06-02-2025, 06:41 PM
According to a long established tradition we should hijack this thread and start arguing about some minor points. Sorry, but that's the way it is 
Why? Voynichese is obviously an invented script, the vellum has been dated, so it's very likely no older than early 1400s. Knowing that the scribe was probably familiar with Humanistic minuscule gives zero new information. I frankly cannot reliably tell Currier A from Currier B, and I'm quite happy knowing that there are people out there who can and do investigate all these hands and scribes, but I won't pretend being able to understand something that I don't.
More generally, I think it makes sense to thoroughly learn things that are relevant to your line of investigation, but it's quite enough just to be aware that some other domains exist without trying to cover everything.
Again, I've seen maybe about 20 various medieval herbals, mostly when I was trying to find potential signature matches for the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. squiggle. The only thing relevant to text analysis that I learned was that occasionally words would split into individual letters to accommodate for stems and branches in herbals, there is nothing unusual about this. I know nothing about plants, so I won't even try guessing. And I probably should be ashamed, but I still have no idea which of the plant drawings in the Voynich MS was confused with a sunflower. I mean, there are a few sunflowery plants there, and I don't really care which one it was.
Strong agree here. It's very hard to find the right model for Voynichese, if you don't know what's wrong with Voynichese in the first place.
...at least be generally aware of who's doing what. I think it's perfectly fine to not know the details of a particular investigation if it lies quite far from what you are doing, but it definitely helps to understand who to follow if you need more information on a particular topic. Most VMS knowledge (beyond what's available on voynich.nu) has not been properly codified, so you have to remember at least a few (nick)names.
Or ignore it completely, if there is definitely no overlap and you are not looking for more clues. I strongly believe that in some cases focus is more important than the scope of knowledge. There is always the tradeoff of digging in versus looking around, you can't do both at the same time.
Read those that you find interesting/relevant
(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Learn about paleography; the different handwriting scripts/styles around the time of the radiocarbon dating for languages such as Latin, Romance and Germanic languages, Greek, maybe English. I'm not sure about other language families.
Why? Voynichese is obviously an invented script, the vellum has been dated, so it's very likely no older than early 1400s. Knowing that the scribe was probably familiar with Humanistic minuscule gives zero new information. I frankly cannot reliably tell Currier A from Currier B, and I'm quite happy knowing that there are people out there who can and do investigate all these hands and scribes, but I won't pretend being able to understand something that I don't.
More generally, I think it makes sense to thoroughly learn things that are relevant to your line of investigation, but it's quite enough just to be aware that some other domains exist without trying to cover everything.
(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Get an overview of medieval herbals; have a look at some of them mentioned here in this forum.
Again, I've seen maybe about 20 various medieval herbals, mostly when I was trying to find potential signature matches for the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. squiggle. The only thing relevant to text analysis that I learned was that occasionally words would split into individual letters to accommodate for stems and branches in herbals, there is nothing unusual about this. I know nothing about plants, so I won't even try guessing. And I probably should be ashamed, but I still have no idea which of the plant drawings in the Voynich MS was confused with a sunflower. I mean, there are a few sunflowery plants there, and I don't really care which one it was.
(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Learn about some statistical laws of texts and ciphers, learn about the concepts of Entropy and Conditional Entropy (Information Theory, not Thermodynamics)
Strong agree here. It's very hard to find the right model for Voynichese, if you don't know what's wrong with Voynichese in the first place.
(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Read the work of other researchers
...at least be generally aware of who's doing what. I think it's perfectly fine to not know the details of a particular investigation if it lies quite far from what you are doing, but it definitely helps to understand who to follow if you need more information on a particular topic. Most VMS knowledge (beyond what's available on voynich.nu) has not been properly codified, so you have to remember at least a few (nick)names.
(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Keep up with the latest research in other areas (e.g. illustrations, provenance, etc) - even if it's not what interests you the most
Or ignore it completely, if there is definitely no overlap and you are not looking for more clues. I strongly believe that in some cases focus is more important than the scope of knowledge. There is always the tradeoff of digging in versus looking around, you can't do both at the same time.
(06-02-2025, 06:03 PM)RadioFM wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Read most (if not all) threads in the Analysis of the text forum and Marginalia, even the old ones
Read those that you find interesting/relevant