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No text, but a visual code
- No text, but a visual code
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RE: No text, but a visual code
Hermes777 > 19-09-2022, 03:30 PM
(19-09-2022, 11:23 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I agree with your analysis. I don't know how what I think is an astronomical coordinate system works. I do have a hypothesis as to why the script is structured as a running text.
The reason may be to pretend to be a language of knowledge, such as Greek, Arabic or Hebrew at the time. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Greek language was beginning to be recovered by the educated people of the West. I guess very few college students could read Greek, much less Arabic or Hebrew. In astronomical-astrological matters, these languages were the predominant ones.
I think that in the VM there is that intention to create something similar to a language of wisdom.
Rather than a wisdom language, Antonio, I have another suggestion which is a key part of my general hypothesis about the manuscript. I have written it up here:
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So what the vords are pretending to be is not Greek or Arabic etc. but literally the language of the nymphs.
(My position on this is similar to yours, but I think there is more involved in the vords than just astronomical coordinates because I detect the more complex systems of Ramon Llull.) -
RE: No text, but a visual code
Antonio García Jiménez > 19-09-2022, 09:24 PM
Sorry Hermes777 but I don't share your theory. Language of the Nymphs, Ladin people, Nicholas of Cusa...They look like ingredients from a medieval mystery novel.
With the Voynich there is a risk of making literature, fiction, and it is a shame because I think it is a medieval science book whose precious teaching may be lost. -
RE: No text, but a visual code
Hermes777 > 19-09-2022, 10:22 PM
(19-09-2022, 09:24 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sorry Hermes777 but I don't share your theory. Language of the Nymphs, Ladin people, Nicholas of Cusa...They look like ingredients from a medieval mystery novel.
With the Voynich there is a risk of making literature, fiction, and it is a shame because I think it is a medieval science book whose precious teaching may be lost.
I entirely understand your reluctance, Antonio
, but the very modern distinction between “science’ and “fiction” is anachronistic. Our manuscript comes from a world in which the mythic and the mythopoeic (and "magical") readily overlap with what we think of as “science”. This is a milieu in which it was literally believed the functions of the human body were governed by nymphs and sprites. We see this move from the folk level to a developed (urban) system in the alchemical medicine of the Paracelsean tradition. (I regard the Voynich ms. as “proto-Paracelsean”.)
In order to understand the Voynich ms. we must penetrate into that mode of thinking. It is an epistemological problem. There is a mode of thinking that is outside of our customary logos/muthos polarity. We find it in such rhetorical devices as prosopopoeia (which is relevant here.)
I think it has been an erroneous assumption throughout its entire known history that the Voynich is a valuable work of proto-science. It is routinely, and wrongly, placed in the progressive science narrative. (Therefore, it must be by someone from our Big Book of Science Heroes, Roger Bacon, Leonardo et al.) That has been a mistaken path from the beginning.
I doubt it contains anything useful to modern science. Rather, I think the view of nature and cosmology presented in the work foreshadows – and should be of great interest to – an alternative stream of science (deemed psuedoscience by some) that matures in Germany especially as the Paracelsean tradition, the Goethean sciences and then, more recently, in such things as Anthroposophical medicine. Romantic vitalism. It belongs in that stream of cosmological thought. (Properly considered, it ought to be a work of interest to contemporary ecological philosophy, perhaps.)
That’s my approach, anyway. It is where I arrive when I place the work among traditional (premodern) cosmologies - which is my area of study and expertise. I’m happy when it overlaps with the research of others such as your astro-coordinates proposal. Onwards! -
RE: No text, but a visual code
Antonio García Jiménez > 20-09-2022, 08:28 AM
I appreciate your knowledge but I do not agree with your vision of the Voynich. Note that you incur the same thing that you reject. You say that the book has been attributed to great heroes such as Roger Bacon or Leonardo and you yourself defend the influence of another great character such as Nicholas of Cusa.
Talking about nymphs in the Voynich is for me one of the main errors of iconographic interpretation. Yes, it is an allegory, but a celestial allegory, since they are personifications of the stars. -
RE: No text, but a visual code
R. Sale > 20-09-2022, 05:41 PM
And several of those nymphs are also personifications of real persons, and well-known literary personalities hidden in the crowd, not recognizable by their appearance of face, but by their heraldic insignia and other particular attributes that were far more relevant to the mid 1400s than they are today. VMs You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. White Aries, red hats and blue stripes. -
RE: No text, but a visual code
Antonio García Jiménez > 20-09-2022, 06:20 PM
Another medieval novel. I'm sorry but the Voynich is a science book that has nothing to do with this. -
RE: No text, but a visual code
R. Sale > 20-09-2022, 08:21 PM
My apologies, but are you saying that red hats and blue stripes are not present on VMs White Aries, or that you are, perhaps, unfamiliar with the relevant historical events and the origin of Roman Catholic church tradition regarding the cardinal's red galero?
The superficial book of science may be perfectly valid, as you suggest, if the text can ever be read. However, there is more to it than that. There is trickery. And the plain fact that there are two alternate possibilities built into the heraldic interpretation on White Aries is an unmistakable indicator of intentional deception by the VMs artist. -
RE: No text, but a visual code
Antonio García Jiménez > 21-09-2022, 07:33 AM
Again you use my thread to expose your theory. This is the third time I've told you to do it in your own thread. I think the forum administrators should intervene. -
RE: No text, but a visual code
Hermes777 > 21-09-2022, 01:56 PM
So you suggest, Antonio, that the sets of coodinates (vords) are arranged to give the appearance of a running text (and labels) in order to convey the impression of a “wise text” in one of the suitably wise languages? At that level, the appearance is deceptive?
What enables it to be done, though, is the spread of vords, some shorter and some longer.
So, if the vords are formulae (of coordinates?) why do some have three glyphs and some seven and most about five? And moreover, this according to a distribution not unlike natural languages?
If all vords were, say, five glyphs long, it wouldn’t give the desired impression of a text. Groups of vords would be like tables with columns. Instead, our author wants to give the impression of a (normal) running text, and can do this because vords are of various lengths (in linguistically felicitous proportions, as it happens.)
If vords are formulae – or at least (highly) formulaic sets – of astronomical data, you’d expect them to be the same number of glyphs, a set form. Formulae have form. Instead, these formulae vary in length.
But perhaps this is deceptive, and part of the deception to create the impression of text? The glyph set might be designed to allow for abbreviation or expansion of a standard set (vord). So vords are, say, all five glyphs long, but modified, so that some are longer and some shorter, by expansion or abbreviation? Perhaps all vords can be shortened or expanded into a standard formula?
As it is, it seems vords consist of three compartments (containers) – the standard formula is tripartite (even where compartments are empty.)
Do we have an astronomical reason why formulae (of coordinates) would be structured into three parts? (Past, present, future? Solar, lunar, fixed stars?)
Maybe the plaintext is just lists or tables of such formulae, all the same length, in three-part vords? This is then disguised by amending the vords so they are of various lengths so they can be arranged to give the (false but alluring) impression of a running text?
In any case, the vords are meaningful units (of astronomical coordinates) but the presentation as a written text (of “words”) is deceptive. As you have it, the motive for this was to add prestige and an aura of wisdom to the work.
So, finally, the manuscript is a highly illustrated set of tables disguised as a text. -
RE: No text, but a visual code
Antonio García Jiménez > 21-09-2022, 07:35 PM
Honestly, I think it's literally impossible to say anything for sure about the script. Just speculate. If I support the theory that the script is an astronomical-astrological system, it is because of some details that I have seen in the structure of the script itself, but above all because I think I am making a more or less correct iconographic reading.
Since this book became known, it has been investigated above all by linguists and cryptographers and, with all due respect to them, I believe that the only possible solution must come from iconographic interpretation.
Repeating and repeating that there are nymphs in the Voynich or that there is a biological or balneological section only leads to a dead end.