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[Article] What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - Printable Version

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RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - ReneZ - 26-06-2020

(26-06-2020, 11:56 AM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I missed that one, but all the better.

Quote:The Voynich is a truly interdisciplinary object. To solve it convincingly will require a combination of skills that are unlikely to have been mastered by a single person.

What one might argue about is that you should only let experts work on the individual areas. In my opinion, a layman who has been working on a topic for years can just as well cooperate. One should not build a front between scholars and laymen ( linguists, historians, cryptologists, etc. against "non-experts" ).

Fortunately, the experts in relevant fields for the Voynich MS that I know are very much aware of, and receptive for serious, significant, or otherwise interesting work of non-experts.

It has to be said at the same time that the lay people (myself included) are not in a good position to judge whether their own work is relevant, completely off the mark, or anywhere in between.

The experts can, however, see this immediately.


RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - ReneZ - 26-06-2020

(26-06-2020, 07:12 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The idea that today someone is studying the Voynich manuscript without knowing of past efforts is therefore unreasonable.

Unfortunately, reality seems to be the opposite, as unreasonable as it may seem.

The majority of people that have proposed solutions in the past few years are unaware of the important statistical properties of the text, and of past research in general.

I have read numerous papers (not to mention blog posts) where it was stated that this was done in order to be able to have a 'fresh look' (or some similar terminology).

For scientific publications, knowledge of relevant past work in the area is an absolute prerequisite.


RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - Mark Knowles - 26-06-2020

(26-06-2020, 11:52 AM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not going to debate this particular article further, as it wasn't intended to make an argument about the contents of the VMS at all, just to introduce readers to the manuscript and some of the complexities involved in working with it.

Sorry for the negativity. As, I am sure you know, almost any statement or argument made about the Voynich will find those who are highly sceptical of it.


RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - Koen G - 26-06-2020

Lisa is well respected in her field, by her peers. If she says there are multiple scribes, I trust her judgement (and the possible implications). 


For expert opinions in general, what we desperately need is a substantial analysis from someone specialized in medieval imagery. The few opinions we've gotten are great, but they are fragmentary and fleeting. A standard work about VM imagery is missing.

It would be a tremendous task though, if it can be done in the first place. I suspect there is a reason why this hasn't been done yet, and that reason is "we have nothing like it". If the lack of solid ground leads even expert analysis to a large degree of speculation, it will be too easily dismissed.


RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - Torsten - 26-06-2020

(26-06-2020, 01:59 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-06-2020, 07:12 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The idea that today someone is studying the Voynich manuscript without knowing of past efforts is therefore unreasonable.

Unfortunately, reality seems to be the opposite, as unreasonable as it may seem.

The majority of people that have proposed solutions in the past few years are unaware of the important statistical properties of the text, and of past research in general.

I have read numerous papers (not to mention blog posts) where it was stated that this was done in order to be able to have a 'fresh look' (or some similar terminology).

For scientific publications, knowledge of relevant past work in the area is an absolute prerequisite.

That someone is ignoring the research of others didn't mean that he or she is not aware that such research exists. Hannig for instance was able to refer to Kondrak and Hauer. Obviously he found their results interesting enough to include some reference. 

The Voynich manuscript was studied for over 100 years and the results of past researchers are available online. Today we have even access to the results of the NSA researchers. If you need a transliteration of the text, if you are interested in the entropy values, the word length distribution, the opinion of a linguist or how many scribes wrote the manuscript all you have to do is to start an online search for already published results and to check the validity of the results you find. It is also possible to use a forum like voynich.ninja to ask other researchers a questions. With other words there is already an international research group and every research can decide himself if he wants to join this group.


RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - Torsten - 26-06-2020

(26-06-2020, 02:26 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Lisa is well respected in her field, by her peers. If she says there are multiple scribes, I trust her judgement (and the possible implications).

You shouldn't trust in results because someone is an expert. You should trust in results since you find the evidence compelling.


RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - Mark Knowles - 26-06-2020

(26-06-2020, 02:41 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-06-2020, 02:26 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Lisa is well respected in her field, by her peers. If she says there are multiple scribes, I trust her judgement (and the possible implications).

You shouldn't trust in results because someone is an expert. You should trust in results since you find the evidence compelling.

I value Lisa's contribution. However I have to agree with Torsten, especially given the history of experts getting things completely wrong in Voynich research. Take our botanical friends who think the manuscript is Mexican, clearly their plant identifications are way off. On the scale of people to trust Lisa has to be near the top, but I would be open to the idea that she might be wrong and this applies to everyone else.


RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - ReneZ - 26-06-2020

DONJCH, you know what I am thinking...


RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - DONJCH - 26-06-2020

Yep Wink


RE: What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript? - Torsten - 26-06-2020

I have tried to find out more about the idea behind the statement that there are "linguistically identifiable roots, prefixes, and suffixes". In 2015 Lisa Davis has posted a blog post. Lisa wrote: "Linguists have identified prefixes and suffixes, and have zeroed in on what seem to be rootwords as well" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). "For example, the following “Voynichese” word is a common root found throughout the astronomical section: [okal]" (Davis 2015)

(Note: [okal] occurs 138 times within the manuscript (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). In the astronomical section [okal] occurs 8 times, in Currier A it occurs 29 times  and 94 times in Currier B. Therefore I wouldn't say that [okal] is especially common within the astronomical section.)

The only other source I was able to find is a blog post by Gordon Rugg. Rugg writes: "Voynichese words typically have a three-syllable structure, of prefix, root and suffix. There are regularities about which syllables occur as prefixes, or as roots, or as suffixes; for instance the syllable '4o' almost always occurs as a prefix, whereas the syllable '89' usually occurs as a suffix, occasionally occurs as a prefix, but hardly ever occurs as a root." (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). 

In his papers Gordon Ruggs writes about 'prefix', 'midfix' and 'suffix'. This idea goes back to Jorgs Stolfis prefix-midfix-suffix decomposition of Voynich words (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Stolfi used his model to explain "the non-trivial word structure" for Voynich words (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Stolfi later modified this 'prefix-midfix-suffix' model into a 'core-mantel-crust' model. 

Stolfi conclusion was: "The paradigm has implications also for theories that assume a straightforward (non-encrypted) encoding of some obscure language. The layered word structure does not obviously match the word structure of Indo-European languages. Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, or Ethiopian could perhaps be transliterated into Voynichese, but not by any straightforward mapping. In fact, if the VMS is not encrypted, the layered structure suggests that the 'words' are single syllables (a conclusion that is also supported by the comparatively narrow range of 'word' lengths). However, the number of different 'words' is far too large compared to the number of syllables in Indo-European languages. So either the script allows multiple spellings for the same syllable, or we must look for languages with large syllable inventory --- e.g. East Asian languages such as Cantonese, Vietnamese, or Tibetan" (Stolfi 2000).

A possible source for Lisa Davis statement is therefore Jorge Stolfis prefix-midfix-suffix model. (Note: Within the prefix-midfix-suffix model the decomposition of [okal] would be [o-k-al].)