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+--- Thread: Who has the Voynichese mindset more? (/thread-3960.html)
Who has the Voynichese mindset more? - Arichichi - 02-03-2023
This question challenges me as someone in this forum told me that the likelihood of someone resembling his culture and society is high. Obviously, when we deal with a new gene in an evolving species, we get to recognize its uniqueness. Bur when we deal with people, we think everyone is subject to a conformist view.
Yet, I don't want to come with assumptions without raising a new question: let's say someone wants to produce something as puzzling as the Voynich MS.
In your opinion, which strategy would bring more beneficial results: creating a cryptic script for English? Or creating a whole new language and a script for that language?
If 2 is your opinion, do you think you'd go for an English looking language or go for something that has unheard of features which wouldn't easily translate into the languages you already know?
RE: Who has the Voynichese mindset more? - Koen G - 02-03-2023
Not everyone is subject to a conformist view, but people do interact with the world around them - conformists just as much as reactionaries. Completely new things are rare, and inventions often build upon earlier concepts. And frameworks remain familiar. For example, the mystics may have produced works that seem special and innovative to us, but they were very much children of their time. The works of Hildegard, unique as they may be, could have never been produced outside of the author's Latin Christian environment. She doesn't need to conform to that environment, but we still need this context to explain her work.
Now to your question, if someone wanted to create something "as puzzling as the Voynich MS", the most puzzling would probably be to write nonsense text according to some rules (ala Timm), because then it would be unsolvable, hence forever puzzling. But I'm not sure if this is the right question to ask, since we don't even know if the MS was made with the intent of confusing others. It may simply have been a private exercise (by a group of people), which happens to puzzle us.
RE: Who has the Voynichese mindset more? - Mark Knowles - 02-03-2023
(02-03-2023, 12:15 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Completely new things are rare, and inventions often build upon earlier concepts.This is very much the perspective that some of us researchers hold such as Michelle Lewis and myself.
The Voynich script, which is the most puzzling thing about it, emerged out of a tradition and didn't appear out of the ether the key is uncovering that tradition from which it emerged. I have my own ideas what tradition that was, but there are alternative possible ideas. But I think those who believe it is outside any tradition have, I think, an ahistorical approach.
Personally, I don't think the goal of the authors was to puzzle. I think the Voynich has the greatest parallel to the work of Giovanni Fontana; the important difference is that his system for producing his script was much simpler, owing to much less experience, on Fontana's part, in that area.
RE: Who has the Voynichese mindset more? - Anton - 02-03-2023
I think that if the VMS were made with the intention of puzzling somebody, it would likely have done that very thing: it would have puzzled somebody, and that, in turn, would not, with good probability, go unrecorded in history. But instead, the first record of it appears only two centuries after its creation - which strongly suggests that it had been privately kept, having been made for concealment rather than puzzling.
RE: Who has the Voynichese mindset more? - Mark Knowles - 02-03-2023
I was wondering if the original intention of the manuscript was to make it public, but in the end it was decided that it was not worth making it public. Almost as if the writers decided that it was a failed project. Maybe they realised that even they could not read their own cipher or that the contents of the manuscript was not of much value i.e. bad medicine or bad science. However the problem with that hypothesis is that they wrote so much. If it was a failure you would think they would have given up on it earlier.
RE: Who has the Voynichese mindset more? - R. Sale - 02-03-2023
More puzzling than pure nonsense is the combination of sense and nonsense. Then there is the puzzle of separating one from the other. There is the investigation to find out which is which.
In the VMs illustrations, the issue of deception is a matter of artistic idiosyncrasy, ambiguity and trickery, plus investigative unfamiliarity with the 'social media' of the C-14 era.
RE: Who has the Voynichese mindset more? - Koen G - 02-03-2023
(02-03-2023, 07:58 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe they realised that even they could not read their own cipher or that the contents of the manuscript was not of much value i.e. bad medicine or bad science.
This kind of reflection would be unusual in the medieval context. If you have a reason (some authority) for writing something down, you are not going to disprove it empirically and then regret that you trusted the source. Especially in the field of medicine, they could get away with a lot. For example it would still take several centuries after the Voynich was written for people to realize that bloodletting wasn't a cure for everything.
RE: Who has the Voynichese mindset more? - Mark Knowles - 03-03-2023
(02-03-2023, 09:38 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I was thinking of the analogy with Giovanni Fontana and wondering why the authors of the Voynich chose not to publicise it.(02-03-2023, 07:58 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe they realised that even they could not read their own cipher or that the contents of the manuscript was not of much value i.e. bad medicine or bad science.
This kind of reflection would be unusual in the medieval context. If you have a reason (some authority) for writing something down, you are not going to disprove it empirically and then regret that you trusted the source. Especially in the field of medicine, they could get away with a lot. For example it would still take several centuries after the Voynich was written for people to realize that bloodletting wasn't a cure for everything.
In my experience of life, psychology can be very individual, so human motivations can cover a very wide spectrum. There are things that other people do that I cannot understand. I find watching sports makes little sense to me. When I was younger I could enjoy playing some sport, but watching sport I have never enjoyed. This is a feature of my own personal psychology, because as I know many people love to watch sport whether in person or on the television.
For this reason understanding the motives of the Voynich author(s) is and probably will always be, even after it is deciphered, the hardest thing. As motivations are complex, specific to each individual and may not have been documented in the Voynich or elsewhere.
RE: Who has the Voynichese mindset more? - R. Sale - 10-03-2023
If the Voynichese mindset is a knowledge of all things that are relevant to the VMs, then its focus is necessarily in the VMs parchment, C-14 dated era, in round terms, anything before 1450 - if at all possible.
Heraldry was a well-developed and widely used system of communication throughout the VMs era.
Does the VMs investigator know medieval heraldry? Both armorial and ecclesiastical?
Does the VMs artist know medieval heraldry? See the tub patterns of VMs Pisces and Aries.
Does the medieval mindset allow for communication through the 'science' of heraldry? Which includes the practice of heraldic canting.
Does the investigator know what the VMs artist knew first hand?