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RE: No text, but a visual code

Antonio García Jiménez > 21-12-2025, 07:40 PM

It doesn't surprise me that you think that way. Our society has extended the respect for all opinions of liberal democracy to respect for all opinions in any field of knowledge. But no. There are authorities in iconography, medicine, or architecture, and there are also authorities in carpentry or automotive mechanics. You either know about a subject or you don't. Of course there can be mistakes, but that does not invalidate the principle of authority.

However difficult the Voynich manuscript may be to interpret, it is a 15th-century human creation and therefore must have an explanation. Can just anyone get it right? I don't think so.
RE: No text, but a visual code

Ruby Novacna > 21-12-2025, 08:22 PM

(21-12-2025, 07:40 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Our society has extended the respect for all opinions of liberal democracy to respect for all opinions in any field of knowledge.

Are you saying, Antonio, that in the history of science there have never been opinions contrary to those of the authorities at the time that ultimately prevailed?
RE: No text, but a visual code

Antonio García Jiménez > 21-12-2025, 09:23 PM

Of course I'm not saying that. Aristotle was an authority for centuries in many fields, and he isn't today. But you can't equate the history of science with a problem of interpreting a 15th-century document.

I am simply maintaining that Panofsky was an expert in iconography and that his opinion deserves due attention, enough to call into question the conventional interpretation of the female figures in Quire 13
RE: No text, but a visual code

Jorge_Stolfi > 22-12-2025, 07:26 AM

(21-12-2025, 07:40 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are authorities in iconography, medicine, or architecture, and there are also authorities in carpentry or automotive mechanics. You either know about a subject or you don't. Of course there can be mistakes, but that does not invalidate the principle of authority.

Forte's Law of Expert Action and Reaction says "For every expert, there is an equal but opposite expert".

Quote:However difficult the Voynich manuscript may be to interpret, it is a 15th-century human creation and therefore must have an explanation.

Allow me to remind you of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Whales look and swim like fish, but their biology is completely different. The VMS looks like a typical Medieval manuscript to the extent that it is a bunch of sheets of vellum with handwriting; but it is very different in almost every other aspect. I think that asking expert paleographers for their opinions on the VMS is like asking a fish expert for his opinions on whales.

And, in fact, over the past 100 years, many expert paleographers who set out to study the VMS quickly gave up and left with burned hands...

All the best, --stolfi
RE: No text, but a visual code

Antonio García Jiménez > 22-12-2025, 01:50 PM

I'm surprised that a university professor of some renown like yourself speaks about knowledge in this way. If we live better than our parents and grandparents, it is thanks to knowledge.

Paleographers do have something valuable to say about the Voynich, but obviously it is not enough because understanding this strange codex requires knowledge of several university disciplines.

Anyway, I wrote a post—one of the longest I've ever written—giving my interpretation of the female figures in Quire 13. My interpretation is based on Panofsky's. You may or may not agree, but knowledge is built by proposing reasoned alternatives. If you have any, please share them.
RE: No text, but a visual code

Jorge_Stolfi > 22-12-2025, 07:02 PM

(22-12-2025, 01:50 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm surprised that a university professor of some renown like yourself speaks about knowledge in this way.

But Forte's Law is real. If we really want something to be "true", we can always find an "expert" who says just that.

Take for example the question of the nature of the VMS ink. We have one "expert", McCrone Inc, who states that it is iron-gall ink. But we also have these "experts" You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., whose goal is to distinguish iron-gall from ochre paint, who say that "iron gall inks absorb infrared radiation up to 1200 nm, while ochre already become transparent at 850 nm". And anyone can look at the multi-spectral image sets from the Lazarus project and verify that the ink is virtually invisible already at 940 nm.

So, each of us must choose the "expert opinion" that one likes the most. Many seem to have chosen the "iron-gall" option. Perhaps because "ocher" would feed the suspicion that the VMS is a whale, not a fish?

Quote:If we live better than our parents and grandparents, it is thanks to knowledge.

Knowledge is great. The problem is that no one, including experts, will gain it just for holding a certain job...

All the best, --stolfi
RE: No text, but a visual code

Antonio García Jiménez > 23-12-2025, 01:14 PM

I agree that knowledge isn't acquired by holding a certain position, but rather through years of dedication and the enthusiasm one puts into something. Having a bachelor's or doctoral degree in a university subject isn't enough, but it is necessary.

As for the distinctions between iron-gall and ochre paint and all those technicalities, I don't think it matters much in the face of an authentic and genuine document like the Voynich.
RE: No text, but a visual code

Jorge_Stolfi > 23-12-2025, 09:33 PM
(23-12-2025, 01:14 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I agree that knowledge isn't acquired by holding a certain position, but rather through years of dedication and the enthusiasm one puts into something.

Agreed, but there is always the "fish vs whale" problem: one can be extremely knowledgeable about some field, but that knowledge may be useless, or even counterproductive, when dealing with something that happens to be outside that field -- and one is not aware of it.

Quote:As for the distinctions between iron-gall and ochre paint and all those technicalities, I don't think it matters much in the face of an authentic and genuine document like the Voynich.

Indeed it should not matter at all for most analyses and theories. But there are a few situations where it may be important or even crucial:
- When trying to infer the origin of the manuscript, in particular what kind or people were the Author and the Scribe, the fact that the Scribe chose ocher paint instead of iron-gall ink is an important bit of evidence;
- When trying to decipher the marginalia on f116v, knowing the nature of the ink is essential to estimate how much the original text was damaged by the big water spill visible in the UV images, and thus how much of what we see today is original or even meaningful.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: No text, but a visual code

Antonio García Jiménez > 24-12-2025, 09:53 AM

I listened to your talk at Voynich Day this summer. I found some things interesting, but I noticed that you downplayed the Voynich imagery, focusing instead on the script and its authorship. That's the traditional approach in research.

  I maintain an opposite approach and believe that what interested the author or authors was above all to exhibit a powerful imagination through the images. They drew and painted the images first because the message they wanted to convey was contained within them. No medieval codex with that fascinating succession of images has survived.

  What does this wondrous imagery tell us? For me it's clear: it shows the power of the stars, of celestial influences on Earth; in this codex, the influence on healing herbs.

And what role does the script play? For me, it only accompanies the images, reinforcing them because it is nothing more than groupings of astronomical symbols. For a man with a solid scientific background like yours, this might seem absurd. But consider that approaches like yours—that the script might conceal an Eastern language—seem equally absurd to me when faced with a codex as European as the Voynich.

  I believe that when we investigate the Voynich Manuscript, we must look for coherence among all its parts. And we must remember that medieval people also had their own internal logic.
RE: No text, but a visual code

Antonio García Jiménez > 28-12-2025, 01:45 PM

In my view of the script, the shape of the glyphs has crucial importance. This is something that is overlooked in script analyses. It is assumed that we are dealing with an unknown alphabet and that the glyphs are arbitrary, that they could be different. I maintain that the design of the glyphs is fundamental. It's an assumption, just like the other one, but mine has the advantage of not straying from the materiality of the script, from what we see.

The shape of the glyphs and their importance in the structure of the script was highlighted by Brian Cham in his well-known curve-line system. His approach, however, doesn't deviate from the conventional view. The script either hides a language or is nonsense. It cannot be otherwise because to get out of this dead end a comprehensive view of the entire codex is needed, including its imagery and the message it conveys.

I believe that the glyphs are the way they are because they represent celestial objects or positions on the ecliptic. For example, the glyph [o] and the other two that Stolfi calls circles in his grammar are, for me, the representation of the fixed stars in different positions. That symbol [o] can be seen in the center of many of the stars drawn in the Voynich Manuscript. It's what Ellie Velinska called dotted stars. On her blog she gave many medieval examples of those dotted stars.

My interpretation, consistent with that way of drawing the stars, which we also see in the Voynich Manuscript, is that this [o] is also part of the script. In fact, it is the most frequent symbol.
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