27-06-2025, 04:14 PM
No, I was addressing a more abstract idea regarding the creation process of the VM.
From an evolutionary perspective, success = survival + reproduction. This can also be applied to cultural achievements and inventions like the book printing technique, writing, the wheel, fire, religious ideas, fashions.
A successful technique survives by being spread from people to people and even if it goes extinct, tends to re-evolve for the sheer need as soon as someone else independently has the same idea. Eventually most become obsolete and go extinct much like biological species. Writing books on parchment was replaced by printed books on paper for obvious reasons. In this regard, the concept of herbals as a collection of plants and their uses can be considered very successful, having enjoyed popularity from antiquity until today. Authors still produce herbals today, both for professional and folk medicine use.
But the VM as the concept of a book of unreadable text with unreadable imagery? It is more like an evolutionary freak event that popped up and disappeared again. The VM as physical object can be considered a fossil of an extinct technique. Much like the hard to interpret remains of a rare and short-lived extinct species, which physiology and ecology remains unknown due to lack of fossil record. It wasn't an evolutionary success-story and quickly got outcompeted by others.
Since such encrypted books with weird imagery did not gain popularity around the time the VM was created and the idea did not reappear in the next 600 years, we can deduct that there simply was neither the need nor desire to do something like that again.
.)If the VM was a commercially successful hoax (which seems absurd regarding its unneccessary complexity that nobody in the 15th century would have uncovered), why did it remain at one attempt? Nobody else had a similar idea to scam people? Such forgeries tend to come in waves and often in reaction to a demand once the first such exoic works pop up. Apart from the single Salani page, we know nothing of such or even remotely similar hoaxes.
.)If the VM was a practical method to conceal information (it would be very viable since nobody managed to crack it until today), same consideration. It didn't spread and nobody ever had a similar idea to create such encrypted books. And the same can be said for mnemonic or spiritual exercises, though arguably in a lesser regard as it would be a highly personal work.
The point I am trying to make is - the uniqueness of the VM creation process as an invention or cultural achievement is a strong argument against a broader usability. It is evidence that the VM was created in a niche environment under rather stringent prerequisites that were necessary for its creation to be possible. And that the use case of the mechanism involved is similarly narrow and not practical or of interest for a broader audience.
Leonardo da Vinci used mirror writing, something that, while not unique, never gained popularity. It was useful to him but isn't feasible for most people. I propose that the VM and the involved creation process also was (in whatever way) useful and important for its creator but not necessarily beyond that. The probability of this hypothesis declines with the number of people involved but that is another matter.
From an evolutionary perspective, success = survival + reproduction. This can also be applied to cultural achievements and inventions like the book printing technique, writing, the wheel, fire, religious ideas, fashions.
A successful technique survives by being spread from people to people and even if it goes extinct, tends to re-evolve for the sheer need as soon as someone else independently has the same idea. Eventually most become obsolete and go extinct much like biological species. Writing books on parchment was replaced by printed books on paper for obvious reasons. In this regard, the concept of herbals as a collection of plants and their uses can be considered very successful, having enjoyed popularity from antiquity until today. Authors still produce herbals today, both for professional and folk medicine use.
But the VM as the concept of a book of unreadable text with unreadable imagery? It is more like an evolutionary freak event that popped up and disappeared again. The VM as physical object can be considered a fossil of an extinct technique. Much like the hard to interpret remains of a rare and short-lived extinct species, which physiology and ecology remains unknown due to lack of fossil record. It wasn't an evolutionary success-story and quickly got outcompeted by others.
Since such encrypted books with weird imagery did not gain popularity around the time the VM was created and the idea did not reappear in the next 600 years, we can deduct that there simply was neither the need nor desire to do something like that again.
.)If the VM was a commercially successful hoax (which seems absurd regarding its unneccessary complexity that nobody in the 15th century would have uncovered), why did it remain at one attempt? Nobody else had a similar idea to scam people? Such forgeries tend to come in waves and often in reaction to a demand once the first such exoic works pop up. Apart from the single Salani page, we know nothing of such or even remotely similar hoaxes.
.)If the VM was a practical method to conceal information (it would be very viable since nobody managed to crack it until today), same consideration. It didn't spread and nobody ever had a similar idea to create such encrypted books. And the same can be said for mnemonic or spiritual exercises, though arguably in a lesser regard as it would be a highly personal work.
The point I am trying to make is - the uniqueness of the VM creation process as an invention or cultural achievement is a strong argument against a broader usability. It is evidence that the VM was created in a niche environment under rather stringent prerequisites that were necessary for its creation to be possible. And that the use case of the mechanism involved is similarly narrow and not practical or of interest for a broader audience.
Leonardo da Vinci used mirror writing, something that, while not unique, never gained popularity. It was useful to him but isn't feasible for most people. I propose that the VM and the involved creation process also was (in whatever way) useful and important for its creator but not necessarily beyond that. The probability of this hypothesis declines with the number of people involved but that is another matter.