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+--- Thread: [Talk] Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 (/thread-2953.html)
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - MarcoP - 14-10-2019
I was at the conference. I will report when I am home, on Friday or so.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - bi3mw - 14-10-2019
Thanks @Marco, I am very curious.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - -JKP- - 14-10-2019
Thank you, Marco. This is one talk I really would like to have seen/heard.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - Koen G - 14-10-2019
I'm curious as well. They posted some pictures to Facebook, but I can't deduce anything from them, only that they presented one of the facsimile manuscripts to the Villa.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - bi3mw - 14-10-2019
The last sentences in the article (by Alain Touwaide) are interesting.
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RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - nablator - 14-10-2019
(14-10-2019, 08:09 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The last sentences in the article (by Alain Touwaide) are interesting.
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Quote:For Formica, the book represents a "unicum" worldwide and it would be wrong to consider it "meaningless". Among the pages of the manuscript there are alternating drawings of plants, which would make us lean towards a herbarium, and images of a religious nature, which instead call into question the entire stylistic structure. "In the Voynich I find a coherence, but above all an incoherence. The manuscript borrows some iconographic motifs, but assembles them in figures that are not realistic. So, there is a coherence from the point of view of iconographic language, but an incoherence in the assembly. And it is this aspect that makes me say that it was not a herbarium to be used in medical practice, but a creation, a caricature, an imitation, a game", explained Touwaide.
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RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - Koen G - 14-10-2019
Very interesting. That is somewhat close to my current opinion about the MS (see e.g. here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ), which was reinforced when I became convinced about hidden religious motifs in the plants. Does this mean Touwaide somewhat altered his views on the MS? I don't recall in detail all the things he said before, did he so categorically deny the possibility of a medical herbarium before?
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - ReneZ - 16-10-2019
Another summary in the press:
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Edit:
following the example of @nablator, here is the "Deepl" translation, without modification:
Voynich, the most mysterious book in the world, returns to Villa Mondragone
Ancient codex expert Alain Touwaide gave a lectio on the mysterious manuscript
The mysterious Manuscript of Voynich has finally returned to Villa Mondragone, the majestic villa of Monte Porzio Catone, now the representative seat of the University of Rome "Tor Vergata". For the occasion L'Ateneo organized a conference dedicated to the work and its mysteries, inviting one of the leading experts in the study of codes, including the Manuscript of Voynich, Prof. Alain Touwaide of the University of California Los Angeles, who gave an exclusive lectio on the subject.
The Conference was opened by greetings from the Magnificent Rector, Prof. Giuseppe Novelli, who declared himself "very proud of this day and to have here the most mysterious book in the world, recovered thanks to the choice, made at the beginning of my mandate, to ask the Rector of Yale to make a copy of the manuscript. A Spanish publisher has reproduced the volume for us using the same materials as the original manuscript, which is important for us because it is a return to the origins in this Villa, where the manuscript was kept. There are several versions of how the work came here, but for us it is an extremely important cultural element.
But the mystery that revolves around the Manuscript does not stop at its place of origin, it is an unknown in its entirety. It appeared on the market in 1912, bought by the Polish book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, from the Jesuit College of Villa Mondragone. According to the analysis of Carbon 14 its dating is placed five hundred years earlier, in the period between 1408 and 1436.
During his lectio, Prof. Touwaide explained much of the Manuscript, also talking about how there is - among other things - the possibility that it is a sensational fake news from the past: "The dating of the manuscript goes from the fifteenth century to a fake recent nineteenth century. There are some incredible studies, with the most specialized computer science, to try to decipher and see graphic signs and words, but so far have not given conclusive results.
"My research - clarified the Professor - is of a totally different nature: I am a scholar of the history and illustrations of botany, and I therefore make systematic comparisons of the Voynich Manuscript with the entire body of the illustrated manuscripts of plants and medicines.
Inside, in fact, there are texts in an unknown language and not yet decoded, accompanied by illustrations of botany, astronomy, pharmacology and female iconography. All assembled in a rather inconsistent way.
"I find a coherence but above all an incoherence - said Prof. Touwaide in this regard - the Voynich borrows a whole series of iconographic motifs that he assembles in figures that are not realistic. And so there is a coherence in the iconographic language but incoherence in assembling and this is what makes me say that the manuscript was not a herbarium to be used in medical practice, but a creation, a caricature, an imitation, a game". The deepening of this hypothesis has widened the field of study once again, even touching on elements typical of judicial investigation, such as the field of study of false cheques and the methods of police work on how to authenticate the writings.
We are faced with "unicum" at world level", as defined by Professor Marina Formica, Professor of Modern History at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata", in her introduction to the Conference: "99.9% of the encrypted texts found since the Middle Ages to date have been deciphered, and the difficulty in deciphering this manuscript suggests that it may be a forgery - reiterated Professor Marina Formica, Professor of Modern History at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata".ssa Formica - The Manuscript of Voynich still remains a mystery, a mystery that attracts perhaps more than the truth".
The manuscript acquired by the University will be kept at Villa Mondragone and the honour and the burden of overseeing the precious work will be on the President, Prof. Massimo Giannini.
"It will remain exposed here for anyone who wants to leaf through, read, translate and eventually codify it - concluded the Rector Giuseppe Novelli inviting anyone to view the manuscript - The idea is to encourage the contribution of scholars of our University and all other Italian universities.
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RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - RenegadeHealer - 16-10-2019
Alain Touwaide Wrote:"In the Voynich I find a coherence, but above all an incoherence. The manuscript borrows some iconographic motifs, but assembles them in figures that are not realistic. So, there is a coherence from the point of view of iconographic language, but an incoherence in the assembly. And it is this aspect that makes me say that it was not a herbarium to be used in medical practice, but a creation, a caricature, an imitation, a game"
This idea of an interplay between coherence and incoherence immediately calls to mind the odd and distinct ways schizophrenia patients use language. I can usually tell that a person has un- or under-treated schizophrenia simply by listening to them talk or reading their writing for a bit. Grammar and syntax are intact at the level of bigrams / short phrases but, wrong at the level of the sentence. Familiar words are used with new and not entirely clear meanings. And most strikingly, none of the sentences uttered seem to have a point, or really say anything concrete. But taking a bird's eye view of a paragraph of schizophrenic language, clear themes, and usually a fairly clear intention of some sort, show themselves. There is a method to the madness, if you will. In their own highly idiosyncratic way, these patients' utterances do make sense. They just reference a lot of experiences for which no one but the patient has any reference point, let alone word.
While I would describe schizophrenic use of language as superficially incoherent but deeply coherent, the translation provided us by Nablator and DeepL.com would seem to imply that Prof. Touwaide describes the content of the VMS in exactly the opposite way: superficially coherent but deeply incoherent. (I could very well be putting words in his mouth here, especially as I don't speak Italian and nuances get lost in translation.)
@Koen, I followed your link to the thread where you talk about the VMS possibly being an intellectual game of some sort, and read a few of your old blog posts tangential to this topic as well. While this is merely subjective and anecdotal, there have been nights I've stared at pages of the VMS, and gotten a subtle feeling like I'm being punked.
RE: Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019 - -JKP- - 17-10-2019
(14-10-2019, 09:06 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Very interesting. That is somewhat close to my current opinion about the MS (see e.g. here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ), which was reinforced when I became convinced about hidden religious motifs in the plants. Does this mean Touwaide somewhat altered his views on the MS? I don't recall in detail all the things he said before, did he so categorically deny the possibility of a medical herbarium before?
I wondered exactly the same thing when I saw that statement. I couldn't remember Touwaide mentioning anything about religious motifs before, so it surprised me a little, but I haven't read everything that's been posted by or about him.