6 ms·

Voynich, Hill, Crumb: A Hitherto Vexing Codex

52 points by arexxbifs 5y ago

fwipsy 5y ago
Linguistic analysis performed on the Voynich Manuscript seems to be consistent with it having some meaning. See e.g. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0066344 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Igelau 5y ago
I also suspect it's indecipherable. I think it's someone's sample piece: meant to showcase the creator's talent for producing such books without giving away real or false alchemical or botanical knowledge. Lorem Ipsum wasn't popular yet, and the author was kind of quirky, so we get... this. It has statistical properties consistent with natural language because humans suck at randomness, not because there's anything there.
- fred_is_fred 5y ago
  Two hundred and seventy two pages is a pretty excessive amount of "sample material" to showcase skills though.
  - normac2 5y ago
    Well, maybe that gives it the general shape that it has, and you make more than you need to convince the client, because it doubles as practice,
    - warent 5y ago
      I think in modern terms it's hard to appreciate how expensive that book would have been to make back then. The parchment is calfskin. In the medieval era, it was uncommon for noblemen to slaughter their livestock for anything, even food, unless exceedingly special occasions. That book would have probably cost at least as much as one or two small farms, which is money only noblemen had, and far more than a lord or even a king would have afforded save for some extreme circumstances or investment.
      - tarboreus 5y ago
        Yes, it would be like spending $750,000 to make a portfolio. Or building an entire castle to show that you can do brickwork.
      - Igelau 5y ago
        Wow, that's definitely something I hadn't considered in my hypothesis. Thanks for pointing that out. The sheer expense makes the book's existence much more intriguing.
microtherion 5y ago
It's an interesting idea. There is a museum in Switzerland collecting outsider art, much of it produced by people diagnosed with mental illnesses, and some of the artists exhibited there did create rather elaborate works, e.g. Adolf Wölfli: https://www.artbrut.ch/en_GB/authors/the-collection-de-l-art-brut/woelfli-adolf https://www.artbrut.ch/en_GB/authors/the-collection-de-l-art...
ALittleLight 5y ago
The example of the schizophrenic writer devolves into nonsense. It looks as though the writer took to repeating the cursive letter "M" over and over. The Voynich Manuscript is clearly different. That it follows the statistical patterns of language suggests to me that it is not the product of madness. The painter examples don't seem compelling to me either. The Voynich Manuscript is illustrated in a style that is reminiscent (to me) of old texts. There are lots of naked women, but not so many that I'd describe it as pathological. I suspect it is a clever cipher, a constructed language, or a forgotten language.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  There are more options than "makes sense" and "nonsense" here. To draw a parallel to a work much discussed on HN, TempleOS is both a functioning operating system and a product of madness, and yet a future archaeologist would have a very hard time extracting a meaning or purpose out of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    There is a difference between a work being driven by madness and a work that is madness. A schizophrenic programmer who builds an OS by pressing the "m" key a million times is different than a schizophrenic programmer who produces an OS that actually works driven by schizophrenic motivations. In other words, the future archaeologists might be confused by TempleOS, but they would be wrong to think it is meaningless.
    - Clewza313 5y ago
      It had meaning to its creator, but not to others. That's kind of what madness is, a break from consensus reality, and why some art can veer into the uncomfortable territory between the two.
      - ALittleLight 5y ago
        It's a program, it will compile and run. Some people can "understand" it, not in the sense that its creator did, but in the sense that a wikipedia article can be written about it and its purpose, and we understand why he wrote in a broad sense (schizophrenia). It's possible the Voynich Manuscript is the ramblings of an insane person but I don't think that is particularly likely. If my guess is right, and the statistical properties of the characters in the book indicate that it is part of a language or language-like system somehow, then we would have no more reason to suspect it was authored by a crazy person than any other random book.
matthberg 5y ago
Also interesting, yet much less enigmatic, is the Codex Seraphinianus [0][1], an illustrated manuscript with a known author (Luigi Serafini) and a known purpose (art). Maybe the Voynich Manuscript was something similar. I'm also partial to xkcd's explaination: https://xkcd.com/593/ https://xkcd.com/593/ 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus 1: https://blog.kolesnik.info/pictures/files/Codex_Seraphinianus.pdf https://blog.kolesnik.info/pictures/files/Codex_Seraphinianu...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dvh 5y ago
I think I found it. It was made by spa owner to lure in rich clients. Spa owner would say they have ancient secret book, written by alchemist monk, of how to treat any disease. They may even show the book to them, saying only their workers know how to read it.
warent 5y ago
If it is indecipherable, I've always subscribed to the theory that it was a scam. Someone crafted the book to make it seem mystical, which they could then use to influence someone somehow. Probably not for money. It seems like it was created by a wealthy educated individual who didn't need money. More likely for political reasons; to manipulate and gain power.
yesenadam 5y ago
> Voynich, Hill, Crumb: A Hitherto Vexing Codex The author is evidently a fan of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid ...
GnarfGnarf 5y ago
I favour the hoax hypothesis... except that the letters and syllable distribution bear a strong similarity to natural languages. A XVth century forger could not possibly have known about this. Recently a Turkish scholar has found indications that it is old Turkish. https://www.openculture.com/2019/02/has-the-voynich-manuscript-finally-been-decoded.html https://www.openculture.com/2019/02/has-the-voynich-manuscri...
- goodcanadian 5y ago
  Recently a Turkish scholar has found indications that it is old Turkish. They certainly make the claim, but I haven't found any evidence that their approach is being given much credence.
  - GnarfGnarf 5y ago
    Here is a brief video of Amet Ardic, who believes the manuscript contains “shapes meaning prefixes and suffixes in distinctive letters, resembling the Turkish language used in his home country.” https://youtu.be/p6keMgLmFEk https://youtu.be/p6keMgLmFEk
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > except that the letters and syllable distribution bear a strong similarity to natural languages. A XVth century forger could not possibly have known about this. A XVth century schizophrenic would have had at least one natural language, and could therefore have, consciously or less so, made up another one. EDIT: If successful it may perhaps still be deciphered; if the descent into illness had gone too far it may not actually make any sense to be decoded out of it -- but still look like a "real" language.

52 points by arexxbifs 5y ago

Linguistic analysis performed on the Voynich Manuscript seems to be consistent with it having some meaning. See e.g. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0066344 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Igelau 5y ago

I also suspect it's indecipherable. I think it's someone's sample piece: meant to showcase the creator's talent for producing such books without giving away real or false alchemical or botanical knowledge. Lorem Ipsum wasn't popular yet, and the author was kind of quirky, so we get... this. It has statistical properties consistent with natural language because humans suck at randomness, not because there's anything there.

fred_is_fred 5y ago
Two hundred and seventy two pages is a pretty excessive amount of "sample material" to showcase skills though.
- normac2 5y ago
  Well, maybe that gives it the general shape that it has, and you make more than you need to convince the client, because it doubles as practice,
  - warent 5y ago
    I think in modern terms it's hard to appreciate how expensive that book would have been to make back then. The parchment is calfskin. In the medieval era, it was uncommon for noblemen to slaughter their livestock for anything, even food, unless exceedingly special occasions. That book would have probably cost at least as much as one or two small farms, which is money only noblemen had, and far more than a lord or even a king would have afforded save for some extreme circumstances or investment.
    - tarboreus 5y ago
      Yes, it would be like spending $750,000 to make a portfolio. Or building an entire castle to show that you can do brickwork.
    - Igelau 5y ago
      Wow, that's definitely something I hadn't considered in my hypothesis. Thanks for pointing that out. The sheer expense makes the book's existence much more intriguing.

microtherion 5y ago

It's an interesting idea. There is a museum in Switzerland collecting outsider art, much of it produced by people diagnosed with mental illnesses, and some of the artists exhibited there did create rather elaborate works, e.g. Adolf Wölfli: https://www.artbrut.ch/en_GB/authors/the-collection-de-l-art-brut/woelfli-adolf https://www.artbrut.ch/en_GB/authors/the-collection-de-l-art...

ALittleLight 5y ago

The example of the schizophrenic writer devolves into nonsense. It looks as though the writer took to repeating the cursive letter "M" over and over. The Voynich Manuscript is clearly different. That it follows the statistical patterns of language suggests to me that it is not the product of madness. The painter examples don't seem compelling to me either. The Voynich Manuscript is illustrated in a style that is reminiscent (to me) of old texts. There are lots of naked women, but not so many that I'd describe it as pathological. I suspect it is a clever cipher, a constructed language, or a forgotten language.

Clewza313 5y ago
There are more options than "makes sense" and "nonsense" here. To draw a parallel to a work much discussed on HN, TempleOS is both a functioning operating system and a product of madness, and yet a future archaeologist would have a very hard time extracting a meaning or purpose out of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  There is a difference between a work being driven by madness and a work that is madness. A schizophrenic programmer who builds an OS by pressing the "m" key a million times is different than a schizophrenic programmer who produces an OS that actually works driven by schizophrenic motivations. In other words, the future archaeologists might be confused by TempleOS, but they would be wrong to think it is meaningless.
  - Clewza313 5y ago
    It had meaning to its creator, but not to others. That's kind of what madness is, a break from consensus reality, and why some art can veer into the uncomfortable territory between the two.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      It's a program, it will compile and run. Some people can "understand" it, not in the sense that its creator did, but in the sense that a wikipedia article can be written about it and its purpose, and we understand why he wrote in a broad sense (schizophrenia). It's possible the Voynich Manuscript is the ramblings of an insane person but I don't think that is particularly likely. If my guess is right, and the statistical properties of the characters in the book indicate that it is part of a language or language-like system somehow, then we would have no more reason to suspect it was authored by a crazy person than any other random book.

matthberg 5y ago

Also interesting, yet much less enigmatic, is the Codex Seraphinianus [0][1], an illustrated manuscript with a known author (Luigi Serafini) and a known purpose (art). Maybe the Voynich Manuscript was something similar. I'm also partial to xkcd's explaination: https://xkcd.com/593/ https://xkcd.com/593/ 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus 1: https://blog.kolesnik.info/pictures/files/Codex_Seraphinianus.pdf https://blog.kolesnik.info/pictures/files/Codex_Seraphinianu...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dvh 5y ago

I think I found it. It was made by spa owner to lure in rich clients. Spa owner would say they have ancient secret book, written by alchemist monk, of how to treat any disease. They may even show the book to them, saying only their workers know how to read it.

warent 5y ago

If it is indecipherable, I've always subscribed to the theory that it was a scam. Someone crafted the book to make it seem mystical, which they could then use to influence someone somehow. Probably not for money. It seems like it was created by a wealthy educated individual who didn't need money. More likely for political reasons; to manipulate and gain power.

yesenadam 5y ago

> Voynich, Hill, Crumb: A Hitherto Vexing Codex The author is evidently a fan of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid ...

GnarfGnarf 5y ago

I favour the hoax hypothesis... except that the letters and syllable distribution bear a strong similarity to natural languages. A XVth century forger could not possibly have known about this. Recently a Turkish scholar has found indications that it is old Turkish. https://www.openculture.com/2019/02/has-the-voynich-manuscript-finally-been-decoded.html https://www.openculture.com/2019/02/has-the-voynich-manuscri...

goodcanadian 5y ago
Recently a Turkish scholar has found indications that it is old Turkish. They certainly make the claim, but I haven't found any evidence that their approach is being given much credence.
- GnarfGnarf 5y ago
  Here is a brief video of Amet Ardic, who believes the manuscript contains “shapes meaning prefixes and suffixes in distinctive letters, resembling the Turkish language used in his home country.” https://youtu.be/p6keMgLmFEk https://youtu.be/p6keMgLmFEk
CRConrad 5y ago
> except that the letters and syllable distribution bear a strong similarity to natural languages. A XVth century forger could not possibly have known about this. A XVth century schizophrenic would have had at least one natural language, and could therefore have, consciously or less so, made up another one. EDIT: If successful it may perhaps still be deciphered; if the descent into illness had gone too far it may not actually make any sense to be decoded out of it -- but still look like a "real" language.