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+--- Thread: On purpose (/thread-3303.html)
RE: On purpose - R. Sale - 30-07-2020
If you want to show that something was done 'on purpose', you need an example.
If you want an example from the VMs, go to f71r, White Aries. Accept the challenge set forth by the Genoese Gambit. Answer the question it has proposed. Does the reader know the heraldic insignia of the pope who originated the traditional, religious use of the red galero?
Does this construction exist by accident or on purpose?
RE: On purpose - Koen G - 30-07-2020
(30-07-2020, 07:43 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am sure what applies to Newton applies to earlier and later scientists.
I can't believe what I'm reading. Newton drove the scientific revolution! A basic understanding of historical periods is required before engaging in these kinds of discussions.
RE: On purpose - Mark Knowles - 30-07-2020
To quote Copernicus:
"Although all the good arts serve to draw man's mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more fully performed by this art, which also provides extraordinary intellectual pleasure."
"intellectual pleasure" is exactly what I am referring to.
Copernicus was born in 1473 and died in 1543. Say he lived roughly 70 years after the writer of the Voynich(depending on how old one thinks the writer was when he wrote the manuscript). Alright this is a different historical period, but not so much later.
RE: On purpose - Mark Knowles - 30-07-2020
(30-07-2020, 08:37 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(30-07-2020, 07:43 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am sure what applies to Newton applies to earlier and later scientists.
I can't believe what I'm reading. Newton drove the scientific revolution! A basic understanding of historical periods is required before engaging in these kinds of discussions.
I think we have a very different perspective on human interests and motivations. I think these are much less variable from historical period to historical period. As we know that biologically humans are very much as they were 600 years ago, I don't think that they were so different in other respects.
RE: On purpose - Mark Knowles - 30-07-2020
(30-07-2020, 08:37 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A basic understanding of historical periods is required before engaging in these kinds of discussions.
People were reading Aristotle before the time of the Voynich. Plato's works were being translated in the 15th century.
To quote Plato:
"Philosophy begins in wonder"
To quote Socrates, courtesy of Plato:
"An unexamined life is not worth living."
These are the kind of thinkers/writers that educated people were reading in the time of the Voynich.
These are not the mindsets of people trying to make money or gain status. The love of and delight in knowledge seem to have been ideas that at least some people were familiar with in the early 15th century. So I think it not unreasonable to suggest that these kind of motivations might have been very important ones to the author of the Voynich. So the very functional arguments for the writing of the manuscript seem very limiting.
RE: On purpose - Mark Knowles - 30-07-2020
"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding", Leonardo da Vinci
"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work", Aristotle
These kinds of ideas seem to be present in the era of the Voynich. The notion of doing something for "intellectual pleasure" in this historical period does not seem strange at all.
That the author of the Voynich might have written a scientific text out of pleasure seems perfectly reasonable to me. It could be the same motivation which lead him/her to devise a code out of intellectual interest. It is certainly possible that there may have been other motivations as well, but to discount this kind of motivation seems unwise to me.
RE: On purpose - Mark Knowles - 30-07-2020
To quote Cicero, who was very popular with the early 15th century humanist movement:
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
This quote illustrates the spiritual value of knowledge. Again this seems far from the purely functional vision of motivations of that time.
I am a little bewildered by the idea that the goal of "intellectual pleasure" was out of keeping with the times and just a modern way of thinking, which was alien to people then.
RE: On purpose - -JKP- - 30-07-2020
Writing 200 pages on parchment, with gall ink, with a quill pen, is hard work. Scribes were paid for their work because it's not the sort of thing most people do for pleasure.
Doing calligraphy for fun is quite different from writing page after page in the same script. Doing it for fun usually involves experimenting with styles and layout, but this doesn't happen in the VMS. It's the same style throughout and the layout is fairly pedestrian.
RE: On purpose - Mark Knowles - 30-07-2020
(30-07-2020, 11:20 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Writing 200 pages on parchment, with gall ink, with a quill pen, is hard work. Scribes were paid for their work because it's not the sort of thing most people do for pleasure.
Doing calligraphy for fun is quite different from writing page after page in the same script. Doing it for fun usually involves experimenting with styles and layout, but this doesn't happen in the VMS. It's the same style throughout and the layout is fairly pedestrian.
Returning again to Newton as an example he wrote a lot without having his own scribe. I think it is reasonable to assert that he wrote for pleasure. Well, what if someone didn't want to employ a scribe, but they wanted to write a manuscript? I don't enjoy typing, but it is a means to an end. If I don't type ever then I can't express myself. I am not going to employ a typist to dictate my thoughts to. It may be hard work writing a manuscript, but people do much harder things.
I was not suggesting for a moment that the author was "doing calligraphy for fun", which should be obvious from what I have written. The pleasure that the author was getting from it was not the pleasure of practising calligraphy just as when Newton wrote his Principia he didn't do it, because he wanted to practice his calligraphy. I have never read the Principia, but I wouldn't be surprised if the layout was fairly pedestrian as that wasn't the focus of the author.
Again if Newton is too late for your liking then I think I have demonstrated that at the time if the Voynich the same mindset applied.
RE: On purpose - Mark Knowles - 30-07-2020
Again Cicero, who was very important to the Renaissance humanist movement, said:
"If you have a garden and a library then you having everything you need."
"Cultivation to the mind is like food to the body"
"To live is to think"
"Rightly defined philosophy is the love of wisdom"
"There are more men ennobled by study than by nature"
"Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth"
"Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so"
A monk tending his garden and writing his book could be doing so without the desire to sell it and promote it to the world. In fact such a person might want to keep it and its contents to themselves and therefore could have written it in such a way that others would not understand it.