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How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
- How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
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RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
dashstofsk > 01-12-2025, 09:42 AM
(01-12-2025, 09:16 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.why would this explanation be preferred
I am not 'preferring' the one person hypothesis. It does seem plausible that there were indeed more then one person. However it does seem plausible also that these writers did write 'in bursts'. Each section being a separate piece of work with gaps of time in between and that the manuscript was not written in one go. -
RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
Koen G > 01-12-2025, 09:56 AM
(01-12-2025, 09:38 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The usual assumption works when scribes use familiar scripts, that they have practiced writing for years. It's highly unlikely that the established well learned handwriting of a professional scribe will noticeably change over the course of a single manuscript, hence if there is a change in handwriting, usually another scribe is assumed.
I don't know if that's the case. As you said, a person's handwriting can change over time, and that's talking about the script that's most intimately familiar to them. But in manuscript descriptions, the assumption is not "this person aged", but rather "this was somebody else". That also tells us something about the way manuscripts were usually made: different scribes coming in was not an exception - it was quite normal.
(01-12-2025, 09:38 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.However, when writing in a new unfamiliar script, it's expected that the handwriting will evolve and writing habits change as the hand adapts to the script. Interestingly, if I remember correctly the work of Lisa Fagin Davis, the most striking difference between the hands was in the execution of the gallows characters, the very characters that are highly specific to the Voynich script.
I understand that the VM is special and we cannot just apply regular expectations to it. However, it is my impression that hand 1, starting from f1r, already had a good feeling for the script and managed to maintain if for many pages. So I don't think we must necessarily assume that (1) they never wrote Voynichese anywhere else and (2) their handwriting, including size and ductus, would change noticeably after a period of absence. -
RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
oshfdk > 01-12-2025, 10:09 AM
(01-12-2025, 09:56 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I understand that the VM is special and we cannot just apply regular expectations to it. However, it is my impression that hand 1, starting from f1r, already had a good feeling for the script and managed to maintain if for many pages. So I don't think we must necessarily assume that (1) they never wrote Voynichese anywhere else and (2) their handwriting, including size and ductus, would change noticeably after a period of absence.
My personal opinion is that the scribe(s) is/are the authors and designers of the script. The large number of weird and unusual glyphs I see as on-the-spot adaptation of the script to express some new symbol, word or letter combination of the underlying text. So, the scribes here can and will experiment.
If this is the case, I see different hands more like an attempt to find a new aesthetic or practical form of the script by the very designers of the script. So more of "how about I try it with rounder shapes on this page", or maybe even adapting to the subject matter ("now we are talking about the royalty, let's make the script look a bit more kingly"). -
RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
MarcoP > 01-12-2025, 10:35 AM
(01-12-2025, 09:16 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(01-12-2025, 09:06 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(30-11-2025, 12:35 PM)qoltedy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If someone wrote the Manuscript in bursts, over the course of decades, that could also plausibly explain the variations in topics ("languages") and handwriting style.
I am also of that opinion.
Again, this is possible. But why would this explanation be preferred over the usual assumption in manuscript descriptions that different hands = different people?
To me, the most attractive reason is the correlation with the different languages. In particular, the fact that Scribe 1 produced different languages in most Herbal A pages and Pharma/Small-Plants pages.
I think it is particularly interesting that, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Herbal A pages that were bound next to Pharma pages use a language that is intermediate between the main Herbal A body and Pharma.
Bigram-frequency plots from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., left labelled by scribe, right labelled by folio.
From this, I understand that the language drift is not due to different scribes nor to different subjects (if we take illustrations as defining subjects, we have Herbal pages with Small-Plants language, so the illustrations do not explain the language change).
Evidence of an evolution process affecting the production of Scribe 1 treating a single subject (Herbal) suggests to me that something similar could underlie the whole “language” drift. The plots above are somehow ambiguous, but they can be read as a single >-shaped trajectory (though it’s also possible to see slightly separated clusters largely corresponding to scribes and subjects).
It could be that differences in the script and differences in language are entirely independent from each other, but still I find the idea of a single “drifting” process attractive. This is one of the many cases in which I have an opinion but I don’t trust it. I think it’s likely that Lisa and Colin’s announced paper will add to our knowledge of the subject. -
RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
Aga Tentakulus > 01-12-2025, 10:56 AM
Not only can you easily see the differences at second glance, you can also see that there are two minds at work. One had a different writing style. I would even say he had a smaller vocabulary.
When two people do the same thing, it is never quite the same.
Wenn zwei das selbe tun ist es dennoch nie das gleiche. -
RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
rikforto > 01-12-2025, 01:03 PM
(01-12-2025, 09:16 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(01-12-2025, 09:06 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(30-11-2025, 12:35 PM)qoltedy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If someone wrote the Manuscript in bursts, over the course of decades, that could also plausibly explain the variations in topics ("languages") and handwriting style.
I am also of that opinion.
Again, this is possible. But why would this explanation be preferred over the usual assumption in manuscript descriptions that different hands = different people?
When talking about 2-5 hands, I think there is a false parsimony in saying that one hand = one scribe is a simpler explanation. When the handwriting is very close, handwriting change over time is at least as good as, and arguably even better than, positing more scribes. By contrast, I find reducing Currier's observations below two different people to require positing a radical shift in handwriting, not just some modest changes in the ductus in a few places. Like a great many Voynich things, it is certainly possible, but not in the same way that 2 people/5 hands is. -
RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
Jorge_Stolfi > 01-12-2025, 02:32 PM
(01-12-2025, 09:38 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.However, when writing in a new unfamiliar script, it's expected that the handwriting will evolve and writing habits change as the hand adapts to the script.
Indeed, and we can see the scribe's gradual evolution and learning in the style of the nymphs and diagrams along the Zodiac section. His Voynichese handwriting too probably changed just as much with practice and age.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
qoltedy > 01-12-2025, 10:54 PM
(01-12-2025, 09:16 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Again, this is possible. But why would this explanation be preferred over the usual assumption in manuscript descriptions that different hands = different people?
The purpose of speculation about the manuscript is to try and elucidate a valid narrative which fits all of the observable facts. If we can find the correct narrative, the actual "true story" of the manuscript, then one day that narrative may actually give us insights into the actual contents.
There are several competing narratives about the VMS that are self-consistent in ways, but inconsistent with some evidence.
An assumption of multiple scribes is consistent with some evidence (the 5 distinct handwriting styles) but struggles to explain other aspects. For example, what the purpose of the document is and why so many scribes would be needed. There are other additions or exceptions you could add onto the theory of multiple scribes (it's copying from an earlier text, it's a phonetic transcription, it's oral knowledge passed down) but each of these requires its own leaps in logic and speculative assumptions.
If the text had multiple scribes to copy a previous text, who wrote THAT text? Was it one person? Meaning one person wrote the entirety of a Proto-Voynich Manuscript, and then later paid 5 scribes to write it again? For what purpose would someone do it this way, instead of just writing it themselves? Perhaps there are explanations, but again we're getting into quite elaborate scenarios to make sense of 5 handwriting styles.
Every explanation is imperfect and has some narrative leap to justify itself.
It's my opinion as someone who has informally created and studied historical philosophical constructed languages, that a simpler explanation is that the manuscript was created by one person, privately, over the course of many years, with them writing about different topics at different periods of their life, and refining the writing system over time.
If we are to use Occam's razor as a benchmark, the hypothesis of one person writing it over a long period of time, at least to me, appears to be a simpler and less convoluted explanation of the evidence.
Could I be wrong? Certainly. Could the multiple scribes hypothesis be wrong? Certainly.
I do think the hypothesis of an individual, private constructed language, is more consistent with there being a single scribe, working over long periods of time to develop a custom system.
The hypothesis of handed down knowledge from previous generations, phonetic transcriptions of spoken knowledge, or similar ideas are more consistent with multiple scribes. -
RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
JoJo_Jost > 02-12-2025, 06:43 AM
(01-12-2025, 10:56 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Not only can you easily see the differences at second glance, you can also see that there are two minds at work. One had a different writing style. I would even say he had a smaller vocabulary.
When two people do the same thing, it is never quite the same.
Wenn zwei das selbe tun ist es dennoch nie das gleiche.
But it also depends on which sources they may have “copied” from and what they considered important in doing so.
One of my theories is that aiin could correspond to “alii,” among other things (!). (The L would then be the same size as the other letters, as was often the case).
Alii is the most common word in some old recipe books because all possible names for a plant are mentioned in the name descriptions. And there, at the beginning of each new word, it says “alii” (=other)
And the page you show is one of the reasons why I came up with this idea.
Now let's imagine that the writers copied from two different sources, and suddenly you have a “completely different language.”There are recipe texts that use greatly abbreviated language and focus only on the essentials, and other texts that are written in a more elaborate style and therefore contain many plant names in other languages.
This would also explain the different writers. One was tasked with copying some plants or contents from one book, the other from another book.
And ur page would then be a good indication of that. -
RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
N._N. > 02-12-2025, 07:32 AM
(29-11-2025, 06:08 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's interesting that by some opinions being expressed more vocally than others, one can get a warped view on the situation.
This is an interesting observation, probably not just in regard to this particular question, but also (Voynich) research in general. There is just no need to be vocal about your opinion if it is basically being open to both the standard theory and the latest research.
I went with option 3, more than two, for three reasons: Firstly, while I have not researched this question in detail myself, I find Lisa Fagin Davis' arguments compelling, even more so since the latest developments suggesting that the manuscript was not bound as a book originally. This makes a group project seem much more likely as well in my opinion.
Secondly, as soon as we assume two people were involved, there has to have been a moment of teaching or shared creation when knowledge of the script (or knowledge of the generation of convincing gibberish) was passed on. If this is the case, why stop at two? Of course, the VMS might have been the work of a married couple, of a father-son duo, coincidentally two people of a larger group which had originally developed the glyphs etc. However, most monastic, scholarly etc. contexts offer no particular argument for exactly two people.
Thirdly, while I would not rule out the idea that some 'hands' are just different phases in the life of the same person, I find this idea hard to match with several aspects of the manuscript and its probable practices of creation such as the relationship between illustrations and 'text'.