No text, but a visual code

[Jorge_Stolfi]

One of the biggest problems in Voynich research, in my opinion, is that attention has been primarily directed to the script, while the images have been studied individually and almost never as a whole. It's curious because it's the opposite of what people in the Middle Ages would probably do. Illiterate people, of course, but also educated people if they had a codex full of fascinating images in front of them.

This is a very distorted view of Medieval manuscripts.  We may imagine them as being highly illustrated, but that is only because those books with nice pictures had a much better chance of surviving to this day, being exhibited in museums, being reproduced in books, magazines, websites. etc.  And being mentioned here.  

But I bet that more than 80% of all manuscripts written in the 1400s had practically no illustrations, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

And that is also a very distorted view of Voynich research.  I bet that, since before Barschius, ten times as many man-hours have been spent poring at the figures than at the text.   Think of all the time that Petersen and others have spent trying to identify the plants, for instance.  Because there was little that people could do with the text, until it was transcribed into computer-edible form. 

And even now, in the computer-assisted era, most newbie Voynichologists quickly find that their statistical grinding does not lead anywhere, and give up...

All the best, --stolfi