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Was the VM a failure?

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• Was the VM a failure?

• RE: Was the VM a failure?

  Koen G > 27-06-2025, 09:47 AM

  What is out of the ordinary is that they don't even attempt to adhere to a known tradition. Sure, there may be an echo here and there, but the overall programme (if we can speak of such a thing) is disconnected from the known. The only example I know of where this happens with 100+ plants is the Trinity College MS O.2.48 herbal we discussed on the forum before. But even this MS started out with some traditional sequences.

• RE: Was the VM a failure?

  ReneZ > 27-06-2025, 10:01 AM

  There are of course exceptions to every 'generic' statement, but indeed, it is not unusual at all that plants are hard to identify. 
  
  Other things are unusual, first of all that the drawings are all original, i.e. not copies from any other known herbal. (But the Voynich MS is not unique in that respect). The emphasis on roots is a bit unusual, and perhaps also the fact that some aspects were undoubtedly drawn from nature. That is something that just started to happen around the time of the Voynich MS.
  
  To me, the many illustrations are a clear sign that the MS was meant to be special.
   
  

  (27-06-2025, 06:48 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe people were merrily reading it for over a century, when it was still in its original environment.

  
  
  I just can't see any chance of that being the case....

• RE: Was the VM a failure?

  Koen G > 27-06-2025, 10:40 AM

  (27-06-2025, 10:01 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (27-06-2025, 06:48 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe people were merrily reading it for over a century, when it was still in its original environment.

  
  I just can't see any chance of that being the case....

  
  Does that mean that you think any information in the document was lost once encoded?

• RE: Was the VM a failure?

  Bernd > 27-06-2025, 12:50 PM

  (27-06-2025, 02:27 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (26-06-2025, 04:55 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (26-06-2025, 04:30 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I would assume abstraction rather than deception here. It was probably intended that the plants in the plant section, for example, cannot be assigned to real plants with certainty. Nevertheless, the first section is a plant section as can be seen in many other manuscripts. This is true even if the plants in the VMS cannot be clearly assigned to any known tradition. It seems as if the author wanted to prevent plant names from being deduced from the coded text ( usually first "word" ? ) at any point.

  
  What is the use of a plant illustration if it won't let the reader identify the plant?

  
  It is a very common modern misconception that illustrations are used to clarify things.
  Certainly, that is the case nowadays.
  
  Especially in early herbals this was NOT the case. Minta Collins is very clear about this. Highly recommended reading.
  
  Initially, this was done to beautify the book, or make it more interesting. The people making the drawings were not the physicians who actually knew what the plant looked like. They did not even realise what are the plant properties that help to identify them. 
  
  This last point was included in one classical work, by Theophrastus. This was only intruduced in Europe in Padua around the time of the Voynich MS creation, but few people could read the Greek. Translations appeared later, and plant drawings that were good enough to recognise the plant started to appear in the 16th century in the times of Brunfels, Bock and Fuchs.

  
  I agree with Rene.
  As I have already mentioned before, we must keep in mind that almost all of the beautiful antique and medieval herbals still existing today were never intended to be used by physicians. They were high-end collectibles created for a bibliophile noble audience, hence lavishly illustrated, but barely touched. No physician could afford such a book. The original Dioscorides was completely unillustrated. The high-level books were also not copied by people with medial knowledge but compiled in workshops by artisans. Independently from text scrolls and stock image paintings. This frequently led to compilations of different plants and mix-ups in imagery - which didn't matter in the end. Because the buyer usually had no medical knowledge either.
  
  Furthermore, no physician went out to collect herbs. At least none that could afford an illustrated book. This was considered an inferior job for women. A physician diagnosed patients and suggested a remedy. Ingredients were usually bought, prepared and administered by others. The only case where the plant's appearance mattered to a physician was to deduct potential uses from the shape on a philosophical ground. I would also not exclude a mnemonic component, especially if we look at the creative root shapes in many illustrations.
  
  Yet many herbals show a consistent display of plants and imagery was conserved from antiquity into the middle ages. Likely by durable paintings on wood (pinakes). The VM plants are odd in many regards though they definitely are inspired by different known sources of herbal imagery like Dioscorides and Tacuinum Sanitatis. What really sets them apart are the flowers. Not only are they weird and most likely original creations of the artist, they are also unusually large compared to most other herbals that put little emphasis on flowers.
  
  I cannot say what any of this means, but it is unlikely that the VM was used as a physician's toolbook. Such must have existed but probably were sparsely illustrated. illustrations=space=parchment=money. The VM must have consisted of around 250 pages including the now missing folios, most of which were occupied with more illustrations than text. Not a very economical approach. But all of that ends in unfounded speculations.
  
  I stand by my point that the VM wasn't a success story that was ever repeated. And we must ask ourselves why.

• RE: Was the VM a failure?

  Rafal > 27-06-2025, 01:25 PM

  What is the measure of success? 
  
  If VM was supposed to carry some meaning and educate people then it's a complete failure as nobody is able to read it.
  
  If it was to be understood only by its author then it probably worked but we cannot be sure. Maybe he wasn't able to understand it himself after a while,
  just like it happens with badly written computer code.
  
  If it was meant to sell and earn money then it was a success, just maybe not for the author. Emperor Rudolf paid for a lot of cash for it, then Voynich payed cash for it, then yet someone else paid for it. Unfortunately the author could at best only watch it from a cloud in Heaven 

• RE: Was the VM a failure?

  Koen G > 27-06-2025, 02:13 PM

  (27-06-2025, 12:50 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I stand by my point that the VM wasn't a success story that was ever repeated. And we must ask ourselves why.

  
  Different definitions of success make this discussion a bit tricky.
  
  A secret, one-off mission can be described as a great success if all goals were reached. The mission was successful in the sense that it did what it needed to do. But nobody will repeat it and not many people will even know about it.
  
  But one can also know artistic or commercial success by reaching a wide audience and being influential. You seem to be thinking about this type of success.
  
  In both cases though, we can only speak of success by first assuming goals. Did the makers intend to...
  

  • make money? Maybe they sold it for big bucks to a rich Frenchman who had it rebound and added the month names. 
    
  • hide information for use within a limited group? Maybe it did function like this for a while, until the group was no longer functional or the MS was no longer needed.  
    
  • serve as an exercise in [meditation? glossolalia? writing? memorization? book making?] for the people who made it? In that case, the making itself was the goal.
    

  
  No matter which initial goal we take, we can think of a scenario where the makers were successful. Only if we assume that the goal was to make a new tradition, the makers obviously failed. But out of all the possible goals, that one is certainly the least likely.
  
  With something like the VM, we must assume that it was not meant for the ages, but rather to function in its immediate surroundings. To educate specific people of a community known to the makers, in the makers' "here and now". So sell for a lot of money to benefit the makers immediately. To trick a pretentious book snob the makers knew. 
  
  They almost definitely weren't thinking about making something for the ages.

• RE: Was the VM a failure?

  Bernd > 27-06-2025, 04:14 PM

  No, I was addressing a more abstract idea regarding the creation process of the VM.
  From an evolutionary perspective, success = survival + reproduction. This can also be applied to cultural achievements and inventions like the book printing technique, writing, the wheel, fire, religious ideas, fashions.
  
  A successful technique survives by being spread from people to people and even if it goes extinct, tends to re-evolve for the sheer need as soon as someone else independently has the same idea. Eventually most become obsolete and go extinct much like  biological species. Writing books on parchment was replaced by printed books on paper for obvious reasons. In this regard, the concept of herbals as a collection of plants and their uses can be considered very successful, having enjoyed popularity from antiquity until today. Authors still produce herbals today, both for professional and folk medicine use.
  
  But the VM as the concept of a book of unreadable text with unreadable imagery? It is more like an evolutionary freak event that popped up and disappeared again. The VM as physical object can be considered a fossil of an extinct technique. Much like the hard to interpret remains of a rare and short-lived extinct species, which physiology and ecology remains unknown due to lack of fossil record. It wasn't an evolutionary success-story and quickly got outcompeted by others.
  
  Since such encrypted books with weird imagery did not gain popularity around the time the VM was created and the idea did not reappear in the next 600 years, we can deduct that there simply was neither the need nor desire to do something like that again.
  
  .)If the VM was a commercially successful hoax (which seems absurd regarding its unneccessary complexity that nobody in the 15th century would have uncovered), why did it remain at one attempt? Nobody else had a similar idea to scam people? Such forgeries tend to come in waves and often in reaction to a demand once the first such exoic works pop up. Apart from the single Salani page, we know nothing of such or even remotely similar hoaxes.
  
  .)If the VM was a practical method to conceal information (it would be very viable since nobody managed to crack it until today), same consideration. It didn't spread and nobody ever had a similar idea to create such encrypted books. And the same can be said for  mnemonic or spiritual exercises, though arguably in a lesser regard as it would be a highly personal work.
  
  The point I am trying to make is - the uniqueness of the VM creation process as an invention or cultural achievement is a strong argument against a broader usability. It is evidence that the VM was created in a niche environment under rather stringent prerequisites that were necessary for its creation to be possible. And that the use case of the mechanism involved is similarly narrow and not practical or of interest for a broader audience.
  
  Leonardo da Vinci used mirror writing, something that, while not unique, never gained popularity. It was useful to him but isn't feasible for most people. I propose that the VM and the involved creation process also was (in whatever way) useful and important for its creator but not necessarily beyond that. The probability of this hypothesis declines with the number of people involved but that is another matter.

• RE: Was the VM a failure?

  oshfdk > 27-06-2025, 05:32 PM

  (27-06-2025, 04:14 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No, I was addressing a more abstract idea regarding the creation process of the VM.
  From an evolutionary perspective, success = survival + reproduction. 

  
  If we take this at face value, the VM itself has survived and probably is in the top 10 of the most reproduced medieval codices.
  
  If you mean specifically the encoding, we don't know much about it, so it's quite possible it was popular and some of the principles may still be used in cryptography.
  
  The only thing that definitely didn't get much traction was the script.

• RE: Was the VM a failure?

  cvetkakocj@rogers.com > 27-06-2025, 06:20 PM

  My artist friend taught me some important value of genuine art, which can be as simple as child's drawing or as complicated as Rembrandt's Prodigal Son, as long as it serve a specific purpose and appeals to human senses. 
  The value of great art is in its symbolic message that is timeless and open to interpretation. Several decades ago, the world renowned Dutch spiritual writer Henri Nauen just discovered a new dimension of Rembrandt's paining, namely, that the Father had one female and one male hand, something the male-dominated religious  societies are forgetting.  
  As my friend said, great art speaks from the heart and mind of the artist to the heart and mind to people, to each one as much as he or she is capable to understand. Sometimes, this communication is taking place on a subconscious level, so that even the author himself is not aware of the message he is transmitting.
  This reminds me of the VM picture Rene Zandbergen chose for the front page of his book. I would be very interested to know why he chose that particular picture, since no flower in natural environment looks like that. 
  There are several clues how to interpret that picture, one of which being Koen's explanation of the picture in f28v, or f35r. Besides animals, flowers had important place in human history, in folk rituals and in prophesy. At the time of religious confusion this picture clearly tells us where to find the Truth.
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