5 ms·

I'm of the opinion that it's not supposed to make sense. I think it's a sample: a demo herbal void of any valuable content. Its purpose is to showcase the abili

by Igelau 6y ago

I'm of the opinion that it's not supposed to make sense. I think it's a sample: a demo herbal void of any valuable content. Its purpose is to showcase the abilities of the author/illustrator and nothing more.

deathcakes 6y ago
Voynich Manuscript as Lorem Ipsum is my favourite theory so far!
moftz 6y ago
Why not just copy sections of the Bible if it's just a sample of work? Why go through the extra effort of creating a new script and possibly a new language just to show how well you can write? Latin would have been the predominate language for manuscripts at this time so writing in Latin would have been a better example of the writer's skills. These kinds of manuscripts took a lot of effort and resources to put together so if someone was just trying to make a portfolio of their work, do you think they would need to produce such a large volume when several pages would have sufficed?
- Raphmedia 6y ago
  We use Latin in "Lorem Ipsum" because most people are unable to read it today. This makes sure that the viewer focus on the page layout and images and not the text itself. If it was written in Latin during an era where everyone could read Latin, it wouldn't be the same concept.
  - Fargren 6y ago
    You are not wrong, but bear in mind that Lorem Ipsum is not latin, is latin-looking gibberish.
    - AquinasCoder 6y ago
      It's ultimately a corrupted version of Cicero's "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum".
- liability 6y ago
  Maybe they were feeling creative? AFAIK many of not all of the plants shown are fictional, so the document being the product of a creative mind seems likely.
- Igelau 6y ago
  > Why not just copy sections of the Bible if it's just a sample of work? It would probably be a bad idea to juxtapose religious text with the borderline alchemical pictures in the manuscript. People are/were a superstitious lot. Also, you wouldn't want to risk angering the church. Aesthetically it would also be a bad fit, because this (probably?) isn't a Bible. For the type of content on display here, it probably wouldn't do to remind the client of Sin during the pitch. > [why] produce such a large volume when several pages would have sufficed? Here's a similar volume of pages with no meaning but to showcase the capability for presenting a particular type of content: https://www.squarespace.com/templates https://www.squarespace.com/templates Only instead of Photography, Online Stores, Blogs the categories are Herbal, Astronomical, Balneological, etc. > Why? I think we can be fairly certain that whoever produced the Voynich Manuscript was at least a little hmmm... eccentric? We should probably be moderate about how much sense we expect to make from it.
retrac 6y ago
I suspect it was more for mystical/religious purposes than for showing off, but I concur that it may well not have any linguistic meaning.
- Igelau 6y ago
  It wouldn't be hard to construct a scheme for using the manuscript as an oracle. A single "word" or "sentence" chosen by chance could only be interpreted since it would have no translation.
dane-pgp 6y ago
If the sequence of symbols was completely random (biased only by a human desire to make it look like a language, and human inability to be perfectly random) wouldn't that show up in a statistical analysis? According to [0], "A long succession of (actually pretty good) past statistical studies has revealed that Voynichese has an abundance of mechanisms that give it internal structure, not only in terms of letter adjacency and within words generally, but also within lines, paragraphs, and pages." Whatever process generated that structure, it seems like it required more work than is necessary to achieve the aim you suggest the writer(s) had. [0] https://ciphermysteries.com/2016/01/21/voynich-statistics-and-why-voynichese-is-not-flat https://ciphermysteries.com/2016/01/21/voynich-statistics-an...
- Igelau 6y ago
  I didn't say it was random. On the contrary, I'd expect it not to be. As you say, humans are bad at random, so if you told a human to sit down and write nonsense content in a nonsense script, you could probably expect some structure to emerge despite the lack of meaning. The writer might even accidentally inject unintentional interpretations by semi-consciously templating their work off of familiar texts.
  - Daniel_sk 6y ago
    It’s not random. The distribution of words obeys the Zipf’s law. A random generated structure would not look like an written real language. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6085/has-it-been-mathematicaly-determined-that-the-voynich-manuscript-is-not-gibberis/16748#16748 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6085/has-it-bee...
    - Igelau 6y ago
      I didn't say it was random. On the contrary, I'd expect it not to be.
DonaldFisk 6y ago
It's possible, but it leaves unexplained how the text was produced.
throwaway4007 6y ago
You would be wrong. There's strong evidence that it does make sense, among which that it respects Zipf's law.

by Igelau 6y ago

deathcakes 6y ago

Voynich Manuscript as Lorem Ipsum is my favourite theory so far!

moftz 6y ago

Why not just copy sections of the Bible if it's just a sample of work? Why go through the extra effort of creating a new script and possibly a new language just to show how well you can write? Latin would have been the predominate language for manuscripts at this time so writing in Latin would have been a better example of the writer's skills. These kinds of manuscripts took a lot of effort and resources to put together so if someone was just trying to make a portfolio of their work, do you think they would need to produce such a large volume when several pages would have sufficed?

Raphmedia 6y ago
We use Latin in "Lorem Ipsum" because most people are unable to read it today. This makes sure that the viewer focus on the page layout and images and not the text itself. If it was written in Latin during an era where everyone could read Latin, it wouldn't be the same concept.
- Fargren 6y ago
  You are not wrong, but bear in mind that Lorem Ipsum is not latin, is latin-looking gibberish.
  - AquinasCoder 6y ago
    It's ultimately a corrupted version of Cicero's "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum".
liability 6y ago
Maybe they were feeling creative? AFAIK many of not all of the plants shown are fictional, so the document being the product of a creative mind seems likely.
Igelau 6y ago
> Why not just copy sections of the Bible if it's just a sample of work? It would probably be a bad idea to juxtapose religious text with the borderline alchemical pictures in the manuscript. People are/were a superstitious lot. Also, you wouldn't want to risk angering the church. Aesthetically it would also be a bad fit, because this (probably?) isn't a Bible. For the type of content on display here, it probably wouldn't do to remind the client of Sin during the pitch. > [why] produce such a large volume when several pages would have sufficed? Here's a similar volume of pages with no meaning but to showcase the capability for presenting a particular type of content: https://www.squarespace.com/templates https://www.squarespace.com/templates Only instead of Photography, Online Stores, Blogs the categories are Herbal, Astronomical, Balneological, etc. > Why? I think we can be fairly certain that whoever produced the Voynich Manuscript was at least a little hmmm... eccentric? We should probably be moderate about how much sense we expect to make from it.

retrac 6y ago

I suspect it was more for mystical/religious purposes than for showing off, but I concur that it may well not have any linguistic meaning.

Igelau 6y ago
It wouldn't be hard to construct a scheme for using the manuscript as an oracle. A single "word" or "sentence" chosen by chance could only be interpreted since it would have no translation.

dane-pgp 6y ago

If the sequence of symbols was completely random (biased only by a human desire to make it look like a language, and human inability to be perfectly random) wouldn't that show up in a statistical analysis? According to [0], "A long succession of (actually pretty good) past statistical studies has revealed that Voynichese has an abundance of mechanisms that give it internal structure, not only in terms of letter adjacency and within words generally, but also within lines, paragraphs, and pages." Whatever process generated that structure, it seems like it required more work than is necessary to achieve the aim you suggest the writer(s) had. [0] https://ciphermysteries.com/2016/01/21/voynich-statistics-and-why-voynichese-is-not-flat https://ciphermysteries.com/2016/01/21/voynich-statistics-an...

Igelau 6y ago
I didn't say it was random. On the contrary, I'd expect it not to be. As you say, humans are bad at random, so if you told a human to sit down and write nonsense content in a nonsense script, you could probably expect some structure to emerge despite the lack of meaning. The writer might even accidentally inject unintentional interpretations by semi-consciously templating their work off of familiar texts.
- Daniel_sk 6y ago
  It’s not random. The distribution of words obeys the Zipf’s law. A random generated structure would not look like an written real language. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6085/has-it-been-mathematicaly-determined-that-the-voynich-manuscript-is-not-gibberis/16748#16748 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6085/has-it-bee...
  - Igelau 6y ago
    I didn't say it was random. On the contrary, I'd expect it not to be.

DonaldFisk 6y ago

It's possible, but it leaves unexplained how the text was produced.

throwaway4007 6y ago

You would be wrong. There's strong evidence that it does make sense, among which that it respects Zipf's law.