Mark Knowles > 16-10-2019, 10:13 PM
(15-10-2019, 11:59 PM)arca_libraria Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(14-10-2019, 12:48 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When you say:
"They simply did not invent things."
Then I can only conclude that it is amazing that the wheel of history has moved forward at all.
I would say that medieval people like modern people were highly inventive, why make assumptions about what they were capable of or inclined towards that you wouldn't make of modern people.
Try to think of it like this: imagine if I showed you 10 photographs taken all over the world in different decades of the 20th century, and each photograph showed a few people, a few buildings and a few plants, and I asked you to tell me approximately when and where you thought they had been taken. You would presumably look at the types of plants, the style of architecture, the clothing, and the general of the appearance of the people to offer your guesses about when and where the pictures had been taken? I think that's what people are doing when they are comparing the illustrations in the VMS to other examples in medieval art.
Or even just think about clothing - e.g. the shape of dresses, or trousers, or hats, or shoes over the past few hundred years - people copy things over and over again and make minor changes to the same basic forms, and every so often someone makes a big change and starts a new sub-fashion, but they are still using the same basic shapes.
History of the book and history of art rely on people making comparisons in order to understand what is traditional and what is innovative about each piece. Medieval people had a visual lexicon and visual archetypes, and so it's interesting when the VMS scribe(s) draws from that visual lexicon and when he departs from it.
Yes, sometimes people come up with comparisons that are not particularly strong, or that others might reject entirely, but that's why this place exists so we can all start a thread with our favourite weird fish-people/crossbows/sunflowers drawn from only the most obscure of central European archives for the delight/derision of the rest of the forum.
Koen G > 16-10-2019, 11:33 PM
Quote:Scattered evidence exists for use of visual aid devices in Greek and Roman times, most prominently the use of an emerald by emperor Nero as mentioned by Pliny the Elder.
The use of a convex lens to form an enlarged/magnified image was most likely described in Ptolemy's Optics (which however only survives in a poor Arabic translation). Ptolemy's description of lenses was commented upon and improved by Ibn Sahl (10th century) and most notably by Alhazen (Book of Optics, ca. 1021). Latin translations of Ptolemy's Optics and of Alhazen became available in Europe in the 12th century, coinciding with the development of "reading stones".
-JKP- > 17-10-2019, 03:13 AM
Mark Knowles > 17-10-2019, 04:13 PM
(16-10-2019, 11:33 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.About your inventions, to be honest I was thinking about inventing as in "making up images or text without reference to existing material". But your examples do illustrate my point.
1) Clocks: timekeeping devices existed before the Middle Ages, were improved upon outside of Europe and perfected only after the Middle Ages.
2) Glasses: here's a fine section from the Wiki that perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about:
.......
Same pattern: start in Ancient times, transmission through Arab world, picked up and improved in Middle Ages, perfected and more widespread in Renaissance.
3) Wind mills: also reached Europe through the Middle East, time of invention uncertain.
4) Castles: evolution of fortifications. You don't invent castles...
5) Compass: First sentence of the Wiki on "history of the compass": The compass was invented more than 2,000 years ago.
6) Developments in weaponry are not completely novel inventions.
7) Building techniques
8) "Overall many refinements/technical improvements to technology adopted from the classical world or arab world or the east" Yes! Exactly. But in those cases, it is important to know what came before.
So in summary, either not Medieval European inventions at all, or improvement of existing things.
Look, I've been arguing for over a year already that the clothing of the Zodiac figures can be reliably dated to within three decades (1400-1430). So I know things did change. But they did not appear out of thin air, and never in isolation. Medieval documents and art is always connected to earlier and contemporary examples, and it is our task to see which ones are most informative for the VM.
Mark Knowles > 17-10-2019, 10:04 PM
-JKP- > 17-10-2019, 11:34 PM
(17-10-2019, 10:04 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
If the Voynich is written in cipher then if it is merely a reproduction of other material and not in some way original there seems little point in enciphering it. Why encipher something that is available elsewhere in an undeciphered form?