17-11-2022, 10:38 PM
Marco wrote:
"Showing similar lists in actual medieval manuscripts, or at least actual books of any kind, would clarify the point being made"
The quest for a precedent for what I imagine the Voynich text might be goes on.
Needless to say I struggle to find anything remotely like it.
So I am forced back upon the possibility that the Voynich text is a singular creation.
While it is not as weird as some suppose – it is not from-another-planet weird – it is singular in many respects, and we struggle to find precedents for many aspects of the text. By any estimation, it is an outlier.
So we must leave open the possibility that it is a type of text without precedent.
Regarding this, I am again drawn to passages in the natural scientific works of Nicholas of Cusa where – conversing with a ‘Layman’ - he foreshadows a totally new way of assessing natural resources and a totally new type of book recording the same:
Orator: You have now explained sufficiently the reasons why you wish for the weights of things to be measured by means of a weight-scale and to be recorded both serially and multiply. For, indeed, we see that that book would be very useful. And we see that the under-taking of it by great men ought to be urged, so that in different
provinces [experimental weights] would be registered and would be collected into one [book], so that we would more readily be brought
to many things that are [now] hidden to us. And I will not cease everywhere to promote its being done.
Layman: If you care for me, then be diligent [in this task]
In the absence of any tangible examples of an inventory such as I suggest the Voynich may be, I can point to literary foreshadowings of such an experimental type of work.
As it happened, Cusanus’ approach to the natural sciences went nowhere and the type of text envisaged in this passage did not proliferate. There might have been but one attempt at it.
More generally, in defense of my position, when we have finally translated nearly every weird, mysterious, arcane text in history it is almost always an inventory or similiar. What did we find in heiroglyphs, cuneiform etc? Tax records. The earliest writings were inventories and records.
In this case too it seems more likely to me that the Voynich is some form of inventory than it is a philosophical or medical treatise. There is strong evidence, anyway, that it is not the prose it appears to be. If not prose, then what? Similarly confounding texts in history have disappointed and turned out to be inventories.
"Showing similar lists in actual medieval manuscripts, or at least actual books of any kind, would clarify the point being made"
The quest for a precedent for what I imagine the Voynich text might be goes on.
Needless to say I struggle to find anything remotely like it.
So I am forced back upon the possibility that the Voynich text is a singular creation.
While it is not as weird as some suppose – it is not from-another-planet weird – it is singular in many respects, and we struggle to find precedents for many aspects of the text. By any estimation, it is an outlier.
So we must leave open the possibility that it is a type of text without precedent.
Regarding this, I am again drawn to passages in the natural scientific works of Nicholas of Cusa where – conversing with a ‘Layman’ - he foreshadows a totally new way of assessing natural resources and a totally new type of book recording the same:
Orator: You have now explained sufficiently the reasons why you wish for the weights of things to be measured by means of a weight-scale and to be recorded both serially and multiply. For, indeed, we see that that book would be very useful. And we see that the under-taking of it by great men ought to be urged, so that in different
provinces [experimental weights] would be registered and would be collected into one [book], so that we would more readily be brought
to many things that are [now] hidden to us. And I will not cease everywhere to promote its being done.
Layman: If you care for me, then be diligent [in this task]
In the absence of any tangible examples of an inventory such as I suggest the Voynich may be, I can point to literary foreshadowings of such an experimental type of work.
As it happened, Cusanus’ approach to the natural sciences went nowhere and the type of text envisaged in this passage did not proliferate. There might have been but one attempt at it.
More generally, in defense of my position, when we have finally translated nearly every weird, mysterious, arcane text in history it is almost always an inventory or similiar. What did we find in heiroglyphs, cuneiform etc? Tax records. The earliest writings were inventories and records.
In this case too it seems more likely to me that the Voynich is some form of inventory than it is a philosophical or medical treatise. There is strong evidence, anyway, that it is not the prose it appears to be. If not prose, then what? Similarly confounding texts in history have disappointed and turned out to be inventories.