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+--- Thread: [Other] Course in Cologne focusing on VMS (/thread-2902.html)
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - davidjackson - 24-08-2019
(23-08-2019, 10:53 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.By the way, isn't it weird to spend so much time and effort explaining Cheshire's nonsense in a class like this? It's like inserting a chapter on Flat Earth in a course on astrophysics.I fail to see why. It's a high profile recent theory that deserves mention, if only to examine the gaping holes in it. The more people who study it, the fewer will fall into this particular Heffalump trap in future, which can only be a good thing.
I'd also point out the description in the course work mentions it as "a kind of proto-Romance language with Latin abbreviations"..... which is about as ironic as mediaevalists get!
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - davidjackson - 24-08-2019
A more important thing comes to mind. The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.describes the 1404 - 1438 period as terminus post quem and terminus ante quem for the manuscript. These dates are of course based upon the infamous You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
I agree that this describes the terminus pq for the manuscript (the parchment cannot have been made earlier, excluding a carbon dating error). But it is not the termius aq for the manuscript, only for the death date of the parchment animal - which is a very different thing.
Now I think the German underneath describes this, but it still isn't the terminus aq. According to the timeline, the terminus aq would be .. 1608*? When the provenance starts, as the manuscript could have been penned at any time between 1404 and it's appearance at sale in 1608.
(*sale date not know - this is only the earliest date at which de Tepenec's signature could have been inscribed).
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - Koen G - 24-08-2019
Strictly speaking you're certainly right. However, the fashion of the Zodiac figures makes a date after the 1430's unlikely. But I guess that's more of a soft terminus ante quem.
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - ReneZ - 24-08-2019
(24-08-2019, 12:26 AM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But it is not the termius aq for the manuscript, only for the death date of the parchment animal - which is a very different thing.
Now I think the German underneath describes this,
It does indeed
Quote:but it still isn't the terminus aq. According to the timeline, the terminus aq would be .. 1608*? When the provenance starts, as the manuscript could have been penned at any time between 1404 and it's appearance at sale in 1608.
(*sale date not know - this is only the earliest date at which de Tepenec's signature could have been inscribed).
Strictly speaking, that should be 1622, the time of his death. It could have been added in 1622 but not after.
I have heard conservators state that such parchment was not stored for any amount of time but prepared to be used. I would keep in mind that details of medieval book production are known from contemporary sources, which most of us would not be aware of. Me most certainly included.
It also helps us that the MS has these fold-out pages, because that makes it even more unlikely that it is an old source of unused parchment.
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - davidjackson - 24-08-2019
(24-08-2019, 06:39 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Strictly speaking, that should be 1622, the time of his death. It could have been added in 1622 but not after.Ah yes, good point.
I wasn't trying to reopen the old "could have been made at any point" argument, just arguing for terminological exactitude...
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - hermesj - 27-08-2019
(23-08-2019, 10:53 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.By the way, isn't it weird to spend so much time and effort explaining Cheshire's nonsense in a class like this? It's like inserting a chapter on Flat Earth in a course on astrophysics.
I actually planned the course without Cheshire (I got his outpourings via various mailing lists). But then, surprisingly enough and during the semester, the publication in Romance Studies popped up together with the whole media circus. The students decided on their own to study his paper. For them (and of course for myself) it was a good lesson in scientific and publication theory, and of course in recognizing nonsense...
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - hermesj - 27-08-2019
(23-08-2019, 08:15 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This sounds really cool, and maybe the course will create some new VM scholars. How many students would there be?
It was just a small course with 14 students who achieved the class goal. They had a lot of fun and maybe some of them will do some further VMS research.
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - Torsten - 16-10-2019
Jürgen Hermes has posted a blog post about the course: "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - MarcoP - 20-10-2019
(16-10-2019, 01:27 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Jürgen Hermes has posted a blog post about the course: "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."
A few passages from Hermes' post - Translated with You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:In spring Torsten added to the list and together with Andreas Schinner published his original theory with further evidence, based on statistical analyses, in Cryptologia. I had advised him to do this, because a Cryptologia article still counts more than an Open Access publication on ArXiv, even if the latter is much more accessible. But on Torsten's website you can find all his publications on this topic.
...
I still cannot find any real arguments in the relevant forums to suggest that an alternative theory would be preferable to that of the autocopist. Perhaps the problem is that it threatens to lose much of the magic of VMS because it denies the manuscript a secret that might eventually be read. I think that's one of the reasons why many of the researchers are much more critical of Torsten's theory than it deserves. It is well elaborated, and Torsten has sincerely and scientifically honestly made every attempt to support his assumptions, both by tracing back virtually all of the strange properties of the VMS to conditions during its creation, and by proving that a complex yet clearly traceable algorithm can produce a text that comes closer than any other attempt to the properties of the VMS. He has even published it in a beautiful iOS app for self-testing. You can't do more than that.
On the one hand Torsten's theory is therefore unsatisfactory, on the other hand however (like - according to Popper - all scientific theories) also simply not verifiable, which is why one may doubt it of course. As I once explained myself, it is possible that the VMS contains a message, but the information has to be much shorter than in a natural language text of the same length. One possibility would be that the VMS contains a large number of zeros, i.e. fill characters without content. Only certain characters or words would then be relevant for the reconstruction of the encrypted information. As far as I can see, Torsten's approach cannot rule this out. But: Torsten's autocopist theory (without hidden message) is currently the one that most economically describes the possible emergence and the peculiarities of the VMS text shape. He therefore holds Ockham's razor firmly in his hand and whoever wants to get hold of it will have to deal with his approach.
While it may be true that Timm and Schinner's work has not been particularly well received, the fact that it has found the support of scholars like Hermes himself and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. seems quite significant to me. I intend to re-read their paper in the near future, and also see if I can understand something of their code.
RE: Course in Cologne focusing on VMS - RobGea - 20-10-2019
The more i grapple with the Voynich text, the more it slips from my grasp like a slithy tove, the more i like the auto-copying theory.