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stop energy waste on herbal research - Printable Version

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RE: stop energy waste on herbal research - Searcher - 20-02-2017

(20-02-2017, 05:24 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Whoeha!

I try to make a point that posting herbal pictures and naming them is a waste of energy and what do you people do ?

Post even more (vague) herbal pictures.

Where is Donald Trump if one needs him ?

Oh,  I knew that you will write this!  Blush

RE: stop energy waste on herbal research - Davidsch - 27-02-2017

Boethius on Aristotle (Second Commentary on De interpretatione):

A fantasy image is a thing in the soul which the Greek call φαντασίας. 
A fantasy image is something imperfect and names and verbs do not signify things or impressions but the quality of understandings.

RE: stop energy waste on herbal research - Searcher - 27-02-2017

I'm sorry, it's a too late refinement to my post. As I can't edit that, I've decided to connect my promise to point a certain folio with David's "wish": "Post even more (vague) herbal pictures." in this post. Tongue

Quote:As for Kalanchoe,  I agree - it could be a possible candidate for f50r,  but I prefer f (will  write later),   although I don't exclude two different species of them. 
I prefer You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , indeed. As it often turns, it is unsitable supposition to the date (earliest possible date - 1500). I think, it looks like  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Kalanchoe pinnata)
[Image: c8df68aec9252b3e6bef0aea4e021153.jpg]
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It could also be You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  (inflorescense seems to be more similar, but leaves differ with their shape)
[Image: Fig-286-Bryophyllum-daigremontianum-Raym...ure-by.png]
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JKP, I remember your list of plants which could fit You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I, with all my open-mindedness  Smile  , looking on the examples above, find it pretty similar to this (unsuitable) plant of Madagaskar: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[Image: Bryophyllum_fedtschenkoi_%28Habitus%29.jpg][Image: 5502fbe3adbe671294f83568f4c714fd.jpg]
Do we really waste our time with plant identification or, maybe, only me?

RE: stop energy waste on herbal research - Diane - 28-02-2017

Davidsch,
The difficulty with discussions of the plant-pictures - in my opinion - is the same as that with discussions of most of the imagery; people do not stop to think carefully, in the first place, about their existing attitudes and expectations.

What is it that you assume, or presume, about these pictures. (Let me guess, by comparison with what has constantly been adopted, without much consideration, by the great majority of Voynich researchers since 1912 - in fact, since the seventeenth century)

1. That they ought to behave as we expect photographs, modern botanical drawings, or medieval Latin/Arabic/Byzantine herbal manuscript pictures to behave.

Point 1: they don't.  So what does that tell you about those assumptions?

2. That depiction of plants ought to aim at a superficial, physical resemblance.

Point 2: these don't do that.  So what does this say about that assumption?

Well, if they don't conform to those expectations, what other forms of plant-pictures are there?  Do they match, for example, the stylized forms found in medieval European decoration - of metalwork, of woodcarving?  How about the imagery in the old lechbokes?

- well, of course I checked out those media as well.  So to save you the trouble - no, they don't match those forms of Latin European plant imagery either.

Next stage - drop the presumptions and start asking questions.

1. Are the images constructed according to consistent, rational principles?  Is it possible to formulate some of those principles that occur across the botanical folios?

- it took a fair while, I admit.  About three solid months of comparative research with a wide range of non-Latin traditions, but the answer to question 1 was... YES

2.  Do these principles accord with any known classification systems?
- it was eighteen months or more before I could be clear about this, but again the answer was 'YES'.  The system of classification, as I first explained in detail some time ago, is not like the Dioscoridan, but accords with the Theophrastan.  Now, for reasons I won't bore you with, and which have more to do with 'theory-parties' than interest in this manuscript, my explanation of how the images are constructed, and the connection to a system akin to Theophrastus' was ignored, but just recently there has been an unexplained (and unjustified) myth arising that the plants have something to do with Aristotle.  The sub-text to that is that it was under Aristotle's name that Theophrastus' works usually survived.  So the 'Aristotle' theme is a bit of a fudge - trying to take up the information about that classification system without admitting where the first insight came from.  Not to worry - at least the validity of my analysis - within which was the first identification of a plant as C.tinctorius (also one of mine).

Now the BIG issue.

Made pictures are made pictures; they are not photographs.
The urge to 'realism' in western art saw imagery first, expected to attempt 'photographic' realism, and then actually to get into the habit of assuming that's what picture-making was all about.

To the obvious question: do these botanical images show a belief that 'realism' is the aim of picture-making... the answer in this case is ... NO.

The people who made these pictures (except for f.9v, which is peculiar in a number of ways) were NOT affected by the near-universal notion (seen in herbal manuscripts of the Dioscoridan lineage) that a picture should try to imitate the superficial forms of nature.

So what does THAT say about the old assumptions about this manuscript being an 'ordinary, but strange-looking' expression of the western Christian cultural tradition?

Well - that's the unconsidered and ill-thought out assumptions were wrong. 

Treating these pictures *as* pictures, and after observing both their basic similarity to Greco-Egyptian customs, and also the overlay (mainly in the way roots are shown) from near-eastern habits datable to the 12thC or thereabouts, it became possible to identify about forty with some confidence. A couple agreed with earlier identifications, except that the pictures show a related group of plants, and most earlier identifications assumed just one.

Sherwood identified Musaceae as the subject of one folio. I reached the same opinion, aided chiefly by having identified the system of construction and the regular use of particular motifs.  But in general we agree on that.

Several people had nominated Dracaena trees as the subject of 25v. I agree in general, but the chief item in the group was not the western, but the Soqotran dracaena.

I believe I had not seen any mention of C. tinctorius before my own - and again the identification has nothing to do with matching a photo to the drawing; it comes from reading these drawings in the terms used for their first enunciation.

- sorry to get technical there.

The pictures aren't photos. They're constructed images, and "looky-like" approach just sends people in circles as you rightly say.

One has to learn to read them... a line is just a line. It's a form of communication and pictures have (as it were) an informing languages, syntax and grammar. 

So it's not true that the plant-pictures can't be identified; the problem is rather that since 1912, there has been far more time and effort put in to arguing theoretical cases, and pet hypotheses than in actually trying to understand the manuscript as its makers and preservers understood it before the seventeenth century.

They obviously didn't see things as we expect they should.  So what?  If we want to understand it, we have to do the work - don't we? Smile

RE: stop energy waste on herbal research - Davidsch - 28-02-2017

you ask me a question and since that happens only once every year this appeals to my smart nature ;-) I am obligated to reply as honest as possible.
I will send you an PM

Asking questions is my favorite way of communicating. Because its shows on one hand modesty and on the other side you show eager to learn. 
On the Maslow scale those are high qualities.