[Other] What is Alain Touwaide up to?

[Aga Tentakulus]

Memory ? 

[-JKP-]

It is at least partially a morphological sorting.

• In the outer semi-circle, there is a skinny-leaf plants pile on the bottom right of the image.
  
• The calendula-like plant in the pile to the left of the skinny-leaf plants seems less matched to the others than the piles to the left and right.
  
• Next comes an outlier, the sagittate single-leaf plant. So far, it is in a group by itself and the way it is drawn is also somewhat unique in the VMS.
  
• Now go left, to the pile of clumpy, layered plants. We can't see all of them, but I don't see clumpy plants in the other piles, so the ones underneath might also be part of a clumpy-plant group.
  
• In the next semi-circle, closer to Touwaide, are several of the animal-like root plants (to the lower right in the second row from the outside), as well as the one with big reddish yam-like roots
  

But most of it looks like work-in-progress (laid out roughly but not fully sorted yet). The plant drawings are smiling for the camera.

[Koen G]

Apparently it's for a chapter of an oncoming book (!) about the Voynich. I asked for more info. 

René, maybe you know more about this?

[DONJCH]

Is he reading the piece of Voynichese text near his knee and sorting accordingly?

[-JKP-]

I just noticed that a basal-whorl pile is near his knee.

[Koen G]

So it will be a chapter of a whole book about the VM, but he cannot give more information. This probably implies that it's a book together with other authors?

[ReneZ]

I guess it's best just to wait and see.

[-JKP-]

So it will be a chapter of a whole book about the VM, but he cannot give more information. This probably implies that it's a book together with other authors?

Sometimes this means... "The publisher has not committed to it yet which is why I'm doing some advance publicity to stir up some interest in the idea."

And sometimes it means... "I don't have the idea fully worked out yet."


It's possible there is a book contract, perhaps a collection of essays (Touwaide has been involved in compilations in the past), but this kind of subject matter (VMS) is harder to sell to a publisher, so perhaps nothing is firm yet.

[Koen G]

Apparently this:
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[Koen G]

Although I don't see how the VM would fit into this, so it's probably still something else.

The medical literature of ancient Greece has been much studied during the 20th century, particularly from the 1970s on. In spite of this intense activity, the search for manuscripts still relies on the catalogue compiled in the early 1900s by a group of philologists led by the German historian of Greek philosophy and medicine Hermann Diels. However useful the so-called Diels has been and still is, it is now in need of a thorough revision. The present five-tome set is a first step in that direction. Tome 1 offers a reproduction of Diels’ catalogue with an index of the manuscripts. The following three tomes provide a reconstruction of the texts contained in the manuscripts listed in Diels on the basis of Diels’ catalogue. Proceeding as Diels did, these three tomes distinguish the manuscripts containing texts by (or attributed to) Hippocrates (tome 2), Galen (tome 3), and the other authors considered by Diels (tome 4). Tome 5 will list all the texts listed in Diels for each manuscript in the catalogue. The present work will be a reference for all scholars interested in Greek medical literature and manuscripts, in addition to historians of medicine, medical book, medical tradition, and medical culture.