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[split] Did the VM go straight from brain to vellum?

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  • [split] Did the VM go straight from brain to vellum?
• [split] Did the VM go straight from brain to vellum?

• [split] Did the VM go straight from brain to vellum?

  Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 06:15 AM

  (01-12-2025, 10:54 PM)qoltedy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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?

  
  It would be insane to write anything on vellum straight from one's head.   It would be like writing a document today with the keyboard connected directly to the laser printer.
  
  Vellum was expensive and difficult to erase from.  Moreover that task required an experienced hand capable of writing tiny letters neatly; something that not everyone would have. 
  
  Thus I bet that practically every manuscript on vellum, including the VMS, including encrypted letters,  was written on (much cheaper) paper first, with all the correcting and crossinging-out that may have been necessary.  And only then this paper draft would be copied to vellum.  
  
  And this last step was a boring mechanical task that required good "quill driving" skill but no understanding of the text.  Thus it must have been usually delegated to a secretary or more-or-less professional scribe, or to "scribal shop" (like a monastery).  
  
  Then the VMS Author would be the person who wrote the draft, not the person(s) who put quill to vellum.  Most likely, he was only one person for the whole book.   
  
  The Author would have to teach the Voynichese alphabet to each scribe, and have the scribe practice until he could copy it satisfactorily well.  This point argues against multiple scribes working at the same time.  But it would allow for a different scribe for each section (counting Herbal-A and Herbal-B as two sections), if they were composed by the Author in separate epochs, separated by substantial time intervals.
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  oshfdk > Yesterday, 09:03 AM

  (Yesterday, 06:15 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It would be insane to write anything on vellum straight from one's head.   It would be like writing a document today with the keyboard connected directly to the laser printer.
  
  Vellum was expensive and difficult to erase from.  Moreover that task required an experienced hand capable of writing tiny letters neatly; something that not everyone would have. 

  
  Do you have any source for this? You make it sound impossible ("would be insane"), but the arguments you provide point to "not usual" at best. If the only considerations were the cost of materials and skill required, then I know a lot of modern creators that would start directly with expensive materials without making a full prototype first, because they know their trade and what they want to do, and creating a full prototype with cheap materials would be a total waste of their time, which to them is more valuable than some "$5 of vellum". They would only bother with sketching and testing when trying to learn a new technique or preparing for some complicated project.
  
  The analogy with the laser printer looks like a faulty one. Writing on a computer and then printing on the printer would not take more time and effort than directly sending from the keyboard to the printer. No time or effort is lost by adding the computer. Writing the whole manuscript first on paper doubles the time and effort, and the cost of materials increases too: while cheaper than vellum, the paper and the ink weren't free either.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 10:15 AM

  (Yesterday, 09:03 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I know a lot of modern creators that would start directly with expensive materials without making a full prototype first

  
  Can you be more specific?  
  
  Oil painters normally sketched their paintings on the canvas with "pencil" before applying their paint.  Sculptors made sketches on paper before putting chisel to marble.  Calligraphy artists make sketches to find the best placement and spacing of letters etc.   Most Medieval manuscripts that survive today were copied by the scribes from other books or drafts.  That must be the case also for documents like decrees, contracts, deeds, etc.
  
  Note that a draft is not a full prototype.  Thus the time spent actually writing the draft (excluding the time spent conceiving its contents -- thinking, doing experiments, reading sources, visiting places etc) is normally only fraction of the time spent scribing it on vellum.   And that time is a good investment, because it is much less than the time that would be wasted by mistakes,  if one wrote directly on vellum.
  
  

  Quote:they know their trade and what they want to do

  
  So are you referring to artisans that make many copies of the same object?  That might be the case of the Alchemists Herbals, maybe.  But even they were probably copied from a master copy, rather than written by the Scribe from memory.   And anyway that example is not relevant to a unique work like the VMS...
  
  

  Quote:The analogy with the laser printer looks like a faulty one. Writing on a computer and then printing on the printer would not take more time and effort than directly sending from the keyboard to the printer. No time or effort is lost by adding the computer.

  
  Of course it takes longer.  The typing time is the same, and then you have to wait for the printer to print it.  But the point is that you write on the computer because you can correct and insert and reorder, while if you were to "type to the printer" you would have to start each page all over after every mistake.
  
  Imagine the VMS Author drawing and writing the text on a Herbal page, directly on vellum, and then realizing that he skipped a whole line of text in the middle of the 1st parag.  Or that he wrote the text for the wrong plant.  If he did that on the draft, no problem -- put an arrow with a note to the Scribe "insert this line here", cross out that sentence overt there, cut the page in half and paste the text onto the correct drawing... 
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  oshfdk > Yesterday, 11:05 AM

  (Yesterday, 10:15 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

  
  I just asked whether you have a source. I'm not sure a discussion about how plausible it was and whether writing directly on vellum was ever reasonable or not makes any sense, if we only base it on our estimates of the realities of the time by using modern analogies. There is certainly nothing physically impossible or "insane" in writing directly on parchment, all your arguments, even if correct, only point towards this as not very efficient way and a recipe for some lost money, which could be or not be an issue, depending on who any why created the manuscript. 
  
  If the author wound't even use a good enough tool for drawing the circles and, according to you, miscalculated the arrangement of various elements on a few occasions, it's less likely that there was a proper draft first and more likely that the whole thing was designed immediately on vellum. And also it's certainly possible to do some drafting or sketching on vellum with a sharp tip instrument.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 01:00 PM

  (Yesterday, 11:05 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I just asked whether you have a source.

  
  No, I don't have a source, sorry.  Neither an example of a manuscript that was definitely written straight from brain to vellum.  Maybe the paleographers can comment on this question?
  
  

  Quote:your arguments, even if correct, only point towards this as not very efficient way and a recipe for some lost money

  
  But the argument is that writing directly on vellum would cost more in time and money, because of the consequences of mistakes.
  
  

  Quote:If the author wound't even use a good enough tool for drawing the circles and, according to you, miscalculated the arrangement of various elements on a few occasions, it's less likely that there was a proper draft first and more likely that the whole thing was designed immediately on vellum.

  
  Again, a draft is not a full prototype.  The draft of a Zodiac page would probably have hand-drawn circles with only the labels and rings of text.  The Scribe was supposed to turn that into compass-drawn circles with the labels and text, and add the decoration -- nymphs and stars -- on his own.
  
  On the Zodiac, in particular, I suppose that the Author and Scribe interacted at first, experimenting with the 2x15-nymph and 30-nymph layout, until they settled for the latter.  But I wonder whether the Author agreed with the layout of Gemini (f72r2) Scorpio (f73r), and Sagittarius (f73v), with the "overflow" nymphs on top -- which I suspect were put there only because the Scribe miscalculated the space when drawing the nymphs inside the diagram.
  
  

  Quote:And also it's certainly possible to do some drafting or sketching on vellum with a sharp tip instrument.

  
  Yes, and such lines are often seen in other manuscripts.  But AFAIK there is no trace of them on the VMS.  Even the guide lines on the bottom parag of f67r2 (the "Seven Planets" diagram) seem to have been drawn with the same ink attachment used to draw the circles, only with a straightedge instead of a compass.
  
  Maybe you are assuming that people at the time routinely wrote on vellum?  AFAIK that was not the case.  Most manuscripts in libraries and museums may be on vellum, but only because those are infinitely more likely to be preserved than work on paper.  Both because they are more durable, and because they are generally more beautiful or historically important.  
  
  Paper itself easily deteriorates and is food for mold and insects, while tanned vellum is not. And paper makes excellent tinder for lighting fires: I recall that part of Dee's writings were lost for that use.  Yet paper (and, a couple centuries earlier, papyrus) was generally used for any writing that did not need to be preserved for many decades.  
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  JoJo_Jost > Yesterday, 02:19 PM

  There are very few corrections. However, such corrections were quite normal at the time. For this reason, there is much to suggest that it was “copied.”
  
  What cannot be proven (at least not yet) is whether it was copied from a single source, such as a text previously written on rag paper, or whether it was “copied” from various sources and translated directly into the Voynicheese. If we imagine a cipher code, then it is also possible that the writer could have written very accurately simply because he “copied” every single letter/syllable/word from the cipher.
  
  Different sources are not unlikely, see the different “languages.”

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 03:03 PM

  (Yesterday, 02:19 PM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.whether it was “copied” from various sources and translated directly into the Voynicheese.

  
  I could accept a direct translation to vellum if the "translation" was merely a substitution cipher.  Even then I would expect quite a few errors.  
  
  If it was a complex cipher, or actual translation between different languages -- I don't think so.  
  
  Translating from language A to language B is much harder than writing original prose directly in B.  Natural languages are all extremely ambiguous, and the ambiguities rarely match.  Thus the translator must be continuously choosing an interpretation of a source word or expression and looking for a word or expression that could be read with a similar meaning.  And often going back and changing a previous translation.
  
  (Once I tried translating a bit of the Russian SciFi novel Roadside Picnic into Portuguese, with the help of Google Translate and three other translations in other languages.  I already had trouble with "Gospodin", that one source translated as "Boss" and another as "General".  Then I got stuck at a sentence like "He leaned back onto the desk and [BLIP]ed."  Where BLIP was a Russian verb that meant "to clasp one's hands once and then rub them together".  How would I translate that?!?)
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  JoJo_Jost > Yesterday, 04:36 PM

  @ stolfi
  I have “developed” some ciphers that would have been possible in the early 15th century to better understand the VMS (one from the circle on f57v). These include ciphers that assign different Latin syllables to individual letters. This then creates words such as otalar. I then have to copy down a single word and then use the cipher again. So that could work.
  
  But I am also convinced, just like you, that it was copied from a text written on paper. It was just another possibility I wanted to point out.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  qoltedy > Yesterday, 05:52 PM

  (Yesterday, 06:15 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (01-12-2025, 10:54 PM)qoltedy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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?

  
  It would be insane to write anything on vellum straight from one's head.   It would be like writing a document today with the keyboard connected directly to the laser printer.
  
  Vellum was expensive and difficult to erase from.  Moreover that task required an experienced hand capable of writing tiny letters neatly; something that not everyone would have. 
  
  Thus I bet that practically every manuscript on vellum, including the VMS, including encrypted letters,  was written on (much cheaper) paper first, with all the correcting and crossinging-out that may have been necessary.  And only then this paper draft would be copied to vellum.  
  
  And this last step was a boring mechanical task that required good "quill driving" skill but no understanding of the text.  Thus it must have been usually delegated to a secretary or more-or-less professional scribe, or to "scribal shop" (like a monastery).  
  
  Then the VMS Author would be the person who wrote the draft, not the person(s) who put quill to vellum.  Most likely, he was only one person for the whole book.   
  
  The Author would have to teach the Voynichese alphabet to each scribe, and have the scribe practice until he could copy it satisfactorily well.  This point argues against multiple scribes working at the same time.  But it would allow for a different scribe for each section (counting Herbal-A and Herbal-B as two sections), if they were composed by the Author in separate epochs, separated by substantial time intervals.
  
  All the best, --stolfi

  
  While agree that it was likely standard at the time to do such practices of writing on paper and transferring to vellum later, we simply can't use that assumption as any definitive evidence for the actual construction of the VMS. Using that logic, many different practices were standard at the time, such as simple substitution ciphers. Just because something was standard practice at the time doesn't mean that's what the VMS authors and potential scribe(s) did.
  
  In fact, given the sheer WEIRDNESS of the VMS, I would argue that the author seemed in ways to actively shun the conventions of the time. To me, the VMS appears to be made by someone with boundless creativity and originality. Doing something that went against the "standard way of doing things" may make it MORE likely that it was done that way, given the sheer uniqueness of everything else in the VMS.
  
  It requires speculation to come up with a coherent narrative about the VMS creation, but that speculation must account for the various pieces of evidence. How does the hypothesis of multiple scribes account for the fact that we have numerous pieces of evidence to indicate the "scribes" also illustrated the drawings on the pages, often with the same pen in the same session? 
  
  Here is specifically what I find hard to believe:
  
  -The Author created an extremely unique uncrackable encryption scheme or language which likely took much thought to even design/figure out.
  -The Author wrote an entire Proto-VMS, for some reason to encode some meaningful information, using this scheme they designed. This included all the illustrations too(?)
  -Then, The Author taught 1-5 additional people how to write in their system, enough that they could reasonably correct mistakes in the original Proto-VMS, know how to rearrange words or sentences that are crossed out. Either they taught them how to fully use the system, so they actually understood it (that seems like quite a lot of work), or they only taught the scribes enough to copy the original (how would the scribes know how to correct mistakes without understanding the underlying system?)
  -Then, the scribe(s) copied the entire Proto-VMS, including illustrations, and drew them often in the same session with the same pen. (Why are the illustrations so seemingly crude if so much preparation went into even the drawings?)
  
  To me, this feels like a rather elaborate explanation to explain 2 anomalous things about the VMS:
  
  1.) Relative lack of "mistakes" we'd expect from off-the-cuff writing 
  2.) 2-5 distinct handwriting styles, correlated with specific topics
  
  If these 2 things can be explained in a simpler way with the hypothesis of The Author being the only scribe/illustrator, writing in a custom personal script, directly on vellum, with no draft, over the course of years, I'm inclined to think that's an overall simpler explanation which requires less assumptions.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  dashstofsk > Yesterday, 06:07 PM

  (Yesterday, 05:52 PM)qoltedy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Author created an extremely unique uncrackable encryption scheme or language which likely took much thought to even design/figure out.

  
  I also find this hard to believe. One thing I do believe is that people have been thinking too hard about this manuscript, and that a simple solution is probably likely.
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