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Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
- Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
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Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
merrimacga > 18-10-2023, 05:13 PM
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OII Halloween Lecture, Illuminating the Illuminated:
Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
with Dr. Joss Wright
Date & Time:
17:15 - 18:15 GMT
Monday 30 October, 2023
Location:
Oxford Internet Institute, Seminar Room
1 St Giles Oxford OX1 3JS United Kingdom
Free event. On-site only. No online access. Registration required.
Event page: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Registration link on eventbrite: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
From the regsistration page:
"The evenings draw in, the candles flicker, the leaves wither and fall.
Ancient fears and dark rumours gather around our darkly dreaming spires.
The anodyne veneer of modern rationality, the brittle lens of our sciences; both falter in the face of primal fears that emerge with the night.
At this time of year, when our resolve against the unknown is at its weakest, we are challenged as scientists to defend and deploy our ideals, our methods, our tools. As Halloween descends we brace ourselves against the umbral tide, and struggle to draw understanding from the darkness around us.
Folklore, legends, myth. Hauntings, strange creatures in the mist, and mysterious lights in the sky. From the earliest terrified reports to modern digital documentation, data describing arcane phenomena has grown and shifted, just as has our capacity, and our stumbling willingness, to interrogate their secrets.
To celebrate the season, you are invited to the annual OII Halloween Lecture.
This year we will delve into the mysteries recorded in the leaves of half-forgotten texts discovered in strange circumstances. The Voynich manuscript is perhaps the most famous and well-documented cryptic tome as yet undeciphered. Written in an unknown alphabet, and filled with peculiar, unearthly diagrams, this 15th century folio has baffled linguists, cryptographers, and intelligence agencies for over three centuries.
In this lecture, we will examine some of the history surrounding the Voynich, and apply statistical tools to explore some of its characterics. A hoax? Or an unfathomable repository of ancient wisdom?
The lecture will be a light-hearted presentation of around thirty minutes, liberally doused with informal discussions on any related topics of interest. Following the talk, we will reconvene at a nearby pub for those brave, or foolhardy, paranormal social scientists who dare to glimpse beyond the murky veil of horrifying reality.
Dr Joss Wright is a Senior Research Fellow, Co-Director of the Oxford EPSRC Cybersecurity Doctoral Training Centre and a Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade. His work focuses on computational approaches to social science questions, with a particular focus on technologies that exert, resist, or subvert control over information.
Joss’ main areas of research are information controls, with a focus on internet censorship and shutdowns; privacy enhancing technologies and data anonymisation; and cybercrime, with a particular focus on the online illegal wildlife trade and its implications for biodiversity and conservation.
Joss gained his PhD in Computer Science at the University of York, where his work focused on the modelling and analysis of anonymous communication systems. Following this, he spent time at the University of Siegen in Germany, researching security and privacy issues in cloud computing. He joined the OII as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2010." -
RE: Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
Mark Knowles > 18-10-2023, 08:35 PM
(18-10-2023, 05:13 PM)merrimacga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.OII Halloween Lecture, Illuminating the Illuminated:
Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
with Dr. Joss Wright
Date & Time:
17:15 - 18:15 GMT
Monday 30 October, 2023
Location:
Oxford Internet Institute, Seminar Room
1 St Giles Oxford OX1 3JS United Kingdom
Well, I live in Oxford, so there is no reason that I can't go. Thanks a lot for digging this up.
I don't imagine it will cover anything very new, but there may be an opportunity to make useful contacts. -
RE: Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
Mark Knowles > 18-10-2023, 08:54 PM
Of course, the Voynich has nothing to do with the Occult or Halloween as far as I can tell, though I doubt the lecturer will be suggesting as such. -
RE: Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
merrimacga > 18-10-2023, 10:29 PM
I have a feeling it is going to be more fun and less serious given it is timed with Halloween. That and participants will be going to the local pub afterwards.
But as you say, you might get some good contacts out of it. In any case, I hope anyone who goes has a good time. -
RE: Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
Mark Knowles > 18-10-2023, 10:58 PM
(18-10-2023, 10:29 PM)merrimacga Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have a feeling it is going to be more fun and less serious given it is timed with Halloween.
But as you say, you might get some good contacts out of it.
Yes, I fear so.
I would hope to make at least one contact. -
RE: Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
tealeaf > 19-10-2023, 04:39 PM
Hello all.
I saw this come up, and registered so that I could reply here.
I'm the one giving this lecture in Oxford. I wanted to confirm that, despite the fact that I've done a semi-serious analysis on some aspects of the Voynich as part of this, this is a lighthearted Halloween event mainly aimed as a seasonal bit of fun for our incoming students, with a focus on statistical and data science elements. While the Voynich isn't the spookiest of topics (last year was an analysis of UFO sightings...), it fits with the theme of applying data science to unusual and mysterious datasets.
I know that there's a lot of much more serious research into the Voynich going on, and the work I'll be presenting is actually intended to contribute to that in the longer term if I get around to writing it up academically. To be clear, though, this is definitely not an event aimed at serious scholars of the Voynich.
For anyone interested in the material before I present it, I'll mainly be giving a little bit of history and context, some of the statistical arguments around whether the text is a hoax, and an analysis that shows a potential change in authorship, writing style, or topic early in the manuscript based on the word frequency distributions. This was all written up a while ago, in a similarly light-hearted way, in a series of four blog posts starting here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I hope that sets the expectations accordingly! -
RE: Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
Mark Knowles > 31-10-2023, 09:04 AM
I attended this interesting talk. Thanks so much to Joss and his efforts. -
RE: Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
bi3mw > 31-10-2023, 10:21 AM
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RE: Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
Mark Knowles > 31-10-2023, 03:00 PM
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RE: Uncovering Patterns in Indecipherable Books – The Voynich Manuscript
Koen G > 31-10-2023, 04:02 PM
It's an interesting and well done talk. However, I am currently a bit over halfway through and I see a problem, which is that Currier languages are ignored. So he discovers a statistical shift around f33, which is where we also see a shift towards Herbal B. To me this feels kind of like discovering where a new 'language' starts, much more than a new topic or a new author. (Even though we do know Currier languages also correspond to different hands). The analysis should really have been done separated by Currier language, in my opinion.