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What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
- What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
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RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
Jorge_Stolfi > 09-12-2025, 02:55 PM
(09-12-2025, 01:10 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is no good evidence that there is a language, as far as I know.
Not categorical evidence, which will probably only come with a full and coherent decipherment. But all the uncountable statistical and structural tests applied to Voynichese have been consistent with that theory.
Quote:As for the ink there is fairly good evidence that it's original in that in the text there are very few places in the manuscript where different strokes are overwritten on one another.
Not "few", but hundreds. Name any page.
Quote:I'm not sure what's so exceptional here. New alphabet? An encryption scheme? Anticlerical doctors?
Well, name an example of such a community that actually existed and actually created something like Voynichese and the VMS.
On the other hand, there are dozens of known cases of European travelers to "Chinese"-speaking lands who could have been the Author according to the Chinese Theory. And probably thousands like them who just did not leave a historical record.
Quote:As for the ink density variation, there have been other examples of medieval manuscripts posted here that show a lot of variation in ink density. Even if not at the scale of the Voynich MS, this was certainly something that did happen.
There are definitely many cases of ink and trace weight variation due to re-inking or re-sharpening of the quill, variations of had pressure, vellum finish etc. There are also cases where the Scribe himself probably went back and retraced some glyphs or strokes that he had just written.
But there are many cases where these explanations don't work. Like when the retraced glyph is clearly a misreading of the original.
Quote:my interpretation is that the scribe chose or had to write/draw the symbols and images the way they turned out for reasons that we don't know, because we have no idea what these images should have depicted and how this text should be read.
But anything that is puzzing in the VMS can then be explained by "reasons unknown" -- and then there is nothing more to investigate, is there?
Retracing can be invoked as an explanation only under very limiting constraints. The addition of spurious details was only a thing of the Boobs Retracer, who used a very dark ink and had rather narrow and stereotyped "artistic" goals. Otherwise, something having been wrongly retraced is plausible only if there could plausibly have been a faded original that could be misread that way.
Quote:[The MRT and COT] don't have good easily testable predictions. One condition under which I can accept a doubtful theory as some kind of a working hypothesis, is if it offers a way to quickly and definitely settle it by following it through and checking the result.
Could you please name one testable prediction of the "All Ink Is Original" theory? Or "The Language is Not Chinese" theory? Or "The Contents is Random Gibberish" theory?
One testable prediction of the MRT is that the artifacts that would be created by retracing (extremely faded traces, faint mousetail tails emerging from under thicker strokes, plumes traced with thick strokes in the wrong direction, "wrong" glyphs and figure details, etc.) , can be found on every page of the VMS. So far I have looked for those signs in only a fraction of the pages, and aways find them.
One testable prediction of the COT is that the words will have limited length and a fairly rigid structure with at most half a dozen slots, each of which can be filled with a specific set of alternatives. A consequence of that prediction is that Sukhotin's algorithm would fail. The COT also predicts that there are no words in Voynichese that seem to work like articles or prepositions. It also predicts the rough size of the Voynichese lexicon, and that Voynichese will obey Zipf's law; and therefore it predicts the entropy per word.
All these predictions were tested 25 years ago, and the COT passed.
Quote:I don't think MRT or the Chinese theory make any predictions that could be tested in reasonable time (say, a week or two) to get a definite yes or no answer.
That is much more than what the Scientific Method asks for. To be "scientific" a theory need only make some predictions that could be tested and found to be false. The theory need not make a prediction that would prove it is true, because in general there is no such thing. And the test may require a lot of work and many decades.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
Jorge_Stolfi > 09-12-2025, 03:21 PM
Back to the topic of this thread, the "Paint Is Original" theory made one testable prediction: that the folio number on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. would be on top of the green paint. That prediction was finally tested at the Folgers workshop, and found to be false. Supporters of that theory now have to argue that the test did not quite show what it is said to show...
Back away from the topic, another prediction of the MRT is that very high resolution images (3000 dots per inch or more) will clearly show original ink peeking out from under the Rt1 ink, like (A1,A2,A3) in this McCrone image:
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
oshfdk > 09-12-2025, 03:39 PM
(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:As for the ink there is fairly good evidence that it's original in that in the text there are very few places in the manuscript where different strokes are overwritten on one another.
Not "few", but hundreds. Name any page.
I'm only aware of two occasions at the beginning of a line, both consistent with the scribe starting a line low on ink, and fixing immediately thereafter. Both brought up by Bluetoes101, if I'm not mistaken. When some real retouching happens, it's quite obvious at the magnification provided by the scans.
(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:I'm not sure what's so exceptional here. New alphabet? An encryption scheme? Anticlerical doctors?
Well, name an example of such a community that actually existed and actually created something like Voynichese and the VMS.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Could you name one manuscript written in a made up alphabet to represent the sounds of a foreign language? +100 points if this manuscript wouldn't contain any notes in the original language of the author.
(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But there are many cases where these explanations don't work. Like when the retraced glyph is clearly a misreading of the original.
This argument would totally work if you somehow produced the original of the Voynich Manuscript, in its unretraced glory, to compare to. Up until then it's just an interpretation of which glyphs are "good" and which ones are "bad", and our interpretations of this clearly differ.
(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But anything that is puzzing in the VMS can then be explained by "reasons unknown" -- and then there is nothing more to investigate, is there?
But I have no intention of "explaining" it. Either there is some verifiable way to uncover the meaning from the manuscript, if it is there at all, or not. The "explanations" for me are only as good as they are able to advance us on our way of achieving this. The explanation that maybe a considerable portion of the manuscript are some doodles and scribbles unrelated to the original text is not helping here, unless it bears some strong evidence. Which for me is not there. At least not yet.
(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Could you please name one testable prediction of the "All Ink Is Original" theory? Or "The Language is Not Chinese" theory? Or "The Contents is Random Gibberish" theory?
No, but for the first two there is some good evidence: visible total lack of retracing in the text and clearly European background of the manuscripts, both images and provenance.
As I said before, a theory to be useful to me should either have some specific evidence or make some easy to test predictions.
(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One testable prediction of the MRT is that the artifacts that would be created by retracing (extremely faded traces, faint mousetail tails emerging from under thicker strokes, plumes traced with thick strokes in the wrong direction, "wrong" glyphs and figure details, etc.) , can be found on every page of the VMS. So far I have looked for those signs in only a fraction of the pages, and aways find them.
Has this been independently confirmed/verified?
(09-12-2025, 02:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One testable prediction of the COT is that the words will have limited length and a fairly rigid structure with at most half a dozen slots, each of which can be filled with a specific set of alternatives. A consequence of that prediction is that Sukhotin's algorithm would fail. The COT also predicts that there are no words in Voynichese that seem to work like articles or prepositions. It also predicts the rough size of the Voynichese lexicon, and that Voynichese will obey Zipf's law; and therefore it predicts the entropy per word.
I'm not sure these are specific enough. Certainly not in a way to unequivocally confirm the Chinese origin of the text. I was talking about predictions that can reasonably quickly let us identify if a theory is correct or definitely not. -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
MarcoP > 09-12-2025, 06:24 PM
(07-12-2025, 09:28 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(07-12-2025, 06:49 PM)davidma Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I find it interesting that on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there is a massive painting instruction that was obviously ignored. The most likely explanation to me seems that the painter simply forgot to paint it.
Another simple explanation is it's no painting instruction at all.
Isn't an explanation something that tentatively explains what the characters are and their function? Sure, giving up on finding an explanation is "simpler" than any possible explanation itself, but it’s not very enlightening in my opinion.
Alain Touwaide and Rene Zandbergen may be wrong about the color annotations, but it's a clear, well documented hypothesis, with excellent late-medieval parallels and supported by two very knowledgeable researchers.