Could the Voynich Author Be a "Ramanujan-style" Anomaly?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Of course, these are all assumptions, and I can’t prove it... But at the very least, this is a reminder that sometimes you need to doubt. Even your own words  

Well, I am quite convinced that it is not encrypted and not gibberish, for the reasons you know.  But I will try to put that aside those reasons for the moment and keep discussing other arguments against it being encrypted.

Both are rather laborious to encode and decode.

2). VMS is hardly some kind of fairy tale. It’s unlikely that the text spanning 200 pages is coherent. The maximum is Quire 13 and Pharma

 

I agree that each page of Herbal, Astro/Cosmo, and Zodiac is almost certainly an independent unit of meaning that would and could be read directly without necessarily reading any other page.  I even think that the same hold for Pharma -- since that section seems to be mainly a list of plants with names, and the text of each paragraph is probably  something like "the plants above are generally good for X Y and Z"  -- hence independent of the other parags and other pages.

However, Bio/Balneo is clearly a continuous text, not a set of separate entries to be accessed in random order.  There are no section headers or marginal notes that would tell the reader where he should start reading to get the information he needs.  

Thus I stand by the objections I posted before.  A complex encryption is unlikely because it would make the book to hard to read. There seems to be no good reason to encrypt the whole book.  Encryption would very likely destroy the "natural-language-like" statistics like Zipf law, vocabulary size, entropy per word.

There are a few examples of whole books being encrypted, but in the cases I know there are good reasons for the encryption, which do not seem to apply to the VMS.

• The Copiale Cipher has the rituals of a Masonic-like secret society that was persecuted at the time, and for which the fun of belonging was mainly in it being secret.
  
• The Rohonc codex, according to Rafal, is not really encrypted, but rather a transcription of some deaf sign language.
  

Are there any examples of an encrypted manuscript book from that epoch with contents and illustrations similar to those of the VMS?                                                                                                                                                       
Of course these arguments are not proof, but make encryption rather unlikely.  On the other hand, the word length statistics and word structure make you-know-which alternative more likely...

All the best, --stolfi

[ololololo]

Encryption would very likely destroy the "natural-language-like" statistics like Zipf law

That’s far from certain. To say that, you need to know how the cipher works. But I’m not an expert here…

[chenxiang]

I think you have put forward a good and interesting argument. I wouldn't go as far as you have.

However, I think is not unreasonable to argue that as the Voynich manuscript is a very unusual historical object the person who produced it may have been an unusual person with unusual abilities. If the person who wrote the manuscript was a true genius then it would make it that much harder to decipher.

Thank you very much for your reply, Mark. You are absolutely right, and I really appreciate you pointing that out. Saying the author was a "true genius with unusual abilities" is much more reasonable and academically sound than my direct comparison to Ramanujan. It also makes the difficulty of deciphering the manuscript even more profound. I agree with your perspective entirely.

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The answer to “Could it be …?” is always “Yes.”

如果只是问“有没有可能……”，答案永远是“有可能”。

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I find the cipher too unstructured given its complex structure, with too many exceptions—that doesn't fit with a genius.

Thank you for the reply and the Chinese translation, JoJo_Jost! You are right—"Could it be" is always "Yes," and the real challenge is finding the structure.

I also really appreciate your edit about the cipher being too unstructured with too many exceptions to fit a genius. That is a very strong point. I hadn't thought about it that way. If a genius created this, the underlying system should probably be perfectly elegant, not messy. This really gives me something to think about. Thank you for sharing your perspective!

[chenxiang]

It seems that the author’s knowledge, particularly the knowledge he presented in the book, was quite modern for his time. For example, he must have had some understanding of herbalism and astrology.
I believe it is more likely that the author did not discover something great or anticipate some kind of discovery. Rather, he wanted to understand a topic that was atypical for the 15th century, but due to a lack of knowledge, he arrived at incorrect conclusions.
 
Perhaps he was trying to engage in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Perhaps he wanted to learn more about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. However, back then, knowledge was rather limited, and so the author could explain it in his own way. 

What about the cipher? Well, it’s most likely based on homophonic ciphers of that time, just made more complex in its own way.

I pretty much agree with this view; I think it's the most reasonable in theory.

[chenxiang]

Hi Chenxiang, 

For only 16 you seem very mature and intelligent for your age.
I think you are 100% correct, the VMS is truly unique so the person(s) behind it are likely unique also. So your intuition is correct (I think). 

There are lots of counterarguments to the broader theory, as you acknowledge. 

Some of the fun of the Voynich Manuscript is that it is a "sandbox" for ideas and tests, another is that researching and learning about "why you are probably wrong" can lead to a lot of learning about various things of interest and you will find you learn more than you would by being "the stubborn rock in the sea defying the waves" and refusing to look past your idea. These things you learn usually develop your ideas further, or snuff them out and lead to other thoughts and ideas.. the cycle continues, and the more you learn.

Specifically on the idea that the VMS was the work of one person I would recommend Lisa Fagin Davis "Many Scribes Theory". Secondly I would recommend Koen's work on A/B plants. I can't seem to find the links to them now, but hopefully you can find / someone can put it here. Anyway, the evidence put forward seems to show that we have something like 6 scribes and at least 2 "artists", maybe this number is 6 also. The point is that several people surely worked on the Voynich manuscript we see today, it doesn't mean there can't be one author, or that it is not a copy. However it does mean "one persons work" is a theory, and multiple peoples work on a manuscript is what we are looking at today. 

I hope that was some food for thought at least and a nudge into the adventure that is Voynich research. Best of luck!

Thank you for the kind words and the valuable advice. I completely agree with the "sandbox" mindset—I'm here to learn, not to defend a stubborn theory. The "stubborn rock in the sea" analogy is great, and I hope to use the counterarguments to refine my way of thinking.

You brought up a fascinating point about Lisa Fagin Davis's "Many Scribes Theory" and Koen's work on the A/B plants. This actually makes me question my own "Ramanujan-style anomaly" premise. Ramanujan was an isolated, singular genius. But if we are looking at the work of 6 scribes and 2 artists, how does the "genius" factor apply?

Here's my thought process: Could it be that the original author (the one who invented the script and system) was the true "genius," but the manuscript we see today is a corrupted, composite copy made by later scribes who didn't fully understand the underlying logic? That would explain the inconsistencies and "exceptions" JoJo_Jost pointed out earlier.

Alternatively, could the "genius" be collective? If multiple scribes produced text that maintains such consistent statistical properties (like Zipf's law), they must have been following a highly disciplined set of rules.

My question for you: When Lisa Fagin Davis talks about multiple scribes, does the statistical analysis show they were copying a pre-existing text, or does it look like they were each composing new text using a shared codebook? And regarding the A/B plants, do those suggest different artists, or different botanical sources compiled into one book?

I will definitely look up their work. If you or anyone else has the links to those threads, I would be very grateful. Thanks again for the nudge into the adventure!

[ololololo]

And regarding the A/B plants, do those suggest different artists, or different botanical sources compiled into one book?

Rather, it seems to be the work of different artists. If you take a closer look at the plants in Herbal B, you’ll notice that they’re often drawn carelessly. For example, in some places the artist used little ink, while in others the ink was rather thin. Moreover, the plants in Herbal B look similar to each other (examples in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

[ololololo]

[*]The Copiale Cipher has the rituals of a Masonic-like secret society that was persecuted at the time, and for which the fun of belonging was mainly in it being secret.

[*]The Rohonc codex, according to Rafal, is not really encrypted, but rather a transcription of some deaf sign language.

Oh, you’re using my favorite examples against me…

That’s far from certain. To say that, you need to know how the cipher works. But I’m not an expert here…

For example, nulls can somewhat distort the statistics of ciphertext. Perhaps there are some other unaccounted factors?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Oh, you’re using my favorite examples against me…  

Rather, I am just pointing out that those two examples are not good analogs for the VMS.

For example, nulls can somewhat distort the statistics of ciphertext. Perhaps there are some other unaccounted factors?

As I wrote in a previous post, nulls will replace each word type by several different word types.  That would ruin the Zipf plot (and other statistics expected from natural languages) unless the nulls are chosen with specific non-uniform probabilities. 

Said another way, if the encoding preserves the Zipf plot and other "natural language" statistics without complicated and specific tricks, it probably is such that each word type of the plaintext is mapped to a single word type of the ciphertext.  That pretty much excludes Vigenère-like and polyalphabetic ciphers, and encodings with random nulls.  

Codebook ciphers have that property, or any character-based encoding algorithm that is deterministic and is reset at each token.  

However, an encoding that is one-to-one on word types can be cracked if the plaintext is running prose in a known (or correctly guessed) language.  One can look for patterns of words that are created by the language's grammar -- like articles before nouns in German and Romance languages, verb-at-the-end for German, etc.  But all attempts to do this with Voynichese have failed...

All the best,--stolfi

[ololololo]

But all attempts to do this with Voynichese have failed...

Well, for now, the counterargument remains that the manuscript text is not connected, and encrypting it is relatively easy. By the way, we don’t know the length of the plaintext or how much it is distorted by the cipher. 

I’m hearing very little from you about the statistics of verbose ciphers... What about them?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I’m hearing very little from you about the statistics of verbose ciphers... What about them?

What do you mean? 

I understand "verbose cipher" to be cipher that produces a ciphertext substantially longer than the input plaintext.  But that is a vast class.  I don't see how one can say anything about their statistics.

Of is "verbose cipher" a cryptology jargon term with a more specific meaning?

All the best, --stolfi