+- The Voynich Ninja (https://www.voynich.ninja)
+-- Forum: Voynich Research (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-27.html)
+--- Forum: Analysis of the text (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-41.html)
+--- Thread: Bifolio as a functional unit? (/thread-5131.html)
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - anejati - 29-12-2025
(15-12-2025, 08:29 AM)kckluge Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(13-12-2025, 02:22 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That's exactly what Colin and I have done with Latent Semantic Analysis. More here, and article coming soon:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The evidence from Colin's analytics shows exactly what you're asking - a very strong textual correlation across conjoint bifolia in both the balneology and stars sections. We did NOT find that correlation across conjoint bifolia in the herbal section, which suggests that, as long suspected, each herbal page is it's own semantic unit.
In other words, 104v and 115r (conjoint) are more closely related than, say, 104v and 105r (consecutive).
It seems to me that this (the difference in LSA behavior between the balneology & stars section bifolia on the one hand and the herbal bifolia on the other) speaks strongly against theories involving glossolalia/automatic writing, Ruggian grids, self-citation methods, etc. because there is no obvious reason for such text generation mechanisms to produce bifolia with different LSA behavior in different (types of) sections. Or am I misunderstanding what the LSA analysis is saying about the herbal bifolia vs the balneology & stars bifolia?
Based on what I'm reading here, self-citation can, in theory, explain the LSA behavior, but you have to add an extra assumption: That self-citation in non-herbal sections was done
at the bifolium level, but in the herbal section it was done on the page level. I would argue that indeed this extra assumption does work against the self-citation theory.
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - Jorge_Stolfi - 31-01-2026
It occurred to me that the Author may actually have intended to make a bound book, but did not realize that, for that purpose, the pages had to be written on the bifolios in a complicated order, because the bifolios would have to be gathered and nested into quires.
That mistake may seem too stupid once one thinks about it, but it is the kind of thing that could be overlooked by someone who had no previous experience in creating a book. And that seems likely to be the the case for both the VMS Author and his Scribe.
(I seem to recall making that mistake myself when trying to laser-print on A4 paper, two-sided, what was meant to be a booklet in A5 size. And I seem to recall that some word processor or PDF viewer had an option to do the necessary shuffling of the pages.)
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - Rafal - 31-01-2026
There were other options apart from the book.
Personally I consider the option that Voynich Manuscript could be originally a folded almanac.
In such case it would be a collection of loose folios carried in some box.
The hint is the presence of numerous foldouts in VM which are generally rare in manuscripts.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
![[Image: 330px-Folding_Almanac_Wellcome_L0047648.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Folding_Almanac_Wellcome_L0047648.jpg/330px-Folding_Almanac_Wellcome_L0047648.jpg)
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - DG97EEB - 01-02-2026
(31-01-2026, 02:45 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There were other options apart from the book.
Personally I consider the option that Voynich Manuscript could be originally a folded almanac.
In such case it would be a collection of loose folios carried in some box.
The hint is the presence of numerous foldouts in VM which are generally rare in manuscripts.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Here's a lovely example from the Wellcome Collection You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Interestingly it's dated to around 1490, but there's a note which reads "Notes
Mention of Pope Innocent VIII, who was pope between 1484 and 1492, gives an approximate dating for the manuscript as c. 1490. The vellum end-papers at each end are from fragments of an early 14th century Commentary on the Code of Justinian." Which suggests that vellum was being re-used
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - ReneZ - 01-02-2026
(01-02-2026, 11:42 AM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here's a lovely example from the Wellcome Collection You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Shelf mark: Wellcome MS 335. It's a collection of items, but the main part is described as a herbal:
Quote:8. pp. 75-372 Herbal in Latin
p. 75 Absinthium est calidum in primo et siccum in 2o ... p. 372 ... et confert ulceri matricis per prouocationem menstruorum. Pandecta. Auicenna. Serapio. Explicit herbarius.
I could not find out from the description if the MS itself has been written on paper or parchment.
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - DG97EEB - 02-02-2026
(01-02-2026, 11:39 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(01-02-2026, 11:42 AM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here's a lovely example from the Wellcome Collection You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Shelf mark: Wellcome MS 335. It's a collection of items, but the main part is described as a herbal:
Quote:8. pp. 75-372 Herbal in Latin
p. 75 Absinthium est calidum in primo et siccum in 2o ... p. 372 ... et confert ulceri matricis per prouocationem menstruorum. Pandecta. Auicenna. Serapio. Explicit herbarius.
I could not find out from the description if the MS itself has been written on paper or parchment.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
"Physical description
1 volume 473 pp. + 3 [4] bl. ll. tall 8vo. 21 1/2 x 7 1/2 cm. Original vellum binding, worn: ties wanting. With 116 watercolour illustrations of plants. Some (blank?) leaves have been cut out: one between p. 4 and p. 5, two between p. 62 and p. 63, one between p. 88 and p. 89, p. 102 and p. 103, p. 274 and p. 275, and after p. 473. Page 473 and the last blank leaf are defective, p. 339 has been repaired and the illustration is damaged. Written in a small current French hand. Ornamental initials in red, or red and green, with marginal decorations, headings and paragraph marks in red. There are pen-drawings of grotesque heads, etc. on pp. 47, 52, 56, 58, 60, 61, 64. The pagination is modern"
I guess you saw that already... Doesn't really tell us much.. will see if I can find other catalogue information.
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - Dunsel - 10-02-2026
(13-12-2025, 02:22 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It seems clear to me, based on the physical and data evidence, that the manuscript was intended to be a stack of unbound singulions rather than nested quires. Colin and I are now working on how we can hypothesize the order of singulions by maximizing the LSA cosine results across sections. Our article will include a link to a GitHub respository with all of the code and data.
Would you happen to have a list of which folios are currently in which quires?
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - DG97EEB - 10-02-2026
(10-02-2026, 02:52 AM)Dunsel Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(13-12-2025, 02:22 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It seems clear to me, based on the physical and data evidence, that the manuscript was intended to be a stack of unbound singulions rather than nested quires. Colin and I are now working on how we can hypothesize the order of singulions by maximizing the LSA cosine results across sections. Our article will include a link to a GitHub respository with all of the code and data.
Would you happen to have a list of which folios are currently in which quires?
They're on Renés site Voynich.nu
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - LisaFaginDavis - 25-02-2026
FYI, the first of the two articles Colin Layfield and I have written about our LSA resuls has passed peer review and has been accepted by Digital Humanities Quarterly. It should be published in a few months. The second article is currently undergoing peer review.
RE: Bifolio as a functional unit? - dashstofsk - 26-02-2026
I would like to present the results of my own investigation which gives further evidence for the hypothesis that the manuscript was written sheet-by-sheet at not in book page order.
By sheet-by-sheet I mean that the writer wrote one sheet at a time, first both halves of one side then turned the sheet over and wrote both halves of the other side.
I found this to be the case for both quire 13 and quire 20. The evidence for this is given in the attached PDF output. For each of these quires it shows values of page-by-page correlations, with the highest page pair correlations listed first. You will see that page pairs that are on opposite sides of a sheet ( SIDE ) and page pairs back-to-back on the same leaf ( LEAF ) tend to appear towards the front.
In particular note the pair You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. / f81r, first in the list for quire 13. Not only do their text have the best correlation but it feels significant also that the drawings on those pages look similar ( green water in a bath tub that has raised sides ). It suggests that these pages were done in one sitting.
Pair You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ( LEAF ) are also well correlated, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. continues with the balloon shaped blue pools started on f84r. Also on that same sheet, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ( SIDE, and in the first quarter ) both have some fancy decoration above the bathing pools, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. also has a blue balloon pool. Possibly all done in the same sitting also.
If you want to know how the correlations were generated then it was like this:
For each page within a quire I calculated the frequencies for a range of parameters ( top words, top prefixes, top suffices, top character pairs, frequencies of gallow words, frequencies of words that appear once in the quire, frequencies of long words, frequencies of words of two characters, frequencies of words that contain s,d,e,a,n,r ). Then for each page pair I summed the absolute values of the differences between all their frequencies to get a score. Better correlated pages would get a lower score.
To illustrate with an example here are the frequencies of word ol in quire 13. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are both high in this word.