Voynich theories and Voynich solutions

[ReneZ]

The fundamental difference between Etruscan research and Voynich MS text research is, of course, that the is no doubt at all that the Etruscan texts are meaningful text in a real language that was spoken by people and written down.

At the same time, there have been at least two people that I remember who were solving (i.e. trying to ....) both Voynichese and Etruscan in parallel with the same approach. I don't remember their names, but as far as I am concerned, that doesn't really seem to matter a lot.

There was a point about collaboration. This has not happened a lot, but I am aware of some good examples, e.g. the nice results presented at Stephen Bax' blog by Marco and Darren Worley.
I have collaborated closely and for an extended time with Gabriel Landini.

This works when people have a common goal (best clearly defined, i.e. not just 'solve the Voynich MS').
It fails when the goal is too much based on someone's conviction of the 'right way to go' because it will be hard to find others who will agree with it.
What may help is when people have complementary skills.


For what concerns the 'origin' of the MS, this is a topic that allows for some confusion.
When I talk (or write) about it, I mean the place where this particular MS was penned down.
The majority of indications, both from the materials, from the style of writing and the style of drawing betray the origin of the MS *in this sense* (at least to people trained in such matters).
Of course, there can be a combination of influences if the author(s)/scribe(s) originate from different places or moved around.

That the work may derive from earlier sources that also originate from elsewhere is not unlikely.
Whether the style of any such original sources survives in the document is a second "style question".
This requires very specific expertise. One can see some examples of these types of discussions in
the descriptions of astronomical manuscripts. They are always quite specific.