17-11-2024, 03:17 PM
Apologies if this has already been covered. I'm just wondering if such a thing would even be possible to prove. For example, lets assume that a few scribes from the 15th century knew that a local ruler is willing to pay a lot of money for obscure/occult books and they decided to make one in a script that visually has some resemblance to a real language but has no meaning.
We know that certain symbols are almost exclusively used as suffixes or prefixes so they must have had some algorithm/method for generating the text. If someone finds a convincing method for generating voynichese words (maybe that's already been done, idk) would that be enough evidence to conclude it's a medieval hoax? Or what other evidence would be needed?
The problems with this theory are that there was probably no need for the makers of VM to bother with a method for generating words for a meaningless text that they wanted to sell to someone - they could have just arranged the letters totally randomly. Also, there are some words that are concentrated in parts of the book that cover similar topics which could suggest that the text actually has meaning - or it could suggest that the scribe who worked on the herbal parts maybe had one method for generating words and the scribe who worked on the cosmological part had a slightly different method.
We know that certain symbols are almost exclusively used as suffixes or prefixes so they must have had some algorithm/method for generating the text. If someone finds a convincing method for generating voynichese words (maybe that's already been done, idk) would that be enough evidence to conclude it's a medieval hoax? Or what other evidence would be needed?
The problems with this theory are that there was probably no need for the makers of VM to bother with a method for generating words for a meaningless text that they wanted to sell to someone - they could have just arranged the letters totally randomly. Also, there are some words that are concentrated in parts of the book that cover similar topics which could suggest that the text actually has meaning - or it could suggest that the scribe who worked on the herbal parts maybe had one method for generating words and the scribe who worked on the cosmological part had a slightly different method.