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Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

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• Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

• RE: Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

  Mark Knowles > 02-01-2021, 10:35 PM

  (02-01-2021, 10:25 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Fontana wrote his book in cipher for the same reason everyone else did in his time.

  
  So are you arguing that if the Voynich manuscript is in cipher the motivations of the author were the same as Fontana's?

• RE: Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

  davidjackson > 02-01-2021, 10:41 PM

  (02-01-2021, 10:35 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So are you arguing that if the Voynich manuscript is in cipher the motivations of the author were the same as Fontana's?

  No, of course not. The Voynich has no plain text. There is no comparison between the two works. Fontana's was a highly technical work which aimed to delve into the workings of his machines.
  Fontana's cipher is not difficult to decipher and follows common techniques of his time.

• RE: Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

  Mark Knowles > 02-01-2021, 11:57 PM

  (02-01-2021, 10:41 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (02-01-2021, 10:35 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So are you arguing that if the Voynich manuscript is in cipher the motivations of the author were the same as Fontana's?

  No, of course not. The Voynich has no plain text. There is no comparison between the two works. Fontana's was a highly technical work which aimed to delve into the workings of his machines.
  Fontana's cipher is not difficult to decipher and follows common techniques of his time.

  
  Some might argue that the Voynich manuscript was a highly technical work.
  
  Fontana's cipher seems a bit primitive for the time. However I get the impression that Fontana didn't realise how primitive it was. I would suspect that was because he had little or no background in ciphers. I would think the author of the Voynich had a very strong background in the latest cipher techniques, which would account for the much greater level of difficulty we find in deciphering the Voynich.
  
  If you argue that the Voynich is not consistent with ciphers of the time, I would say watch that space. There was more inventiveness and variation than you might think.
  
  To me Fontana's works seem to be the closest parallel to the Voynich.

• RE: Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

  davidjackson > 03-01-2021, 12:05 AM

  (02-01-2021, 11:57 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Some might argue that the Voynich manuscript was a highly technical work.

  No they wouldn't. The Voynich shows no attempt at perspective, at physics, at mechanism, at automatism. It is purely based in allegory of earlier centuries.

• RE: Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

  Mark Knowles > 03-01-2021, 12:22 AM

  (03-01-2021, 12:05 AM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (02-01-2021, 11:57 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Some might argue that the Voynich manuscript was a highly technical work.

  No they wouldn't. The Voynich shows no attempt at perspective, at physics, at mechanism, at automatism. It is purely based in allegory of earlier centuries.

  Given that we don't know what it says how can we say that it wasn't high technical? I suppose it depends on what one means by "technical". Clearly the Voynich has different content from Fontana's work, but one could see that as the difference between a book about engineering compared to a book about biology.

• RE: Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

  davidjackson > 03-01-2021, 12:32 AM

  Well, if we compare abstract theories of nature with technical drawings of engineering, we can compare the Voynich to Fontana.
  
  Both the Voynich and Fontana's works are amazing, but they are not comparable.
  Fontana is showing off his work to his contemporaries, advancing his knowledge and advancing his prestige within his guild and his profession, showing off to his patrons and developing his own ideas.
  The Voynich is.... well, we still don't know what it is, but it isn't doing what Fontana did in the same way.

• RE: Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

  Mark Knowles > 03-01-2021, 02:01 AM

  (03-01-2021, 12:32 AM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, if we compare abstract theories of nature with technical drawings of engineering, we can compare the Voynich to Fontana.
  
  Both the Voynich and Fontana's works are amazing, but they are not comparable.
  Fontana is showing off his work to his contemporaries, advancing his knowledge and advancing his prestige within his guild and his profession, showing off to his patrons and developing his own ideas.
  The Voynich is.... well, we still don't know what it is, but it isn't doing what Fontana did in the same way.

  
  I suppose whether their works are comparable is just a question of perspective. My perspective is that it is fruitful to compare them.
  
  I think what I was driving at was the question as to what we know about Fontana's motivations rather than what we might think his motivations were. What do we know about what Fontana wrote about his motivations? I haven't studied his work, but I wonder if he writes what he sees as the motivation or purpose of writing a specific text. I think what one might hypotheses that his motivations must have been is weaker than primary evidence of what he said his motives were or what others said that he told them his motives were.

• RE: Why did Giovanni Fontana write his book in cipher?

  -JKP- > 03-01-2021, 10:13 AM

  You're still discussing Fontana's motivations, but I see no signs that you read his book.
  
  If you had read my blog in its entirety (and the comments I posted earlier in this thread), you would see that I pointed out that Fontana WROTE A BOOK on memory systems (mnemonics), and on ciphers, using his deliberately-mnemonic cipher.
  
  Instead of all this speculation about his motivations, all you have to do is read his book, which I cited in my blog with a couple of diagrams as examples (Secretum BNF NAL 635).
  
  
  I should think that an entire book that combines the topics of mnemonics and ciphers counts as motivation and explanation from him for developing and demonstrating his cipher.
  
  Except for the contents and some of the section titles, the entire 150-page book is in cipher. In addition to being mnemonic in overall design, I noticed as I was reading it that he keeps abbreviations to a minimum even though they were copiously used in the 15th century. This, in addition to the mnemonics, suggests that the text was meant to be readable for anyone who has worked out (or been briefed on) the mnemonics.
  
  
  To put it another way... he demonstrated that if you create the cipher using a mnemonic system you can comfortably write and read an entire book written with that cipher.
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