02-06-2026, 11:01 AM
This goes one step further from my previous rare-token network analysis. The following results make me think that the MS may have a meaning.
Previously I focused mostly on page-to-page connections using semi-rare tokens. This time I wanted to check whether those connections were actually meaningful, or if they were simply an artifact of section size. After all, large sections like Herbal naturally contain much more text, so they also have many more opportunities to share tokens with other parts of the manuscript.
So I built a null model. I used rare and semi-rare tokens appearing between 2 and 10 times across the manuscript and compared the real section-to-section connections against randomized versions of the same data. The null model preserves how many times each token appears and how many pages it occupies, but randomizes where those appearances occur. In other words, it estimates what level of cross-section overlap we would expect simply by chance.
This is the raw heatmap of connections.
The graph below shows the raw shared-token structure between sections using semi-rare vocabulary (max rare frequency = 10).
The heatmap and raw graph look interesting. Herbal and marginal stars connected to almost everything, but very strong together. This initially seemed interesting, but after normalization some of those links almost completely disappeared. The reason is simple: Herbal is huge. Given the amount of text in that section, a high number of random overlaps is statistically expected.
What survived the null model was much more interesting.
The strongest surviving connections are not simply the largest sections. Instead, the Marginal stars section repeatedly shows much stronger lexical overlap than expected with several different areas of the manuscript, especially Biological, Text-only and Cosmological folios. This is important because the effect remains even after correcting for text volume and token frequency distribution.
After applying the null model, the structure changes considerably. Edge labels show observed shared rare tokens versus expected random overlap.
What caught my attention is that Marginal stars still behaves like an anomalous connector section even after normalization. Meanwhile some visually related sections, like Astronomical and Cosmological, are not nearly as dominant as one might intuitivly expect.
I think this potentially changes the interpretation of these folios. Instead of just being isolated thematic sections, some pages may actually function as lexical bridges or references between different textual areas of the manuscript.
The large hubs themselves are also interesting. The strongest hubs remain mostly concentrated in Marginal stars and Text-only folios:
f111r, f111v, f108v, f115v, f86v5, f86v6
What I find difficult to explain under a completely meaningless-text hypothesis is not just the existence of repeated tokens, but the existence of selective cross-sectional structure after normalization. It would be relatively easy to generate pseudo-language with local repetition. It is much harder to accidentally generate pages that repeatedly behave as connectors between specific textual communities while still preserving coherent statistical structure.
Of course this still does not prove semantic meaning. Shared vocabulary could also emerge from formulaic writing, structural markers, categories, references, or repeated textual functions rather than direct semantic content. But I do think the results are becoming harder to reconcile with a purely random distribution of semi-rare tokens.
One possible interpretation is that some sections may contain more referential or organizational language than others. If so, pages from Marginal stars and some Text-only folios could potentially be pointing toward recipes, plants, biological processes, or other content elsewhere in the manuscript. Even if the actual meaning remains unknown, the internal organization of the text may already be partially visible through these rare-token networks.
Previously I focused mostly on page-to-page connections using semi-rare tokens. This time I wanted to check whether those connections were actually meaningful, or if they were simply an artifact of section size. After all, large sections like Herbal naturally contain much more text, so they also have many more opportunities to share tokens with other parts of the manuscript.
So I built a null model. I used rare and semi-rare tokens appearing between 2 and 10 times across the manuscript and compared the real section-to-section connections against randomized versions of the same data. The null model preserves how many times each token appears and how many pages it occupies, but randomizes where those appearances occur. In other words, it estimates what level of cross-section overlap we would expect simply by chance.
This is the raw heatmap of connections.
The graph below shows the raw shared-token structure between sections using semi-rare vocabulary (max rare frequency = 10).
The heatmap and raw graph look interesting. Herbal and marginal stars connected to almost everything, but very strong together. This initially seemed interesting, but after normalization some of those links almost completely disappeared. The reason is simple: Herbal is huge. Given the amount of text in that section, a high number of random overlaps is statistically expected.
What survived the null model was much more interesting.
The strongest surviving connections are not simply the largest sections. Instead, the Marginal stars section repeatedly shows much stronger lexical overlap than expected with several different areas of the manuscript, especially Biological, Text-only and Cosmological folios. This is important because the effect remains even after correcting for text volume and token frequency distribution.
After applying the null model, the structure changes considerably. Edge labels show observed shared rare tokens versus expected random overlap.
What caught my attention is that Marginal stars still behaves like an anomalous connector section even after normalization. Meanwhile some visually related sections, like Astronomical and Cosmological, are not nearly as dominant as one might intuitivly expect.
I think this potentially changes the interpretation of these folios. Instead of just being isolated thematic sections, some pages may actually function as lexical bridges or references between different textual areas of the manuscript.
The large hubs themselves are also interesting. The strongest hubs remain mostly concentrated in Marginal stars and Text-only folios:
f111r, f111v, f108v, f115v, f86v5, f86v6
What I find difficult to explain under a completely meaningless-text hypothesis is not just the existence of repeated tokens, but the existence of selective cross-sectional structure after normalization. It would be relatively easy to generate pseudo-language with local repetition. It is much harder to accidentally generate pages that repeatedly behave as connectors between specific textual communities while still preserving coherent statistical structure.
Of course this still does not prove semantic meaning. Shared vocabulary could also emerge from formulaic writing, structural markers, categories, references, or repeated textual functions rather than direct semantic content. But I do think the results are becoming harder to reconcile with a purely random distribution of semi-rare tokens.
One possible interpretation is that some sections may contain more referential or organizational language than others. If so, pages from Marginal stars and some Text-only folios could potentially be pointing toward recipes, plants, biological processes, or other content elsewhere in the manuscript. Even if the actual meaning remains unknown, the internal organization of the text may already be partially visible through these rare-token networks.
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