5 ms·

I think this approach has a lot of potential, and I wonder what a statistical comparison of character co-occurrences between the Voynich manuscript and other wr

by vonnik 11y ago

I think this approach has a lot of potential, and I wonder what a statistical comparison of character co-occurrences between the Voynich manuscript and other writing systems would reveal. For anyone curious, here is Stephen Bax's video on his 2014 findings. https://m.youtube.com/watch?index=1&v=fpZD_3D8_WQ&list=LLATcCtXq6Eg7iFjmWQ1CNkA https://m.youtube.com/watch?index=1&v=fpZD_3D8_WQ&list=LLATc... He believes he has translated about 10 words in the manuscript, which is huge, and he thinks the script may have been invented to express a language once spoken between the near east and the Himalayas, maybe Turkic or Caucasian...

benbreen 11y ago
It blows me away how many conflicting but semi-convincing theories there are about this manuscript (I read one fairly recently that argued for a New World origin of many of the plants, for instance). Which gets me thinking, has anyone analyzed the actual paper it's made out of to get any clues about where it originated? I know that spectroscopy can sometimes be used to make a guess at geographic origins of biological material but I haven't heard anything about it being used on the Voynich MS.
- skdfhksdf 11y ago
  The vellum was carbon dated not too long ago, indicating that the book dated back to the 15th century: http://phys.org/news/2011-02-experts-age.html http://phys.org/news/2011-02-experts-age.html
  - benbreen 11y ago
    I'd seen that, but I'm wondering if there's any way to use spectroscopy or some other technique to determine roughly what part of the world the vellum came from. It's been shown to be possible with wine: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23682581 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23682581 And (I think this one is really fascinating) some researchers at the Louvre awhile back even used spectroscopic analysis on a painting by Murillo to determine that the obsidian he painted on began its life in a 14th century Aztec obsidian mine! http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005NIMPB.240..576C http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005NIMPB.240..576C
- TillE 11y ago
  I've seen nothing that persuades me even a little bit away from the most common theory, which is that it's basically a hoax. It's a pseudo-occult book produced by some creative individual for fun and/or profit. There are some contemporary alchemical manuscripts which are written at least partly in code, for example, but the illustrations strongly suggest that Voynich is pure fantasy.
  - throwaway2048 11y ago
    It obeys statistical models of natural language that "fake text" would not at all. This sort of statistical modelling of language would almost certainly be unknown at the time it was produced. I find the hoax theory to be pretty unsatisfactory. Even if the overall goal was some kind of hoax, the text itself almost certainly carries semantic meaning, and that in itself is fascinating due to its apparent indecipherability.
    - Houshalter 11y ago
      Yes it's definitely a real language that has been written down, and not one that we know of. So the only question is if it's a made up language, or a real language that has been lost. A made up language is possible, but seems less likely. There are thousands of real languages that have been lost to the world.
    - acqq 11y ago
      Any links to the "statistical" proof the that the text is not fake? I've seen just the opposite, that the statistics are really too weird, compared to anything we know. Which, to me, is a bit too much.
      - ajuc 11y ago
        http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0066344 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
        11y ago
perone 11y ago
Thanks for the feedback, I also believe that this approach has a lot of potential, especially after the work of Stephen Bax, a few word translations can help us to figure out transformations that could allow translation in vector space.

by vonnik 11y ago

benbreen 11y ago

It blows me away how many conflicting but semi-convincing theories there are about this manuscript (I read one fairly recently that argued for a New World origin of many of the plants, for instance). Which gets me thinking, has anyone analyzed the actual paper it's made out of to get any clues about where it originated? I know that spectroscopy can sometimes be used to make a guess at geographic origins of biological material but I haven't heard anything about it being used on the Voynich MS.

skdfhksdf 11y ago
The vellum was carbon dated not too long ago, indicating that the book dated back to the 15th century: http://phys.org/news/2011-02-experts-age.html http://phys.org/news/2011-02-experts-age.html
- benbreen 11y ago
  I'd seen that, but I'm wondering if there's any way to use spectroscopy or some other technique to determine roughly what part of the world the vellum came from. It's been shown to be possible with wine: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23682581 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23682581 And (I think this one is really fascinating) some researchers at the Louvre awhile back even used spectroscopic analysis on a painting by Murillo to determine that the obsidian he painted on began its life in a 14th century Aztec obsidian mine! http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005NIMPB.240..576C http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005NIMPB.240..576C
TillE 11y ago
I've seen nothing that persuades me even a little bit away from the most common theory, which is that it's basically a hoax. It's a pseudo-occult book produced by some creative individual for fun and/or profit. There are some contemporary alchemical manuscripts which are written at least partly in code, for example, but the illustrations strongly suggest that Voynich is pure fantasy.
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  It obeys statistical models of natural language that "fake text" would not at all. This sort of statistical modelling of language would almost certainly be unknown at the time it was produced. I find the hoax theory to be pretty unsatisfactory. Even if the overall goal was some kind of hoax, the text itself almost certainly carries semantic meaning, and that in itself is fascinating due to its apparent indecipherability.
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    Yes it's definitely a real language that has been written down, and not one that we know of. So the only question is if it's a made up language, or a real language that has been lost. A made up language is possible, but seems less likely. There are thousands of real languages that have been lost to the world.
  - acqq 11y ago
    Any links to the "statistical" proof the that the text is not fake? I've seen just the opposite, that the statistics are really too weird, compared to anything we know. Which, to me, is a bit too much.
    - ajuc 11y ago
      http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0066344 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
      - 11y ago

perone 11y ago

Thanks for the feedback, I also believe that this approach has a lot of potential, especially after the work of Stephen Bax, a few word translations can help us to figure out transformations that could allow translation in vector space.