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+--- Thread: How could we approach the Pharma and Recipes? (/thread-3054.html)
How could we approach the Pharma and Recipes? - Anton - 19-01-2020
These are some methodological thoughts of mine. Since I'm unlikely to bring them to practice in the nearest future, I thought I'd better share them for someone to maybe pick them up.
Initially I approached the herbal section in the view that it may reveal some "template" of narration (which I was not able to find, but that does not mean it does not exist, because I tested it from one side only).
But the Recipes section (suppose these are recipes, to begin with) would perhaps exhibit even a more templated style. There are different types of recipes (not in the VMS, I mean, but in human practice). You have recipes to cook something, recipes to prepare medicines, recipes to cure the diseases. Each of those, however, would exhibit regularities. There will be some frequent words (such perhaps as "water" or "powder"). Some function words, such as e.g. "for", are not unlikely to exhibit positional affinities (e.g. in the titles: "for ...."). There will be measures and numerics (be that expressed by digits or by words). What is especially interesting, there will be established phrases, such as the "so nim" which we have extensively discussed in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread.
So what could we do?
Take some contemporary manuscript with recipes. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. seems to me a good candidate, since it contains several recipe sections by different scribes (that is, by different authors, most probably) and of different types. Calculate word statistics for each section. Find most frequent words and word combinations, find positional templates. Do the same for the Recipe section of the VMS. Compare the results.
RE: How could we approach the Recipes? - -JKP- - 19-01-2020
I think the Number 1 priority for this section is to stop calling them recipes.
They could be recipes.
They could be proverbs.
They could be an annotated index (I have found examples in medieval texts).
They could be lists of good days and bad days for doing certain tasks or procedures.
They could be incantations.
They could be the properties of gemstones.
and many other things...
I don't know the best thing to call these sections, but I refer to them for my own use as "dense text" folios and "starred text" folios. There are probably better names, but "recipes" is not a good name. WAY too many assumptions built into it.
RE: How could we approach the Recipes? - VViews - 19-01-2020
JKP, I agree to some extent in that it can be a little confusing: the "small plants" section has always looked more like a recipe section to me than the "starred text" section.
Personally, I just call it Quire 20.
However, I don't think the name we give to the sections really matters that much, as long as we are all clear about what is being discussed.
I really don't think anyone who has spent serious time studying the Voynich is limited by such names. Newcomers perhaps. But I really don't see it as something that is stopping us from understanding this manuscript.
This reminds me of when Diane was adamant in trying to convince everyone here that we should stop calling the Zodiac section by that name and instead refer to it as the "Calendar": whatever name is given to the Voynich sections, hasn't enabled proponents of either option to read them.
RE: How could we approach the Recipes? - Anton - 19-01-2020
Proverbs? I think collecting proverbs becomes a business from XIX century onward.
Index - too lengthy passages, multi-line, does not look as such
Lists of good days and bad - this is effectively a type of "recipe" as well
Incantations - have you ever seen that many pages of incantations in a row?
Gemstones - too many paragraphs, not that many gemstones out there
Of course, it could be some other thing. But without assumptions there's no starting point. At any rate, visual homogeneity suggests there must be some template in there.
That's my point number one - to seek for the template.
RE: How could we approach the Recipes? - VViews - 19-01-2020
Anton,
isn't this basically the same thing as Nick's Block Paradigm approach to Q20?
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I guess not much progress has been made in that quest since then, so it may be good to try and get the momentum going again.
RE: How could we approach the Recipes? - Linda - 19-01-2020
I refer to them as Quire 20, wraps it up nicely with no misleading terminology, easy to find that way too if someone wants to know where to look for them. Dense text could be mistaken for other text only pages. Starred text would be ok i guess.
I tend to think of them as being linked with the zodiac nymphs because of the stars, especially the ones with tails. I think they are historical in nature although i have no concrete reasoning behind that idea. I also think they might have a lot in common with quire 13, due to the use of eva qo. Although a few plant pages also come up there is a larger correlation with quire 13, which on its face does not seem to have anything to do with the plants or recipes.
So, i do not think they are recipes and probably not related heavily with the plants, and agree that a more generic name should be used when referring to this section of the manuscript. Similarly with quire 13, the use of biological is incorrect in my view, same with balneological, although that is a bit better.
RE: How could we approach the Recipes? - Anton - 20-01-2020
(19-01-2020, 11:49 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Anton,
isn't this basically the same thing as Nick's Block Paradigm approach to Q20?
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I guess not much progress has been made in that quest since then, so it may be good to try and get the momentum going again.
No that's quite a different thing. The "block paradigm" implies that you try to locate candidates for original sources of the VMS ciphertext and then try to reverse engineer the ciphertext.
What I'm describing is not looking for original sources, it's about comparing VMS text statistics with statistics of texts of (supposedly) similar category/subject in order to recognize keywords and patterns (in order to subsequently reverse engineer them). That's what I call "contextual analysis".
RE: How could we approach the Recipes? - Koen G - 20-01-2020
Quire 20 is the best name. It's an easy to remember number. "Recipes" is problematic because there is some confusion with the small plants section. So this is where the name really fails. It's one single quire, so just use its number.
And I agree that the same goes for Q13. I shiver whenever I read "biological section". Moreover, these are confusing again because it is unclear whether the entire quire is meant or just those pages presumed biological in content.
Anyway, terminology aside, how to attack this section? Anton, I like the way you're thinking. Templates can be of many shapes, and we may have missed some. I prefer any approach that's vocabulary based over attempts to actually read words.
However, I am reading regularly that we may not assume that Voynichese words are words as we would think of them. If that is true, vocabulary and pattern comparisons will also fail
RE: How could we approach the Recipes? - Anton - 20-01-2020
In fact, I should have said that what I suggest may be well applied to both Pharma and Recipes sections. I will correct the thread name.
I'd even say it's better to start with Pharma, since it's probably a more reliable candidate for "recipes" as actual recipes.
RE: How could we approach the Recipes? - Anton - 20-01-2020
(20-01-2020, 12:16 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.However, I am reading regularly that we may not assume that Voynichese words are words as we would think of them. If that is true, vocabulary and pattern comparisons will also fail
There are some tricky things that can be done beyond simple word frequency analysis. You can look for consistent patterns (think of "so nim").
You can look at positioning. When I analyzed "Voynich stars" several years ago, I undertook what I think was an altogether novel approach: I examined where exactly they do occur in the folio space (of the botanical section), and with this tried to trace the narration structure of the botanical section text. I failed, but with the recent developments it can be explained by that those labels are probably NOT the object names. But the approach is worth of further development.
And so on.