14-04-2017, 02:50 PM
OK, I think many will agree that the question of whether the VMS text (apart from pictures therein contained) represents a meaningful message or is meaningless - that this question deserves to be discussed on its own.
Here are my thoughts on the subject.
I support Rene's idea of forming lists of arguments pro and contra.
But prior to composing any such lists, we should, in the first place, agree on what we consider "meaningful" or "meaningless". This might look as idle scholastics, but in fact it is not, because approaches to proving or disproving something largely depend on that "something"'s definition and understanding.
Considering that "meaningful" and "meaningless" are opposites by definition, there are two ways of research here.
a) We could define "meaningful" and then aim either at proving the presence of "meaningfulness" or at disproving its absence. Both will argue towards the text being "meaningful". Let me designate these two methodologies by "MF+" and "MF-", respectively.
b) Alternatively, we could define "meaningless" instead, and then aim at either proving the presence of "meaninglessness" or at disproving its absence. Both will argue towards the text being meaningless. Let me designate these two methodologies by "ML+" and "ML-", respectively.
Offhand, I'm not aware of a good definition of "meaningfulness". I'm sure though, that linguists have more to say on this subject than myself. But perhaps, taking "meaninglessness" as a starting point could be easier. One could define the VMS's text's "meaninglessness" as its having been generated out of a pre-defined alphabet by a procedure which either involves recording results of some random tests or is governed by some deterministic algorithm.
Now on towards the question of whether meaningfulness/meaninglessness can be proved, and how.
MF+. Here, we should positively prove the presence of meaning in the text. I think the only one means for that is to decrypt the Voynichese. Little success in that, so far.
MF-. Here, we should start from the assumption that the text is not meaningful and disprove that assumption. In other words, this is proof ex contrario. Offhand, I can suppose that applied/computational linguistics possess some methods to test whether an unknown text's characteristics are incompatible with meaningless texts. For example (out of my head) - to demonstrate the inner narration structure of the text, to trace co-occurrence patterns, and, more generally - to trace any facts or characteristics which would be highly unlikely to hold true for a meaningless text.
ML+. Here, we should positively prove the presence of meaninglessness of the text. Given the definition of "meaninglessness" that I proposed above, the only way that I can see for that is to propose and successfully test (demonstrate) a text generation procedure which would 1) match all essential characteristics of the VMS text, and 2) be compatible with no later than 15th century level of productive forces of humankind. So far, little success in that as well.
ML-. Here, we should start from the assumption that the text is not meaningless and disprove that assumption. In other words, this is also proof ex contrario. By way of analogy, I can think of any methods of demonstrating that characteristics of the VMS text are not compatible with those of meaningful texts. But this task looks to me exceptionally difficult, since it should not only consider the case of plain text, but also take into account all possible methods of enciphering the source text. In other words, comparisons should be made against characteristics of enciphered meaningful texts - which, of course, differ depending on the type of cipher.
Here are my thoughts on the subject.
I support Rene's idea of forming lists of arguments pro and contra.
But prior to composing any such lists, we should, in the first place, agree on what we consider "meaningful" or "meaningless". This might look as idle scholastics, but in fact it is not, because approaches to proving or disproving something largely depend on that "something"'s definition and understanding.
Considering that "meaningful" and "meaningless" are opposites by definition, there are two ways of research here.
a) We could define "meaningful" and then aim either at proving the presence of "meaningfulness" or at disproving its absence. Both will argue towards the text being "meaningful". Let me designate these two methodologies by "MF+" and "MF-", respectively.
b) Alternatively, we could define "meaningless" instead, and then aim at either proving the presence of "meaninglessness" or at disproving its absence. Both will argue towards the text being meaningless. Let me designate these two methodologies by "ML+" and "ML-", respectively.
Offhand, I'm not aware of a good definition of "meaningfulness". I'm sure though, that linguists have more to say on this subject than myself. But perhaps, taking "meaninglessness" as a starting point could be easier. One could define the VMS's text's "meaninglessness" as its having been generated out of a pre-defined alphabet by a procedure which either involves recording results of some random tests or is governed by some deterministic algorithm.
Now on towards the question of whether meaningfulness/meaninglessness can be proved, and how.
MF+. Here, we should positively prove the presence of meaning in the text. I think the only one means for that is to decrypt the Voynichese. Little success in that, so far.
MF-. Here, we should start from the assumption that the text is not meaningful and disprove that assumption. In other words, this is proof ex contrario. Offhand, I can suppose that applied/computational linguistics possess some methods to test whether an unknown text's characteristics are incompatible with meaningless texts. For example (out of my head) - to demonstrate the inner narration structure of the text, to trace co-occurrence patterns, and, more generally - to trace any facts or characteristics which would be highly unlikely to hold true for a meaningless text.
ML+. Here, we should positively prove the presence of meaninglessness of the text. Given the definition of "meaninglessness" that I proposed above, the only way that I can see for that is to propose and successfully test (demonstrate) a text generation procedure which would 1) match all essential characteristics of the VMS text, and 2) be compatible with no later than 15th century level of productive forces of humankind. So far, little success in that as well.
ML-. Here, we should start from the assumption that the text is not meaningless and disprove that assumption. In other words, this is also proof ex contrario. By way of analogy, I can think of any methods of demonstrating that characteristics of the VMS text are not compatible with those of meaningful texts. But this task looks to me exceptionally difficult, since it should not only consider the case of plain text, but also take into account all possible methods of enciphering the source text. In other words, comparisons should be made against characteristics of enciphered meaningful texts - which, of course, differ depending on the type of cipher.