State of the Voynich 2020

[Koen G]

On January 1st 2017, I conducted a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to find out which beliefs about the VM were strongest in our community. I thought it would be fun to try this again, three years later. Members have come and gone, and people change their minds, so the results may be different this time around.

First and foremost, this is just for fun and has no scientific merit whatsoever. We do not aim to find any consensus, it is just about aggregated personal opinions.

The rules are simple: 

• You must answer yes or no to each question. 
  
• No maybe's allowed, you have to choose. If you believe a statement is 51% likely, then you pick YES. For once, speculation is obligatory.
  
• Answer in a reply to this post. Spolier tags are allowed if you don't want to influence others. Last time two or three people preferred to keep their answers private and PM them to me, that is also allowed.
  
• Try to answer each question, even if you don't have a strong opinion about it (that's better for the dataset )
  
• Please answer in a numbered list to avoid confusion.
  
• I will analyze the results and compare them to 2017 as soon as we have enough submissions.
  

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These are the questions. I recycled the 2017 list and added one question at the end. Please answer in a numbered list with yes or no:

1. Does the text contain any meaning?
   
2. Has the text been purposefully enciphered to conceal its meaning?
   
3. Do the images match the text?
   
4. Are the plants meant to refer to real plants?
   
5. Is the majority of the plants exotic from a European perspective (Asian, African, American...)?
   
6. Have the images been made ambiguous or otherwise strange to conceal their true meaning?
   
7. Is alchemy an important part of the manuscript?
   
8. Is astronomy and/or astrology an important part of the MS?
   
9. Is medicine an important part of the MS?
   
10. Is the MS the creative product of one mind, i.e. an author? (Taking into account the possibility that one or more scribes helped to fashion the physical manuscript)
    
11. Is the MS authored by a known historical figure?
    
12. Will we ever be able to read the MS?
    
13. Will there be any breakthrough in Voynich studies in 2020?
    
14. Is the MS any kind of hoax?
    
15. Have (part of) your views about the MS changed notably over the last few years?
    

[Koen G]

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1. yes
   
2. yes
   
3. yes
   
4. no
   
5. no
   
6. yes
   
7. no
   
8. yes
   
9. no
   
10. no
    
11. no
    
12. yes
    
13. no
    
14. no
    
15. yes
    

I must say I have gotten less certain about several questions. Specifically our ability to ever extract any meaning from the text. I also don't believe anymore that reference to real plants is the main function of the plant images, which is why my answer shifted to "no" on question 4.

[Anton]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. No
6. No
7. No
8. Yes
9. Yes
10. Yes
11. No
12. Yes
13. No
14. No
15. No

[Aga Tentakulus]

1.  yes
2.  Yes
3.  Yes
4.  Yes
5.  No
6.  No
7.  No
8.  Yes
9.  Yes
10. Yes
11. No.
12. Yes
13. No
14. No
15. No

[farmerjohn]

1. Yes
   
2. ?
   
3. Somewhat
   
4. No
   
5. -
   
6. No
   
7. No
   
8. No
   
9. No
   
10. Yes
    
11. ?
    
12. ?
    
13. No
    
14. No
    
15. Yes
    

[Koen G]

There goes my nice dataset :p

[-JKP-]

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1. Does the text contain any meaning?  YES
   
   
2. Has the text been purposefully enciphered to conceal its meaning?  YES
   
   
3. Do the images match the text?                             Hmmmmmm. I really don't know........ but I'm leaning toward YES
   
   
4. Are the plants meant to refer to real plants?   !!!!               You mean ALL of them? They aren't necessarily all the same.        YES
   
   
5. Is the majority of the plants exotic from a European perspective (Asian, African, American...)?  NO!
   
   
6. Have the images been made ambiguous or otherwise strange to conceal their true meaning?  YES
   
   
7. Is alchemy an important part of the manuscript?  NO
   
   
8. Is astronomy and/or astrology an important part of the MS?  YES
   
   
9. Is medicine an important part of the MS?                   I don't know.....     I have to choose?    I used to think it was. I've changed my mind. Maybe minor importance.   NO
   
   
10. Is the MS the creative product of one mind, i.e. an author? (Taking into account the possibility that one or more scribes helped to fashion the physical manuscript). NO
    
    
11. Is the MS authored by a known historical figure?   NO
    
    
12. Will we ever be able to read the MS?   YES
    
    
13. Will there be any breakthrough in Voynich studies in 2020?   YES
    
    
14. Is the MS any kind of hoax?    Hmmmmmm.   NO
    
    
15. Have (part of) your views about the MS changed notably over the last few years?   Hmmmm. Notably. Not really. Details, yes. Notably...   NO
    

[MarcoP]

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    1 Does the text contain any meaning? YES, but I am much less sure about this than I used to be. Timm and Schinner are having a considerable impact on my views. Also, the idea of glossolalia put forward by Geoffrey on this forum is something that has opened new perspectives of meaninglessness to me.

    2 Has the text been purposefully enciphered to conceal its meaning? NO, but Rene's "mod_2" cipher seems to me one of the important new things of 2019. It makes the "cipher" idea more understandable to me, but I am not convinced. In particular, I believe there are features that suggest that Voynichese is a phonetic script (e.g. what Emma and I discussed in our paper, Jacques Guy 1991 Sukhotin paper).

    3 Do the images match the text? YES, why not? Until we can read the text and prove the contrary, this is the simplest assumption. Unless the text is meaningless...

    4 Are the plants meant to refer to real plants? YES - something that changed my views in recent years is Rene's posting about Trinity ms O.2.48. I believe this is in several respects the herbal that comes closer to the VMS. I believe the plants in the "three names" Trinity herbal derive from real plants, though the illustrations are unreliable and the plants cannot be identified.

    5 Is the majority of the plants exotic from a European perspective (Asian, African, American...)? NO (but I believe the herbal text could be non-European, as possibly is the case also for the Trinity "three names" herbal)

    6 Have the images been made ambiguous or otherwise strange to conceal their true meaning? NO - there are several manuscripts with puzzling illustrations, but this is because the concepts they illustrate are different from the modern way of thinking.

    7 Is alchemy an important part of the manuscript? NO, with some doubts about Quire 13.

    8 Is astronomy and/or astrology an important part of the MS? YES: by this I mean that it is a recognizable theme in the illustrations. I don't mean it is the main subject of the whole ms.

    9 Is medicine an important part of the MS? YES: this is what plants, astral bodies, part of plants and jars could have in common. Bathing would also be consistent, but it is less clear that the bathing women are not entirely allegorical.

    10 Is the MS the creative product of one mind, i.e. an author? (Taking into account the possibility that one or more scribes helped to fashion the physical manuscript) YES, but I am far from sure.

    11 Is the MS authored by a known historical figure? NO

    12 Will we ever be able to read the MS? YES (but since I am not sure about 1, who knows?)

    13 Will there be any breakthrough in Voynich studies in 2020? NO - this field moves forward by small steps.

    14 Is the MS any kind of hoax? NO. Discovering the Angelic Languages by Dee and Kelley also changed my views. The VMS could be something similar and I don't see their work as a hoax (though some believe Kelley was an impostor). At least the first of the two languages (Loagaeth) appears to be meaningless and phonetic, quite close to glossolalia. The second one (Enochian) could be even more interesting, being a messy pseudo-linguistic unconscious parody of English. Also relevant about the cipher idea (point 2): Dee and Kelley created their own alphabet, but its goal was not concealing the meaning of their mostly meaningless text.

    15 Have (part of) your views about the MS changed notably over the last few years? YES (see 1, 2, 4, 14).

[bi3mw]

....





    7 Is alchemy an important part of the manuscript? NO, with some doubts about Quire 13.



....

I would like to expressly confirm this statement. However, I have not only some doubts about Quire 13, but I think that an alchemical content is very well possible there.

[Scarecrow]

1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes
4. No
5. No
6. No
7. No
8. Yes
9. Yes
10. No
11. No
12. Yes
13. No
14. No
15. No