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Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - Printable Version

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RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - Mark Knowles - 26-11-2022

(26-11-2022, 02:15 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Click "New Reply", and use the save as draft feature as you go along. You can open the forum in a separate window and copy /paste quotes. When you're satisfied you can post the final draft.

OK. Great. I will use the "Save as draft". Thanks


RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - Mark Knowles - 26-11-2022

I was fully aware that the question I raised in this thread was going to be controversial. Personally I think that is not a vice and arguably a virtue. I have always had sympathy with the notion, I believe originated by Hegel, of the dialectic method, meaning the idea of having a thesis, an antithesis and a synthesis. That is not to say that I don't believe what I have said or that I am playing a Devil's advocate rather that I think there is value in opposing ideas being placed against each other and lead to justify themselves. I think this approach, ultimately, leads to more robust arguments being developed. I think it is good to challenge arguments even though for the person who produced the argument, whether me or someone else, it can be disconcerting, frustrating and aggravating at times to have to address them. I have often been suspicious of consensus. Obviously there are numerous areas where there is a justifiable consensus. However sometimes consensus can be a result of a desire not to rock the boat or a lack of courage by people to challenge orthodoxy or an undue sense of deference to the originator of an idea. So, if at times, my comments seem provocative well I don't think that is necessarily a problem. As long as one is dealing with possibly provocative statements about arguments or ideas and not personal statements directed at people; I have always tried to stick to arguments not insults.


RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - Mark Knowles - 26-11-2022

(26-11-2022, 05:15 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.More generally, if the Voynich MS zodiac is suspected to be a copy of a Lauber work, while Lauber is known to have used older sources and copied them accurately, that effectively removes the post-1430 argument, because the Voynich MS could equally well have been copied from these older sources.
Yes the Voynich MS could equally well have been copied from the older sources. However I have argued that it is makes most sense to look at the most similar sources rather than go back to a postulated source in the distant past. Why assume the source was some unknown and unobserved source from the very beginning of the 15th century when the sources from the 1430s+ are the most similar to the central Zodiac drawings in the Voynich?


RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - Mark Knowles - 26-11-2022

(26-11-2022, 08:51 AM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are two different arguments being conflated here:
a) Is the VM a derivate work of the Lauber style?
b) Can the VM illustrative style be used to attempt to date the period which they represent?

I fail to see why attempts are being made to link one to the other.
Well they are linked as the works of Lauber date from 1427 onward. So if the Voynich central Zodiac Illustrations are copied from a work of Lauber this cannot have happened before 1425. Likewise if the Voynich drawings date from before 1425 then they cannot have been copied from a work of Lauber. So b) and a) are interdependent and therefore linked.


RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - ReneZ - 27-11-2022

(26-11-2022, 01:02 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-11-2022, 05:15 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If it were the opinion of someone with training and experience in the matter, it would be a different story already.
Well then whatever myself, yourself, Koen or anyone has said in this thread should be ignored on that basis as to the best of my knowledge none of us could be said to have "training and experience in the matter".

Of course not "whatever".
But when it comes to judging the origin of the Voynich MS illustrations, then, yes, that is essentially what I meant.

Let's take an example. Which literature on this topic has been used by any of us all? Which literature do we know exists? What percentage of relevant illustrations can be found on the internet? How much contemporary written text has been used? Does that actually exist, and if so, how much?
Are there just the two workshops from Alsace that could be relevant?
The reference to "all those other workshops" illustrates the point quite well.


RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - ReneZ - 27-11-2022

(26-11-2022, 01:49 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To reiterate, on the basis of the dataset Koen compiled and referred to:

the mean average year is 1416

The standard deviation is 15 years

I will assume the data is normal distributed. I would be interested in anyone with an argument why it would not be normally distributed.

Considering a 95% confidence interval this gives us a range of dates from 1387 to 1444

Despite the claims of non-bias or precision there was no, even basic, statistical analysis of the data carried out.

Your own model predicts a probability of 16% that the clothing is from after 1431.


RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - R. Sale - 27-11-2022

There are now nine mss. under the Hagenau tag. Five originally provenanced as 'Hagenau, Germany' and now four more that are provenanced as 'Hagenau, France' - the "other" Hagenau.

There are some examples of "regular" clothing. Do these examples prove anything? They are dated into the 1440s - that's for the illustration.

The interpretive connections provided by these investigations are fairly strong, but it is not especially precise. There is good information in the data. The problem lies in the potential time lag between the 'event' and the illustration - even if that is only one or two decades. A person born c. 1400 could live past 1450.

The VMs has instead, based on its trickery and ambiguity, based on something that is not strong, but weak - and highly precise. That is the Golden Fleece dated after 1430. But given that the appearance is weak will fail, reinforcement is required. Reinforcement is found through pairing. Two examples of the fleece have been proposed. One is with the "mermaid" Melusine. Melusine and the Golden Fleece are connected through the Valois ancestry of the Duke of Burgundy. The Golden Fleece and the Agnus Dei of BNF Fr 13096 f. 18 are connected through the library of the Duke of Burgundy and by the similarity of their structural details. Problematic appearance is compensated and validated by structure in the VMs illustrations.


RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - nablator - 27-11-2022

(27-11-2022, 02:35 AM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are now nine mss. under the Hagenau tag. Five originally provenanced as 'Hagenau, Germany' and now four more that are provenanced as 'Hagenau, France' - the "other" Hagenau.

They are one and the same place: Hag(u)enau, Alsace.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.


RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - Mark Knowles - 27-11-2022

(27-11-2022, 12:47 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-11-2022, 01:02 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-11-2022, 05:15 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If it were the opinion of someone with training and experience in the matter, it would be a different story already.
Well then whatever myself, yourself, Koen or anyone has said in this thread should be ignored on that basis as to the best of my knowledge none of us could be said to have "training and experience in the matter".

Of course not "whatever".
But when it comes to judging the origin of the Voynich MS illustrations, then, yes, that is essentially what I meant.

Then you must surely on that basis reject Koen's efforts to judge the origin of the Voynich MS Illustrations. Personally I don’t reject his efforts, but that seems to imply that you do.


RE: Are the 1430s the most likely date range for the Zodiac drawings? - ReneZ - 27-11-2022

Koen's web page very clearly visualises what an authority on the subject is saying, and there I see its great value.