02-06-2026, 10:54 PM
I made another small experiment using the rare-token networks.
This time I started from a speculative assumption of mine: maybe the Text-only, Pharmaceutical and Marginal stars folios are the parts of the manuscript where recipes, procedures, remedies or references are explained. Not necessarily "meaning" in a direct sense, but perhaps more functional or referential text.
So I checked how the Herbal and Biological sections connect to those three "hub-like" sections using only low-frequency tokens.
For each page in Herbal and Biological, I asked: what is the first maximum token frequency needed so that every page in the section shares at least one uncommon token with Text-only, Pharmaceutical or Marginal stars folios?
Results:
I also checked direct shared semi-rare vocabulary between sections:
What I find interesting is not just that both sections eventually connect, but how they connect.
Biological becomes fully covered extremely quickly using only very rare tokens, and most of those links point toward Marginal stars folios. Herbal also connects, but it requires slightly less rare vocabulary and the connections are more distributed.
At the same time, Herbal and Biological do share a considerable amount of uncommon vocabulary directly between them. So this is not simply a case of isolated sections. But even then, Marginal stars still remains the strongest lexical attractor for both.
That is probably the most interesting part of the analysis so far.
Of course this does not prove semantic meaning. But if those hub-like sections really contain some kind of explanatory, procedural or referential content, then this starts looking less like random local repetition and more like selective reuse of uncommon vocabulary between specific textual communities.
This time I started from a speculative assumption of mine: maybe the Text-only, Pharmaceutical and Marginal stars folios are the parts of the manuscript where recipes, procedures, remedies or references are explained. Not necessarily "meaning" in a direct sense, but perhaps more functional or referential text.
So I checked how the Herbal and Biological sections connect to those three "hub-like" sections using only low-frequency tokens.
For each page in Herbal and Biological, I asked: what is the first maximum token frequency needed so that every page in the section shares at least one uncommon token with Text-only, Pharmaceutical or Marginal stars folios?
Results:
| Source section | Full coverage threshold | Distribution of links |
|---|---|---|
| Biological (balneological) | max token freq = 3 | 75% Stars, 15% Text-only, 10% Pharmaceutical |
| Herbal | max token freq = 6 | 58% Stars, 20% Text-only, 22% Pharmaceutical |
I also checked direct shared semi-rare vocabulary between sections:
| Section pair | Shared semi-rare tokens |
|---|---|
| Herbal ↔ Marginal stars | 560 |
| Biological ↔ Marginal stars | 319 |
| Herbal ↔ Biological | 249 |
| Herbal ↔ Text-only | 208 |
| Biological ↔ Text-only | 106 |
What I find interesting is not just that both sections eventually connect, but how they connect.
Biological becomes fully covered extremely quickly using only very rare tokens, and most of those links point toward Marginal stars folios. Herbal also connects, but it requires slightly less rare vocabulary and the connections are more distributed.
At the same time, Herbal and Biological do share a considerable amount of uncommon vocabulary directly between them. So this is not simply a case of isolated sections. But even then, Marginal stars still remains the strongest lexical attractor for both.
That is probably the most interesting part of the analysis so far.
Of course this does not prove semantic meaning. But if those hub-like sections really contain some kind of explanatory, procedural or referential content, then this starts looking less like random local repetition and more like selective reuse of uncommon vocabulary between specific textual communities.