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+--- Thread: No text, but a visual code (/thread-2384.html)
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RE: No text, but a visual code - bi3mw - 18-11-2023
(18-11-2023, 11:52 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..... in German star is feminineIn German it is spelled "der Stern" which is masculine.
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RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 18-11-2023
I didn't know that in German. In any case, in Latin star is a feminine noun and I believe that the authors of the VM are cultured people who knew Latin.
I see no other reason to draw so many women if not for their identification with the fixed stars. It is the same logic that underlies drawing the sun as a man and the moon as a woman, something that we also see in Voynich.
RE: No text, but a visual code - ReneZ - 19-11-2023
Unfortunately (for language learners) there is not much of an agreement between Germanic and Romance languages about the gender of nouns.
Between German and (say) French, Sun and Moon are swapped, for example.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 24-11-2023
Sometimes I think that in the next century, if the VM remains undeciphered, someone will ask the same question as me: Isn't that glyph that so closely resembles the letter c and that is repeated so often in different shapes simply the symbol of the Moon?
In a book with so many astronomical diagrams and in which the image of the Moon is repeated so much, perhaps this question ends up on someone's mind.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 30-11-2023
I believe that the VM script has an easier solution than it seems. As I said before, the glyph that looks like the letter c is quite likely to represent the moon, as well as all the glyphs with that shape, such as the one that looks like the letter s and the benches. All of them may be different positions of the moon in space.
The rest of the glyphs are also astronomical symbols. The creators of the script group them to create special positions in space and to have the appearance of a language, a scientific language. This last thing I said is what I think is very difficult for us to understand, because the problem of the VM is more than anything to understand the mentality that underlies it.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 08-12-2023
The VM has been compared many times to the works of Giovanni Fontana, where a circle-line cipher is used. I reproduce the Fontana alphabet from Stephen Bax's page.
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Really, delving into the similarities of these contemporary works, the VM and Fontana's books, is a promising avenue. The first thing to consider is that the Fontana cipher does not hide anything, it is not designed to hide. Too easy having also text in Latin. So what did Fontana design it for, what's the point?
He was an engineer who was accused of witchcraft, but he was a proto-scientist. With his artifacts he created a kind of artificial magic. I think his cipher was a way to create a scientific language. The fact that its symbols have a geometric characteristic attests to this. The content was as important as the way of communicating his knowledge.
Can any of this be said about the Voynich script? In my opinion there is a parallel, the same impulse to create a kind of scientific and universal language. Only instead of using the Latin alphabet as a base source, it uses pictographic or ideographic symbols.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 15-12-2023
I am the only one who defends the iconic character of the script. If I fail to convince, I don't think it is due to the very nature of the glyphs, some of which are designed with a clear intention of spatial representation. For example, the little line that is usually transcribed as an i and that has nothing to do with an alphabet. This little line, which also accompanies other glyphs, is not designed vertically but obliquely. Why has the author designed it like this? I simply believe that he imagines it inscribed on a sphere, like the mark of the degree, as was done when a Volvelle was designed.
What is difficult for our mentality to understand, therefore, I do not believe is the nature of the glyphs, but rather the fact that medieval man saw meaning in a succession of symbols and astronomical objects arranged like a language.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Hermes777 - 15-12-2023
(08-12-2023, 10:08 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The VM has been compared many times to the works of Giovanni Fontana, where a circle-line cipher is used. I reproduce the Fontana alphabet from Stephen Bax's page.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Really, delving into the similarities of these contemporary works, the VM and Fontana's books, is a promising avenue. The first thing to consider is that the Fontana cipher does not hide anything, it is not designed to hide. Too easy having also text in Latin. So what did Fontana design it for, what's the point?
He was an engineer who was accused of witchcraft, but he was a proto-scientist. With his artifacts he created a kind of artificial magic. I think his cipher was a way to create a scientific language. The fact that its symbols have a geometric characteristic attests to this. The content was as important as the way of communicating his knowledge.
Can any of this be said about the Voynich script? In my opinion there is a parallel, the same impulse to create a kind of scientific and universal language. Only instead of using the Latin alphabet as a base source, it uses pictographic or ideographic symbols.
This is very close to my point of view now Antonio, and I'm sympathetic to your approach. I see the work as arising out of the Lllullian revival in northern Italy in the 1400s, primarily through Catalan scholars teaching Ramon Lllull's systems at the University of Padua. The text appears to be a symbolic system of complex combinatorics. While I have traced those ideas to Nicholas of Cusa, Fontana is the much more likely candidate - both men studied Llull at the University of Padua.
In this view the characters - an eclectic assembly of letters, numbers, abbreviations and sundry manuscript marks - have fixed non-linguistic significations. In the nature of the book, they could well be astrological. And the characters could have been selected according to a pictographic scheme. Vords, and perhaps other units eg. lines, are like formulae, symbols combined according to set (quite complex) rules. I think it is worthwhile considering the text in this way. Not as a language, not as a hoax, but as a Llullian folly.
Although, we must then explain why these symbols are arranged to have every appearance of being a written text. It is tempting to conclude, with Friedman, that it might be an attempt at a symbolic apriori constructed language. Quite a feat, and ahead of its time, but Liebniz was right to see such an idea already present in Lllull's Ars Combinatoria.
In any case, it is entirely clear that, in the first instance, the work concerns (1) the herbs of the earth and (2) the stars above. And it is a pharmacological treatise and therefore concerns how to extract celestial powers from herbs.
What sort of symbolic language would be appropriate for this purpose?
Fontana (a native Ladin speaker) is a good candidate, most likely during his duties as a Municipal Physician with oversight of apothecaries.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Antonio García Jiménez - 16-12-2023
Yes, I also believe in a certain analogy with Llull's work, but more from the point of view of combinatorial mechanics than intentionality, given that in the Voynich there is no religious intention as there is in Llull. I'm inclined to see the VM more inspired by the Volvelles, which is another mode of primitive analog computing but more focused on astronomy. I believe that the VM script is made by transcribing the glyphs inscribed on superimposed wheels in the manner of the Volvelles.
I'm glad, Hermes777, that you cite Friedman, who was the first to see a possible combinatorial system in the VM script. According to his final conclusions, he believed that each glyph was a symbol with its own meaning and that each vord was a combination of glyphs.
RE: No text, but a visual code - Hermes777 - 16-12-2023
(16-12-2023, 07:32 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, I also believe in a certain analogy with Llull's work, but more from the point of view of combinatorial mechanics than intentionality, given that in the Voynich there is no religious intention as there is in Llull. I'm inclined to see the VM more inspired by the Volvelles, which is another mode of primitive analog computing but more focused on astronomy. I believe that the VM script is made by transcribing the glyphs inscribed on superimposed wheels in the manner of the Volvelles.
I'm glad, Hermes777, that you cite Friedman, who was the first to see a possible combinatorial system in the VM script. According to his final conclusions, he believed that each glyph was a symbol with its own meaning and that each vord was a combination of glyphs.
We should distinguish between Llull himself and later Llullism. By the 1400s there was a spurious literature in Llull's name and he had become associated with alchemy and astrology and other 'low arts'. Cusanus dedicated himself to Llull's more Christian, inter-religious and theological works - against those who regarded Llull as heretical. As you say, the Voynich is not theological or pious - it is only nominally Christian. But there were contemporary devotees of Llull with other interests - notably Giovanni Fontana. I agree, he would be using Llull's methods without Llull's mission.
I'm with Friedman: "he believed that each glyph was a symbol with its own meaning and that each vord was a combination of glyphs.." But what then are the meaning of the glyphs? That becomes the only question that matters.
I note that the glyphs are an eclectic assortment of letters, numbers, abbreviatiions etc., mainly but perhaps not exclusively from Latin conventions. In English it would be like making an alphabet from characters taken from across the keyboard, such as: S&7uL?9H. This strongly suggests the glyphs were selected independent of their conventional significations and according to some other (non-linguistic) criteria, visual shape perhaps?