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Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript?
- Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript?
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Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript?
Jimmy123 > 4 hours ago
So this is a stupid question but we know that the VMS was used heavily, due to paper fading, so that means that many people used it for practical purposes and were able to read it without many problems. So my question is: why did nobody continue to use this method of encipherment in any other manuscript?
Why are there no Voynichese in no other astrology MS from 1400 or 1500, or even 1600?
If the encipherment was so successful, I would think that whoever could read it, and use it every day, would also continue to use it later? Like in marginalia of existing astrology manuscripts, for personal annotation, or even to encode other mysteries and hidden knowledge?
But there are NO Voynichese in ANY manuscript, ANYWHERE.
Why?? -
RE: Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript?
LisaFaginDavis > 4 hours ago
1) not EVERY surviving manuscript in the entire world has been digitized for us to examine, much less catalogued to be findable in a database, so we can't say FOR SURE that no other examples exist. Only that they haven't been found.
2) only about 5-10% of all manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages have survived to the present day. So there MIGHT have been other examples, they just haven't survived.
3) In a soon-to-be-published article, Colin Layfield and I argue that the manuscript was likely not meant to be bound at all but was a loosely-stacked pile of unnested bifolia. If it hadn't been (mis)bound between wooden boards later in the fifteenth century, it would likely not have survived at all.
We have no way of knowing what we haven't seen or what doesn't survive. I think it's LIKELY that the Voynich is unique, but we just can't say for sure. There are other manuscripts that are just as unique in text, writing system, or artistry. -
RE: Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript?
Bernd > 2 hours ago
I think this is a very valid question.
What we can say for sure is that whatever 'Voynichese' is, it never gained enough traction to become common knowledge. Neither at the time the VM was created, nor was something even remotely similar re-invented in the following centuries.
To me, this is no proof but a very strong indication that Voynichese is unlikely to be useful in a broader context. Regardless if it is a cipher or transliteration of another language. If this system had a practical application, even if the knowledge was lost, a similar method would have been independently developed by now. This and the fact that we can't 'decipher' it most likely means that it either encodes no useful information, or in a way that is inefficient and/or impractical.
We have no idea if anyone ever 'used' the VM, it may very well be that people did what we did today with digital copies, and just desperately tried to make sense of it. It does become addictive.
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RE: Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript?
eggyk > 1 hour ago
(4 hours ago)Jimmy123 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So this is a stupid question but we know that the VMS was used heavily, due to paper fading, so that means that many people used it for practical purposes and were able to read it without many problems.
Do we know that the VMS was used heavily, or do we suspect that someone/many people riffled through the pages over the years? There are more reasons for doing so besides using the written content for some purpose. Perhaps it represents a couple hundred years of confused people scouring the pages in order to solve or understand it.
There are countless scenarios which could explain why there are no other voynichese manuscripts but most are a variation of:
1) There are no more, or the VMS was the only one to survive
2) There are more, but we haven't found one yet
3) The author only decided to make one VMS, or died before making another (and then noone copied it because why copy a useless book?)
4) The manuscript is not genuine in some way -
RE: Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript?
oshfdk > 52 minutes ago
This could be a deliberate decision of the author(s) to never use this cipher for anything else.
I've been pushing this idea a few times, and I'll repeat it again: the invention of a strange new alphabet for the cipher could be motivated by the desire to protect the identity of the author(s). Normal characters can be matched against the existing handwriting to attempt identifying the author. You can't identify the author if the whole text is written in an invented alphabet. I think it's possible that even the characters that are similar to the existing European numbers or abbreviations (y, l, etc) are written in the Voynich Manuscript in a specific peculiar way to suppress the normal writing habits.
If the above it true, then this can only work if the script is only used for the codex and never again and certainly doesn't appear in any plaintext documents. -
RE: Why is there no more Voynichese in any other manuscript?
Mark Knowles > 14 minutes ago
(4 hours ago)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) not EVERY surviving manuscript in the entire world has been digitized for us to examine, much less catalogued to be findable in a database, so we can't say FOR SURE that no other examples exist. Only that they haven't been found.
2) only about 5-10% of all manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages have survived to the present day. So there MIGHT have been other examples, they just haven't survived.
3) In a soon-to-be-published article, Colin Layfield and I argue that the manuscript was likely not meant to be bound at all but was a loosely-stacked pile of unnested bifolia. If it hadn't been (mis)bound between wooden boards later in the fifteenth century, it would likely not have survived at all.
We have no way of knowing what we haven't seen or what doesn't survive. I think it's LIKELY that the Voynich is unique, but we just can't say for sure. There are other manuscripts that are just as unique in text, writing system, or artistry.
I think it is important to remember that the only surviving medieval documents are not just manuscripts. There are many other documents that survive in archives in Italy and elsewhere such as letters, decrees, etc. When I was researching in the Milan State Archives I was looking through numerous sheets of loose documents of which they have many. I say this as if one were to read the Voynich forum one might have the impression that manuscripts are all there is when in fact they just constitute part. And it is clear to me from experience that so little of these other documents have been studied in any detail that there could easily to be something amongst them to be found. Also I wonder what percentage of surviving manuscripts have not been digitised and so may be largely unknown to Voynich researchers.