6 ms·

The Unsolvable Mysteries of the Voynich Manuscript

78 points by shawndumas 10y ago

Animats 10y ago
Mandatory XKCD: [1] [1] https://xkcd.com/593/ https://xkcd.com/593/
- happy-go-lucky 10y ago
  That pretty much sums it up.
- yitchelle 10y ago
  If a new edition of the Manuscript is ever published, they need to add this XKCD as a forward.
sctb 10y ago
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084229
pakl 10y ago
For some recent information (mid/late 2016) on applying linguistic methodology to the Voynich Manuscript, see this two part video. It's really great to see how much progress the community has made. https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Interesting, it relates to the decoding of Stephen Bax (above) , at least in the few minutes I've watched
- anotheryou 10y ago
  Wow, thanks so much! End of part 2 is so amazing :). Looks like I can wait for the translated version before I buy a print :)
Ros2 10y ago
If the language is fake, enough special attention was paid to constructing it to look real enough in the present day to still attract analysis. If it's real, it hasn't ever been turned into anything meaningful. Either outcome is incredible. It's a fun problem. Any angle you attack it at seems to just lead to more questions and dead ends (with some WTFs thrown in).
- pakl 10y ago
  Well, it seems taking a principled approach helps avoid the WTFs :) Please see my other comment for informative video links reviewing recent work by community collaborators.
icanhackit 10y ago
Skimmed the article to see if it had been mentioned but from what I could see it wasn't. Stephen Bax, Professor in Applied Linguistics University of Bedfordshire: Through analysis of a number of illustrations in the manuscript, including one constellation (Taurus) and seven plants, then drawing on European and Middle Eastern mediaeval manuscripts and contemporary nomenclature, the paper proposes the identification of a set of proper names in the Voynich text, giving a total of ten words made up of fourteen of the Voynich symbols and clusters. The resulting scheme is set out in Appendix 1 (page 56) of the paper. The aim of the paper is to attempt to lay the groundwork for an eventual full decoding and complete decipherment of this fascinating document. The evidence shows that the manuscript is not a hoax, and is probably an explanatory treatise on nature. The script was possibly devised to encode a previously unwritten language or dialect, perhaps by a small community which later died out or disappeared. The paper (PDF): http://stephenbax.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Voynich-a-provisional-partial-decoding-BAX.pdf http://stephenbax.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Voynich-a-p... The video, 47m-11s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpZD_3D8_WQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpZD_3D8_WQ
- Nursie 10y ago
  Yeah, this analysis is a few years out now, talking about fictional plants and untranslatability. Bax et al. fairly convincingly identified a couple of plants and made some inroads into identifying some of the sounds and symbols.
- anotheryou 10y ago
  I also hoped for an update on this one. He is quite convincing.
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  http://ciphermysteries.com/2014/02/21/stephen-bax-voynich-manuscript http://ciphermysteries.com/2014/02/21/stephen-bax-voynich-ma... is critical of the approach taken by Stehen Bax.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    This critique seems harsh, maybe dismissive, but it has some merit (then again I don't know much about the VM) All the gallows pointing at the same letter is indeed something problematic and that the other video pointed in this thread come to the same conclusion (that is, they mean different things) His point 6 is addressed by the other video pointed in this page (basically the repeated letters should have an 'r' between them) Point 1/3 might be fair, 2 is just nitpicking, 7 might be an issue but then this is not looking at a picture of a plant, but rather a bad illustration
tetha 10y ago
This is a great example for the RPG Call of Cthulhu. It is an ancient text, written in an unknown language. It appears to have some relationship with our world, because there are plants from earth, but there are also... different plants. Or are they different? It's hard to tell - you might be fooled by the style of illustration, but there might be something wrong about some of these plants in a very strange way. And you can kinda guess the meaning of some of the words based on their relationship with the images, something must be connected to the sunflower, something must be connected to that nightshade. But who knows fully? And thus, it takes months and months to dig through some of the old text, the texts the cultists read so freely. Months of relating to other, equally or more obscure texts, months of lying in bed without sleep until an idea pops into your head. That's why reading old occult texts is hard. Yes, I love lovecrafts work and that RPG.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  >> That's why reading old occult texts is hard. Hard, and it also costs Sanity, let's not forget.
runeb 10y ago
I recommend having a look though the Codex Seraphinianus which is an artwork inspired by the manuscript. It has an incredibly alien feel.
- jaclaz 10y ago
  Yes, it is a work of beauty. Find some references here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus Luigi Serafini thinks that the Voynich is as "invented" as his own work: https://www.wired.com/2013/10/codex-seraphinianus-interview/ https://www.wired.com/2013/10/codex-seraphinianus-interview/
patrickg_zill 10y ago
Is there a reason in an American publication to use metric measurements, especially for a book that is about the standard size of 6x9 inches?
- na85 10y ago
  Well, perhaps the New Yorker knows it attracts a multinational readership, and perhaps it also is aware that the rest of the world tends to view the US customary system of weights and measures as rather silly.
  - harryjo 10y ago
    > The manuscript is two hundred and twenty-five millimetres tall, a hundred and sixty wide, and five centimetres thick. "met_re_s" in an American publication? In this case, it's obviously just the New Yorker spelling out words and mixing scales just to increase word count/diversity to give the article a more mysterious pseudo-intellectual feel, as is the style of the magazine. The New Yorker spins articles through a thesaurus before publication. See also > ineluctable Considering that the venerated New Yorker(!) is blogspamming a Reddit(!) thread, they needed to do something to distinguish themselves from BuzzFeed.
    - na85 10y ago
      >The New Yorker spins articles through a thesaurus before publication. Perhaps, but there's a reason for the French saying "le mot juste": Synonyms aren't actually words that have the same meaning. They are words that have similar, related meanings but don't actually connote the same thing. What should they have chosen instead of "ineluctable"? Irresistable? Inevitable? Those words don't really carry the same meaning for me. Precision in language (spoken, written, programming, or otherwise) is a beautiful thing.
    - doug1001 10y ago
      well the author of the piece is Josephine Livingstone; she might be British. I don't know whether she is; but i do know that i have read article by her in the Guardian which is a leading newspaper published in the UK.
cLeEOGPw 10y ago
I don't know how much the idea is accepted within the community, but for me the most probable case seems to be some guy writing half truth (real plants, constellations), half fiction (imaginary plants and mechanisms) with either made up or intentionally very unknown, even at the time of writing language, script as a hobby/work. The illustrations, even the strange ones, fit the art style of the time pretty well, and if there were people willing to buy things like that, why not make it? Seems perfectly reasonable course of action to produce it, only thing that's strange is that there aren't more these kind of scripts. Or there are, we just haven't heard of them because they were either in known languages, or deciphered?

78 points by shawndumas 10y ago

Animats 10y ago

Mandatory XKCD: [1] [1] https://xkcd.com/593/ https://xkcd.com/593/

happy-go-lucky 10y ago
That pretty much sums it up.
yitchelle 10y ago
If a new edition of the Manuscript is ever published, they need to add this XKCD as a forward.

sctb 10y ago

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084229

pakl 10y ago

For some recent information (mid/late 2016) on applying linguistic methodology to the Voynich Manuscript, see this two part video. It's really great to see how much progress the community has made. https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4

raverbashing 10y ago
Interesting, it relates to the decoding of Stephen Bax (above) , at least in the few minutes I've watched
anotheryou 10y ago
Wow, thanks so much! End of part 2 is so amazing :). Looks like I can wait for the translated version before I buy a print :)

Ros2 10y ago

If the language is fake, enough special attention was paid to constructing it to look real enough in the present day to still attract analysis. If it's real, it hasn't ever been turned into anything meaningful. Either outcome is incredible. It's a fun problem. Any angle you attack it at seems to just lead to more questions and dead ends (with some WTFs thrown in).

pakl 10y ago
Well, it seems taking a principled approach helps avoid the WTFs :) Please see my other comment for informative video links reviewing recent work by community collaborators.

icanhackit 10y ago

Skimmed the article to see if it had been mentioned but from what I could see it wasn't. Stephen Bax, Professor in Applied Linguistics University of Bedfordshire: Through analysis of a number of illustrations in the manuscript, including one constellation (Taurus) and seven plants, then drawing on European and Middle Eastern mediaeval manuscripts and contemporary nomenclature, the paper proposes the identification of a set of proper names in the Voynich text, giving a total of ten words made up of fourteen of the Voynich symbols and clusters. The resulting scheme is set out in Appendix 1 (page 56) of the paper. The aim of the paper is to attempt to lay the groundwork for an eventual full decoding and complete decipherment of this fascinating document. The evidence shows that the manuscript is not a hoax, and is probably an explanatory treatise on nature. The script was possibly devised to encode a previously unwritten language or dialect, perhaps by a small community which later died out or disappeared. The paper (PDF): http://stephenbax.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Voynich-a-provisional-partial-decoding-BAX.pdf http://stephenbax.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Voynich-a-p... The video, 47m-11s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpZD_3D8_WQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpZD_3D8_WQ

Nursie 10y ago
Yeah, this analysis is a few years out now, talking about fictional plants and untranslatability. Bax et al. fairly convincingly identified a couple of plants and made some inroads into identifying some of the sounds and symbols.
anotheryou 10y ago
I also hoped for an update on this one. He is quite convincing.
DonaldFisk 10y ago
http://ciphermysteries.com/2014/02/21/stephen-bax-voynich-manuscript http://ciphermysteries.com/2014/02/21/stephen-bax-voynich-ma... is critical of the approach taken by Stehen Bax.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  This critique seems harsh, maybe dismissive, but it has some merit (then again I don't know much about the VM) All the gallows pointing at the same letter is indeed something problematic and that the other video pointed in this thread come to the same conclusion (that is, they mean different things) His point 6 is addressed by the other video pointed in this page (basically the repeated letters should have an 'r' between them) Point 1/3 might be fair, 2 is just nitpicking, 7 might be an issue but then this is not looking at a picture of a plant, but rather a bad illustration

tetha 10y ago

This is a great example for the RPG Call of Cthulhu. It is an ancient text, written in an unknown language. It appears to have some relationship with our world, because there are plants from earth, but there are also... different plants. Or are they different? It's hard to tell - you might be fooled by the style of illustration, but there might be something wrong about some of these plants in a very strange way. And you can kinda guess the meaning of some of the words based on their relationship with the images, something must be connected to the sunflower, something must be connected to that nightshade. But who knows fully? And thus, it takes months and months to dig through some of the old text, the texts the cultists read so freely. Months of relating to other, equally or more obscure texts, months of lying in bed without sleep until an idea pops into your head. That's why reading old occult texts is hard. Yes, I love lovecrafts work and that RPG.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
>> That's why reading old occult texts is hard. Hard, and it also costs Sanity, let's not forget.

runeb 10y ago

I recommend having a look though the Codex Seraphinianus which is an artwork inspired by the manuscript. It has an incredibly alien feel.

jaclaz 10y ago
Yes, it is a work of beauty. Find some references here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus Luigi Serafini thinks that the Voynich is as "invented" as his own work: https://www.wired.com/2013/10/codex-seraphinianus-interview/ https://www.wired.com/2013/10/codex-seraphinianus-interview/

patrickg_zill 10y ago

Is there a reason in an American publication to use metric measurements, especially for a book that is about the standard size of 6x9 inches?

na85 10y ago
Well, perhaps the New Yorker knows it attracts a multinational readership, and perhaps it also is aware that the rest of the world tends to view the US customary system of weights and measures as rather silly.
- harryjo 10y ago
  > The manuscript is two hundred and twenty-five millimetres tall, a hundred and sixty wide, and five centimetres thick. "met_re_s" in an American publication? In this case, it's obviously just the New Yorker spelling out words and mixing scales just to increase word count/diversity to give the article a more mysterious pseudo-intellectual feel, as is the style of the magazine. The New Yorker spins articles through a thesaurus before publication. See also > ineluctable Considering that the venerated New Yorker(!) is blogspamming a Reddit(!) thread, they needed to do something to distinguish themselves from BuzzFeed.
  - na85 10y ago
    >The New Yorker spins articles through a thesaurus before publication. Perhaps, but there's a reason for the French saying "le mot juste": Synonyms aren't actually words that have the same meaning. They are words that have similar, related meanings but don't actually connote the same thing. What should they have chosen instead of "ineluctable"? Irresistable? Inevitable? Those words don't really carry the same meaning for me. Precision in language (spoken, written, programming, or otherwise) is a beautiful thing.
  - doug1001 10y ago
    well the author of the piece is Josephine Livingstone; she might be British. I don't know whether she is; but i do know that i have read article by her in the Guardian which is a leading newspaper published in the UK.

cLeEOGPw 10y ago

I don't know how much the idea is accepted within the community, but for me the most probable case seems to be some guy writing half truth (real plants, constellations), half fiction (imaginary plants and mechanisms) with either made up or intentionally very unknown, even at the time of writing language, script as a hobby/work. The illustrations, even the strange ones, fit the art style of the time pretty well, and if there were people willing to buy things like that, why not make it? Seems perfectly reasonable course of action to produce it, only thing that's strange is that there aren't more these kind of scripts. Or there are, we just haven't heard of them because they were either in known languages, or deciphered?