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+--- Thread: Mark Knowles' theories of pharma and other labels (/thread-3140.html)
RE: [split] Mark Knowles' theories - Mark Knowles - 01-04-2020
Steganography is a more general concept than that of filler/null text, so I think it important to be specific. Anyway I have searched through the threads and from what I have spotted there is no thread devoted to the use of steganography in the Voynich. It seems to be a subject which is touched on tangentially. In addition a large percentage of the threads where it is referenced are threads which I have initiated or contributed to a large extent. So this does not seem to be a topic which has been addressed much.
The concept of null words represents an even more specific kind of filler text as it suggests a structure to the filler text.
RE: Matching “pharma” / “small plants” labels in context - Mark Knowles - 01-04-2020
I dispute that the idea of homophones are not compatible with the structure of Voynichese.
Diplomatic ciphers become relevant as they combine these 2 features: nulls and homophones. Timm does not discuss nulls and his work is quite different from mine, though interesting.
RE: [split] Mark Knowles' theories - Mark Knowles - 01-04-2020
An important thing to note is that on some of the pharma pages the plants have no labels, which could lead one to conclude that labels are an option rather than a necessity and therefore null labels wouldn't be out of place.
RE: [split] Mark Knowles' theories - Mark Knowles - 01-04-2020
From wikipedia:
"Steganography is the practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video."
However this can be done in many different ways where having a filler text is just one of these way. Invisible writing is one form of steganography, but something very different from what I am referring to.
"[font=-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont,]The advantage of steganography over cryptography alone is that the intended secret message does not attract attention to itself as an object of scrutiny." However this is not what we are talking about in the case of the Voynich.[/font]
[font=-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont,]So for these and other reasons I steganography is not nearly as useful term as filler text or null text.[/font]
RE: [split] Mark Knowles' theories - Mark Knowles - 01-04-2020
To me it seems much easier to imagine a cipher influenced by the most advanced cipher techniques of the time rather than a complex cipher with no contemporary parallels or influences. So if someone says that the Voynich can't be related in any way to ciphers of the time it seems likely that it is not a cipher.
RE: Mark Knowles theories' of pharma and other labels - Koen G - 01-04-2020
Thread title specified at Mark's request.
RE: [split] Mark Knowles' theories - -JKP- - 02-04-2020
(01-04-2020, 05:09 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To me it seems much easier to imagine a cipher influenced by the most advanced cipher techniques of the time rather than a complex cipher with no contemporary parallels or influences. So if someone says that the Voynich can't be related in any way to ciphers of the time it seems likely that it is not a cipher.
Many new cipher concepts were added in the 16th and 17th centuries (and since then, of course), so it's not impossible that a new idea or two existed in the 15th century.
Have you looked at the Jewish ciphers? They had some before the 15th century that were different from the usual one-to-one substitution ciphers that were prevalent in the 15th century. Some of them are similar to magic square diagrams (that's a very rough analogy because they are not palindromic, they are alphabetic), but with multiple letters in some of the compartments.
RE: Mark Knowles theories' of pharma and other labels - bi3mw - 02-04-2020
(02-04-2020, 03:15 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Have you looked at the Jewish ciphers?Do you have some examples ?
RE: Mark Knowles theories' of pharma and other labels - -JKP- - 02-04-2020
Hmmm, I don't know if this is easy or hard to find on the Net.
I read about it years ago (in a book) when I was reading about kabbalah. The one I'm thinking of is not a Caesar cipher, pigpen, or atbash cipher, it was a little more difficult to decrypt (not much, but a little). I remember it being an abbreviated character set (some chars were represented by the same symbols), and I'm reasonably sure it was earlier than the Italian diplomatic ciphers, maybe 14th century or early 15th century?
It was a library book, which means there might be a scan on Google Books, but they all have similar titles and I read several in a row, so I no longer remember which one discussed the less common ciphers, I was simply trying to get a feel for how advanced the technology was at the time.
RE: Matching “pharma” / “small plants” labels in context - Mark Knowles - 02-04-2020
(01-04-2020, 06:04 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]We drifted away from discussing Matching “pharma” / “small plants” labels in context. I suggest moving posts from #26 onwards to a new Mark Knowles' theories thread.[/font]
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My work is not connected to Timm and Schinner, though I think there work is of interest. Steganography is a much less specific term than I am using. I disagree with JKP that the concept of homophoned [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]are not compatible with the structure of Voynichese, I think they are compatible. The use of the term diplomatic ciphers is to be more specific rather than to blur the point.[/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Some people have written[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif] that the Voynich cannot be a cipher. I certainly haven't suggested everything believes that; Nick Pelling for one believes, from what I understand, that the Voynich is written in cipher. It would take time and not make a lot of sense to list all researchers who have said that Voynichese cannot be a cipher, though it appears to be an opinion widely stated. From what you have said it seems that you acknowledge that Voynichese could be a cipher. Well in fact when you say "[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]options are only excluded by delusional solvers" then that would seem to imply to me that there are plenty [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]delusional solvers. In fact to quote Gerard Cheshire in a recent email to me "Hi Mark, Yes, you may well be right about it being a cipher.", so I am not sure your statement even applies to him.[/font][/font][/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]You seem to believe that Voynichese cannot be related to diplomatic ciphers of the period as you seem to be saying that the Voynichese cannot have features connected to or related to that of homophones. Is this a correct assessment of your position?[/font][/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]I mentioned diplomatic ciphers as a way to approach and explain the phenomena that you were discussing regarding pharma labels. I have spent a lot of time looking at these labels and various specific explanations were not considered in this thread, such as certain labels being meaningless null words and certain plant names being able to be spelled completely differently as we see with homophones.[/font][/font]