasonable), then it is reasonable to expect certain repetitive narration structure of the underlay message throughout the homogenous folios (such as plant folios).
In other words, when describing plants, the scribe would likely have followed more or less constant pattern, such as (just for example) "this plant is called
XXX, it is associated with such and such days, stones, stars, angels etc., it is useful in such & such cases, it is to be used in such & such form etc."
Provided that there is the narration structure, synthetic language will preserve it in its written form (natural language, obviously, will do that too, but I rule it out offhand for other reasons). On the other hand, cipher may preserve it, but not necessarily will. For example, a simple substitution cipher (which, btw, the VMS is definitely not) does only change individual letters through a pre-defined rule and does not change the order of words. Hence, the narration structure is preserved. A cipher involving interleaving of text blocks (words, lines etc.) will destroy the narration structure, and it becomes not traceable in the overlay.
So whether we observe or do not observe the narration structure in the overlay may serve as a (conditional) tiebreaker between cipher and synthetic language: namely, if the narration structure is not observed, then a cipher is most certainly in place.
The question is ready - what do we do to "observe" the narration structure? Actually that is the question that I was about to ask - does anyone know any computational methods of revealing narration patterns in unknown texts?
In my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I utilized most basic and rough approach - namely, I followed the location of occurrences of "Voynich stars" (f68r1 and f68r2) labels within botanical folios - whether their position in the folio exhibits any patterns or not. No definite evidence towards the narration structure was collected. The only positive result was that in multi-paragraph folios, the first star occurrence tends to be in earlier paragraphs while the subsequent star occurrences (if they do exist) tend to be in the last paragraph. However, folios with only one star occurrence do not support this picture - the star is very often mentioned in the last paragraph.
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| The 600 ducat question |
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Posted by: ReneZ - 25-01-2016, 05:27 PM - Forum: Provenance & history
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Did Rudolf II really buy the Voynich MS for 600 ducats? Would that not have been an unrealistic price?
We don't know the answer yet, but we can see some of his other acquisitions, showing that the price would not have been unrealistic, as has sometimes been suggested. (This only works for those who can read German).
Here, he pays 600 Taler to Jacopo Strada for some books:
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(Note that the silver Taler was worth a little more than a gold florin, and a little less than a gold ducat).
From other references, this seems to concern 6 printed books.
Here is a contract with Sambucus for 2500 ducats for a collection of Latin and Greek classics:
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This concerns 500 books. There was some haggling about the price: 5 or 6 ducats a piece. Not so funny: Sambucus died before being paid and his widow is asking for the money afterwards. A nice list of debts after Rudolf's death:
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But I digress.
Here some herbal books of Clusius. He is not sure what is their usefulness, but still pays 200 Taler.
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1350 Taler to the Dutch trader Emanuel Sweerts for flower bulbs (making up 700 Taler) and a book:
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There's a curious book (but only 150 florins):
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My favourite: 500 Taler to Carolus Widemann for books. These are almost certainly paracelsan and/or alchemical works. Several are still preserved in the Vossius collection in Leiden (NL):
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On a side note, here's a list of people receiving a monthly stipend of some 20 florins. Who can spot Jacobus de Tepenec?
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| Word Fitting |
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Posted by: Fachys - 25-01-2016, 09:56 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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At the bottom of folio f56r, there is a large space between "kchoar" and "sotodan".
In my interpretation, the spacing exists because "sotodan" would overlap with the illustration. Do you agree?
I mention this because the Voynich text itself could be meaningless gibberish - certainly the qok*dy chains in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. have low information content - in which case it's improbable that the author would not make good use of that space.
While there are other plausible explanations for that particular whitespace, in my opinion it suggests that:
- The author's intent was to write down "sotodan", and no shorter word would do.
- It was not desirable to split up the word in order to fill up the space.
- It was not acceptable to fill in the space with a random set of glyphs.
If true, these are three important points, and a sensible set of axioms for further analysis and interpretation of the text.
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| VMs Zodiac shows heraldry |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 24-01-2016, 09:15 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (10)
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Traditional heraldry uses a number of standard patterns that can be found in any reference. Among them are certain patterns of alternating stripes, known as the paly, bendy and barry, examples where the stripes are vertical, diagonal and horizontal respectively.
In the VMs Zodiac, on first page, which is Pisces, at the top of the outer ring, there are two figures, one apparently male and the other female, occupying separate tubs on which there are patterns of alternating, vertical stripes. And moving clockwise, other tub patterns can be seen with similar stripes oriented diagonally and horizontally. Then there is another pattern with alternating stripes that can be seen as strongly equivalent with the heraldic pattern of chevrons. In addition to these, the Pisces tub patterns have examples that are evocative of the heraldic designs known as a semy of roundels and a papelonny.
Six traditional heraldic patterns, well represented in VMs Pisces: three vertical, two horizontal and one each of the others. To me this is a sufficient display to indicate that something very strongly evocative of historical heraldry has been included in the Pisces illustration. And furthermore, it suggests to me that heraldry might well be a plausible basis for further investigation into these illustrations.
The heraldic patterns are continued on the second page of the VMs Zodiac, with repeated examples of the semy of roundels and the papelonny, etc. Heraldry clearly is a theme that is carried on in the Zodiac illustrations. For all of three pages!
Let's examine the four striped patterns more closely. One is missing. The diagonal pattern in Pisces is representative of the bendy sinister. (Sinister = from the left) The pattern that is missing is the opposite diagonal which is a bendy from the dexter or right-handed side.
An example of the standard bendy is on the second page of the VMs Zodiac, Dark Aries. Directionally, the pattern is oriented from the bearer's right hand. And as it is, in a sense, a bendy the right way, could it not have been selected by the author as an affirmation of positive direction? It is, in fact, a direct indicator of the fact that the things on which the investigation of heraldry depends are those which the VMs illustrations provide.
And this particular pattern, the standard bendy, becomes even more important as the investigation moves to the third page, White Aries. Here there is a paired representation and a disguised evocation of historical facts and events. Here there is also an opening to glimpse the author's intentions. They are drawn into the VMs illustrations through intentional positioning. There is a level of complexity and historical correspondence that completely eliminates any accidental possibility. Heraldry is a key to the author's intentional construction, and the trail of the author's intent is a key to the VMs.
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| Character entropy of Voynichese |
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Posted by: Anton - 23-01-2016, 02:08 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Comparatively low character entropy of Voynichese has traditionally been used as an argument against the natural language hypothesis. To make it clear, it is not the single argument against the natural language, but it seems to me that it is not the strongest one.
Why? Because I wonder how we can be sure of our calculation of Voynichese character entropy if we don't know the real Voynichese alphabet? We only work with transcriptions (such as EVA), which maybe (and I'm sure they are) not that adequate.
Take an English text and substitute all instances of "d" with "cl" (which visually is much the same, but not linguistically). In other words, exclude the letter "d" from the English alphabet and imagine that letters "c" and "l" now do all the work. I think that character entropy of English will then change (namely, decrease), will it not?
So if we decrease the level of decomposition in our transcriptions of Voynichese, entropy is likely to rise.
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| Quire 13 |
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Posted by: VViews - 22-01-2016, 06:51 PM - Forum: Imagery
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Hello everyone,
A few months ago I made a wordpress to share my views of Quire 13.
It's just one page, but here's a link in case anyone is interested:
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As I explain on that page, it may be that Glen Claston or Nick Pelling had come to some of the same conclusions before, but I never read any explanation of what their exact reordering was or the exact reasons they gave for it beyond the connected tubs on two of the folios.
I don't have the courage to trawl through old VMS list archives in search of their exchanges on the subject, if they're even on there. If someone has a link to them I'd love to read them.
If my observations have been made by others before, I'll be happy to edit and give credit as necessary, or even delete the whole thing if its entirely redundant.
I'm not really sure whether to post this here or in some other section. I put it here because my views are based on illustrations. Admins, feel free to move it, or tell me how to do it.
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