No text, but a visual code

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Are you trying to fit your theory into another participant’s thread?

 
I am giving objections against the thread's premise.  Like you were doing.  Any objection is of course an alternative explanation.  Or do you mean that, on each thread, only posts that agree with its premise are allowed? 

Yes, I’ve heard your assumptions that all the authors of VMS are very stupid, incompetent, and incapable of doing anything, so it’s impossible to analyze this book.

 
I never said such things.

My claim is that the Scribe who copied the Author's draft to vellum was not very bright, so that when he copied decorative illustrations from other books he usually misunderstood them. 

Which is a possibility that one must consider when trying to interpret the images as a "visual code".  Can we trust that the details we see were intentional?  If the "perfume bottle" on f85r2 was indeed a urine sample flask, what else could the "artist" have got wrong?

The bulges of the blue cloud are not very similar to those on Oresme. They’re too simple and uncomplicated. When you want to draw a cloud and emphasize its formlessness, you can do so using this kind of pattern.

Yes, because at the time the Scribe did not know that a cloudband was a specific design with a specific conventional meaning (the boundary between Heavenly and Earthly domains).  He did not recognize it as a stylized cloud band, and drew it as the edge of a pool.

I remember that in Balneis Puteolanum, naked women bathed in green water bodies. Did I prove that balneology talks about lakes?

No, that does not prove anything.  But given the many resemblances between the Bio section and the Balneis (like the "water slide" on f75r), it is pretty likely that those green areas do represent lakes and pools.  Al least as the fist layer of meaning -- that is, "pools" is indeed what the Scribe expected/wanted people to see when they looked at those figures. 

It is less certain, but still likely, that there is a second layer of meaning (like anatomy) hidden under that "balneological" appearance.  This has been discussed elsewhere.

I remember that in the Aztec herbal, there was a drawing of a plant on the page along with text describing it. Did I prove that VMS is an Aztec herbal?

No, because there are zillions of other non-Aztec herbals that all look like that.  Probability theory explains when such "coincidences" are significant and when they are not.

All the best, -- stolfi

But [Rosettes is a map of a region of Italy] is not provable, is it?

But some people find a lot of coincidences...

Like which?

All the best, --stolfi