RE: The incredible unravelling of the Voynich Manuscript
PaulW > 05-07-2020, 11:53 AM
Many thanks for the comments and suggestions. I would like to go into some points below, especially the question raised by MarcoP about the 3 criteria "What Will It Take to Solve the Voynich Manuscript?"
1) An acceptable proposal must be consistent with the realities of the object itself.
In the 15th century, a well-stocked library consisted mostly of manuscripts from various periods and regions. Accordingly, a reader of these works came across various applications and forms of Latin abbreviations, depending on the region and age from which the works originated. These different systems, which are now being intensively researched and systematized, probably caused readers some headaches even then. If we now assume (as I do) that the author of the Voynich manuscript was deliberately looking for a coding system that was as complex and confusing as possible, it is precisely this reality of the multiplicity of different abbreviations that has become the brilliant idea behind his code. In this respect, the method fits in perfectly with the circumstances of the time.
On the other hand, the reverse conclusion, repeatedly expressed as criticism, that a solution to the Voynich code must be based exclusively on the circumstances of Latin manuscripts of the XVth century, is not admissible. Then the text would have been unencrypted and readable by anyone in the 15th century.
2) An acceptable solution must be the result of a sound and explicable methodology that is logical and repeatable.
I fully agree with this statement, but again, the criticism of my presented solution based on this is not correct in my opinion. Yes, ambiguities do result, and I am not the only one who considers a 1:1 assignment of characters to be impossible due to the structure of the Voynich text. So ambiguities are inevitable. But: The ambiguity arises exclusively in the back-translation. If one "turns around" the translation guide I have drawn up, i.e. takes it as a coding key, the same character sequence will always result for each word. The method does not allow the arbitrary use of characters for a specific Latin word. The coding can always be repeated with the same result. Only when recoding, ambiguities occur - but this is the case in the entire medieval manuscript system up to a certain degree (see also my quite detailed comments on the difference between ambiguity and arbitrariness in the original text). Partly still open, however, is an exact rule at which position of the word endings was abbreviated in each case (see next point on the open questions of grammar).
Conclusion: The method I presented is logical and repeatable, but (inevitably) only in one direction of coding.
3) An acceptable proposal must result in a reading that makes sense semantically, chronologically, and logically.
Maybe I am too optimistic, but of all the solutions I have seen so far, the results of my approach are, despite all ambiguity, highly plausible, consistent and logical. I do not know of any other work that actually results in botanical explanations, where botanical explanations would be expected due to the world of images. The conclusions from the translation of folio 71r also seem more than plausible to me.
However, since I am not an expert in Latin, I have taken the path of greatest possible transparency in the remaining difficulties to derive grammatically correct sentences. My hope was and is that here in the forum there will be experts who constructively push forward a further development, improvement and correction of gaps and errors in my basic work. I think it will be worthwhile.
To two aspects of detail @ JKP: 1. "We always encounter this written character at the beginning of a word only in very short words.": This was not the letter o, but the letter a. Of course “o” occurs in many long words at the beginning of a word.
2. contari and percontari can both be found in Latin dictionaries for "inquire". This is not a word invention of mine.