1 hour ago
Well Egg, thank for the reasonable thought you have given this discussion, and to both of our viewpoints. It is refreshing.
And your point here probably sums up our different view of all the related levels of "likelyhood". In my case... and maybe because I've had this theorem idea in my pocket for years, and quietly (that is, without openly mentioning it), I've used it... applied it... dozens of times. As you know, especially on this forum, there are a great many comparisons to everything under the Sun, to the Vms illustrations. When they are good, I scramble to open a window to see where it is from... and see, yet again, yep, meets the Theorem requirements. And conversely, I note all the great many things which fill the history of literature, art and science, and are not represented in the Voynich.
Point being, this is not my first rodeo... I try not to be biased when a new feature of the Voynich is brought up, but in my opinion, for me at least, it cannot be ignored. This one took some digging... but I've gotten to the point where I expect it to turn out to be the case, because it always IS the case. So far, anyway.
You, being somewhat new to this observation, this Theorem, and everyone else here who is likewise new to it, try it yourself. But remember the "good comparison" requirement... and, yes, there are a great many bad ones. As a good example is my pet armadillo: I of course believe the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. animal IS an armadillo, and for the reasons I've given. As it applies to my Theorem, though, it goes much further than the many armadillos in print, for the best (to me) comparison is the Gesner illustration of one. I had already thought this... that "on points" it matched best the Voynich "armadillo" on the most features, including copied errors, like the orientation of the scales. Well it turned out that this particular version is ALSO in a book mentioned IN Bolton's Follies, which is a volume Voynich said he "knew by heart", and at least one Genuine Voynich adherent cites as a "go to" for Voynich in his supposed attempt to figure out his Ugly Duckling... it is a Chicken/EggYk problem, which came first? But the point being, like Voynich's association with Gruel, in this and other cases we have an additional supporting factor, butressing the already fulfilled Theorem #1.
But the reason I also bring it up is because that Theorem has an important, related, converse: Bad comparisons may or may not fulfill the theorem. Therefore, many suggested other animals... sheep, pangolins, wolves... oh I can't remember all of them... well most would be in print somewhere by 1910, but some in private collections. I think one was only in Milan. So others make the case THIS or THAT is the actual animal shown, but they don't look as much as the Gesner Armadillo to me. Point being, while I do understand there is a certain level of subjectivity, and someone could continue to insist, say, some rare rodent from Antarctica, discovered in 1913, looks most like it... fine for them, but this is why I generally use this as a tool for myself, for my own Litmus Test of any truly good comparison, to know that I am not fooling myself. It also is a sort of Litmus Test to the level of open mindedness of others... for instance, there is at least one researcher who insists these are NOT Zodiac representations at all, and therefore this is evidence THEIR theory is still possible.
Fine... this is my own test, though. I brought it up here, in public, which I only do about one in ten times, because I wanted to demonstrate it to you... before I knew the answer. It was a risk, but not really a huge one, as I have only seen it succeed.
In your imagined, hypothetical find, yes it would of course be a challenge to my Theorem, and goes to the very reason I invented it. The Theorem is a test, and your designed "find" would of course challenge it. So if one did find this I would, of course, be surprised... but then seek to determine if there was any way such a combination was known to have existed elsewhere, despite what we were told about it, or if the cited example was truly hidden, and so on. If it still remained, it would undermine the success and therefore the value of the Theorem, and be possible evidence that the Voynich was actually old and genuine.
But also, to me, I would see this example, should it arise, as an unresolved issue, more than having a high degree of genuine evidence, for it would be an anomaly in a long line of perfect successes. Yes that is a form of bias... but natural in science, in that if something happens the same exact way hundreds of times, then the data which opposes this can be assumed to be a Purple Cow, and may have some unknown reason for being. That is, I would tend to treat such a find, overall, as an unresolved issue that needed further examination, given it's perfect uniqueness, rather than consider it, alone, would undermine the Theorem as a whole.
So is that an admission of an unscientific bias on my part? I don't think so, and partly for the reasons I just gave... it would be an outlier... more an open question that needed to be resolved, given the perfect record... IMO... so far (I still do not agree with the claimed rarity of the July names, as I feel, personally, they are far too indistinct to pin down as any particular spelling).
And by the way, I point out that in order to test my use of the Theorem, a hypothetical needed to be created, as none currently exist; therefore, again, supporting the Theorem's strength.
When I saw your message this morning... over poached eggs on toast, by the way... sorry, one of my favorites (I sat on the floor in a Salvation Army a dozen years ago, digging through boxes filled with vintage kitchen gadgets until I found that LAST egg cup for the set! I am nothing if not determined... if it is there, I will move Heaven and Earth to find it, small or large a missing item)... when I saw your message, I had assumed you would... due to possibly unclear wording on my part... misunderstood one of my points, that of the relative likely hood of Voynich finding these name spelling and forms, vs. us looking for them, today. But you didn't. Still, I wanted to post the analogy I created to better explain it, and having taken the picture already, and thought it out, maybe it will still be good to post:
I have several containers of fasteners, which I saved from a great man projects over the years. This is just one small one I keep in a kitchen draw, so I hopefully don't have to dig through the many more boxes in the attic. Those are, however, sorted into type: nails, bolts, nuts, screws, machine bolts, lag bolts, and so on... the kitchen box is an assortment of types and materials:
When I do an emergency fix, or build a jig, or support for something, or whatever... I may use metal or wood scraps of all material types, and choose some assortment of fasteners which will work, with little regard for their original purpose. Sort of "Zen and the Art" of off the cuff repair, I suppose. So say I am needing some wooden widget to temporarily solve some problem... It may have Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar parts, and be held together with any number of brass wood screws, along with stainless pan-head sheet metal screws, maybe needing some nails, which could be roofing nails along with 6d and 8d zinc galvanized nails, and so on... If it does not matter to the project, I'll use them.
And this is what I believe we are seeing in much of the Voynich. His creation uses the "parts bin" of varied forms of illustration, spelling, styles, text, which like me, he accumulated over decades.
So to the point here: If someone were to find one of my Frankenstein creations a hundred years from now, they may make observations like, "That stainless steel screw is VERY rare! It came off a 1928 waffle iron. It would have been impossible for the maker to have found one of these! Especially since he also used a galvanized roofing nail from 1996, and a brad from 2004, and a spring from a 1948 Emerson radio! It would have taken an extraordinary effort, and much time, for that idiot to have found all these things, and built this!"
But of course that is backwards reasoning... I did not take any time at all in choosing these items... they are willy-nilly because they are what fell at hand, already in stock, and roughly, minimally, suitable for the emergency purpose. And of course this is how I envision the similarly diverse and IMO whacky construction of the Voynich... his head would have been, by 1910, like my jumble box, as I said, "filled to overflowing" with a great number of very diverse elements, and taken little effort and time to pick from them, off the cuff, to create the Voynich and his zodiac. And also, like my constructs, he just did not think it necessary... he was correct on this, as we know!... to carefully search out better examples, or better combinations of them, to create his Ugly Duckling.
Sorry for the very long, verbose response... too much coffee is part of my excuse... malingering from unhappy tasks like dealing with the thick blanket of hardwood leaves in the yard, another... Rich
(3 hours ago)eggyk wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I believe that we are broadly on the same page then. Neither of us know for certain what he had access to, but it was a lot. I appreciate the answer on how accessible the BNF would have been, as I genuinely didn't know. I just meant that if the forms were present in sources strongly linked to Voynich personally -such as the manuscript he personally got involved with to sell- that would be far more convincing to me personally.
It would be, I would say, an unlikely coincidence.
And your point here probably sums up our different view of all the related levels of "likelyhood". In my case... and maybe because I've had this theorem idea in my pocket for years, and quietly (that is, without openly mentioning it), I've used it... applied it... dozens of times. As you know, especially on this forum, there are a great many comparisons to everything under the Sun, to the Vms illustrations. When they are good, I scramble to open a window to see where it is from... and see, yet again, yep, meets the Theorem requirements. And conversely, I note all the great many things which fill the history of literature, art and science, and are not represented in the Voynich.
Point being, this is not my first rodeo... I try not to be biased when a new feature of the Voynich is brought up, but in my opinion, for me at least, it cannot be ignored. This one took some digging... but I've gotten to the point where I expect it to turn out to be the case, because it always IS the case. So far, anyway.
You, being somewhat new to this observation, this Theorem, and everyone else here who is likewise new to it, try it yourself. But remember the "good comparison" requirement... and, yes, there are a great many bad ones. As a good example is my pet armadillo: I of course believe the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. animal IS an armadillo, and for the reasons I've given. As it applies to my Theorem, though, it goes much further than the many armadillos in print, for the best (to me) comparison is the Gesner illustration of one. I had already thought this... that "on points" it matched best the Voynich "armadillo" on the most features, including copied errors, like the orientation of the scales. Well it turned out that this particular version is ALSO in a book mentioned IN Bolton's Follies, which is a volume Voynich said he "knew by heart", and at least one Genuine Voynich adherent cites as a "go to" for Voynich in his supposed attempt to figure out his Ugly Duckling... it is a Chicken/EggYk problem, which came first? But the point being, like Voynich's association with Gruel, in this and other cases we have an additional supporting factor, butressing the already fulfilled Theorem #1.
But the reason I also bring it up is because that Theorem has an important, related, converse: Bad comparisons may or may not fulfill the theorem. Therefore, many suggested other animals... sheep, pangolins, wolves... oh I can't remember all of them... well most would be in print somewhere by 1910, but some in private collections. I think one was only in Milan. So others make the case THIS or THAT is the actual animal shown, but they don't look as much as the Gesner Armadillo to me. Point being, while I do understand there is a certain level of subjectivity, and someone could continue to insist, say, some rare rodent from Antarctica, discovered in 1913, looks most like it... fine for them, but this is why I generally use this as a tool for myself, for my own Litmus Test of any truly good comparison, to know that I am not fooling myself. It also is a sort of Litmus Test to the level of open mindedness of others... for instance, there is at least one researcher who insists these are NOT Zodiac representations at all, and therefore this is evidence THEIR theory is still possible.
Fine... this is my own test, though. I brought it up here, in public, which I only do about one in ten times, because I wanted to demonstrate it to you... before I knew the answer. It was a risk, but not really a huge one, as I have only seen it succeed.
(3 hours ago)eggyk wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Seperately, out of interest, if we were to find a genuine manuscript with the same french+german sequence found in the VMS, and that manuscript was not yet uncovered/discovered before 1912, what would you think of that?
For me, there are two ways I could go:
1) The unusual VMS has a sequence attested in a genuine manuscript that voynich didn't see, so the VMS is likely genuine
or
2) If we find a second example, there were likely many many more examples out there, which means Voynich may have seen one of the others
In your imagined, hypothetical find, yes it would of course be a challenge to my Theorem, and goes to the very reason I invented it. The Theorem is a test, and your designed "find" would of course challenge it. So if one did find this I would, of course, be surprised... but then seek to determine if there was any way such a combination was known to have existed elsewhere, despite what we were told about it, or if the cited example was truly hidden, and so on. If it still remained, it would undermine the success and therefore the value of the Theorem, and be possible evidence that the Voynich was actually old and genuine.
But also, to me, I would see this example, should it arise, as an unresolved issue, more than having a high degree of genuine evidence, for it would be an anomaly in a long line of perfect successes. Yes that is a form of bias... but natural in science, in that if something happens the same exact way hundreds of times, then the data which opposes this can be assumed to be a Purple Cow, and may have some unknown reason for being. That is, I would tend to treat such a find, overall, as an unresolved issue that needed further examination, given it's perfect uniqueness, rather than consider it, alone, would undermine the Theorem as a whole.
So is that an admission of an unscientific bias on my part? I don't think so, and partly for the reasons I just gave... it would be an outlier... more an open question that needed to be resolved, given the perfect record... IMO... so far (I still do not agree with the claimed rarity of the July names, as I feel, personally, they are far too indistinct to pin down as any particular spelling).
And by the way, I point out that in order to test my use of the Theorem, a hypothetical needed to be created, as none currently exist; therefore, again, supporting the Theorem's strength.
When I saw your message this morning... over poached eggs on toast, by the way... sorry, one of my favorites (I sat on the floor in a Salvation Army a dozen years ago, digging through boxes filled with vintage kitchen gadgets until I found that LAST egg cup for the set! I am nothing if not determined... if it is there, I will move Heaven and Earth to find it, small or large a missing item)... when I saw your message, I had assumed you would... due to possibly unclear wording on my part... misunderstood one of my points, that of the relative likely hood of Voynich finding these name spelling and forms, vs. us looking for them, today. But you didn't. Still, I wanted to post the analogy I created to better explain it, and having taken the picture already, and thought it out, maybe it will still be good to post:
I have several containers of fasteners, which I saved from a great man projects over the years. This is just one small one I keep in a kitchen draw, so I hopefully don't have to dig through the many more boxes in the attic. Those are, however, sorted into type: nails, bolts, nuts, screws, machine bolts, lag bolts, and so on... the kitchen box is an assortment of types and materials:
When I do an emergency fix, or build a jig, or support for something, or whatever... I may use metal or wood scraps of all material types, and choose some assortment of fasteners which will work, with little regard for their original purpose. Sort of "Zen and the Art" of off the cuff repair, I suppose. So say I am needing some wooden widget to temporarily solve some problem... It may have Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar parts, and be held together with any number of brass wood screws, along with stainless pan-head sheet metal screws, maybe needing some nails, which could be roofing nails along with 6d and 8d zinc galvanized nails, and so on... If it does not matter to the project, I'll use them.
And this is what I believe we are seeing in much of the Voynich. His creation uses the "parts bin" of varied forms of illustration, spelling, styles, text, which like me, he accumulated over decades.
So to the point here: If someone were to find one of my Frankenstein creations a hundred years from now, they may make observations like, "That stainless steel screw is VERY rare! It came off a 1928 waffle iron. It would have been impossible for the maker to have found one of these! Especially since he also used a galvanized roofing nail from 1996, and a brad from 2004, and a spring from a 1948 Emerson radio! It would have taken an extraordinary effort, and much time, for that idiot to have found all these things, and built this!"
But of course that is backwards reasoning... I did not take any time at all in choosing these items... they are willy-nilly because they are what fell at hand, already in stock, and roughly, minimally, suitable for the emergency purpose. And of course this is how I envision the similarly diverse and IMO whacky construction of the Voynich... his head would have been, by 1910, like my jumble box, as I said, "filled to overflowing" with a great number of very diverse elements, and taken little effort and time to pick from them, off the cuff, to create the Voynich and his zodiac. And also, like my constructs, he just did not think it necessary... he was correct on this, as we know!... to carefully search out better examples, or better combinations of them, to create his Ugly Duckling.
Sorry for the very long, verbose response... too much coffee is part of my excuse... malingering from unhappy tasks like dealing with the thick blanket of hardwood leaves in the yard, another... Rich