The Voynich Manuscript - A Discussion

[Australis]

I don't know if been discussed on the BBS before, and I don't know if this is the exact place for it, but as a place of technical and logical discussion, thought I'd give it a whirl here.

The Voynich Mnuscript is one of the enduring mysteries of our times. Hoax? Cypher? Glossolalia? No one really knows.

From Wikipedia:

The Voynich manuscript is a handwritten book thought to have been written in the 15th or 16th century and comprising about 240 vellum pages,[notes 1] most with illustrations. The author, script, and language remain unknown: for these reasons it has been described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript".[1]
Generally presumed to be some kind of ciphertext, the Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II. Yet it has defied all decipherment attempts, becoming a historical cryptology cause célèbre. The mystery surrounding it has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript a subject of both fanciful theories and novels: numerous possible authors have been suggested for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

Now, I'm very skeptical of UFOs, bigfoot and other cryptozoology, John Titor, and so on. Nonetheless, I believe this manuscript to be the only existing piece of evidence for the existence of parallel universes, that somehow this book has ended up here from... somewhere else. An alternate Earth, with different peoples, languages, even plants. Which then begs the question, how did it end up here?

It's waaaaayy too complex to be just a nonsense hoax, the time component alone is huge, and the skillset would have to have been exceptional in the day. Which is one reason why some theorists suggest John Dee or people like him.

Of course, I admit that theory is completely out there, and I'm fine with that. But as the other theories seem to lead to dead ends, I offer it up. At worst, this could be an interesting discussion about an intriguing document.

 

[Jadzia]

Re: They Voynich Manuscript - A Discussion

I don't know that it's so complex a book. It would have taken a long time to sit down and make, but monks/religious scribes were used to doing exactly that in the middle ages, as they were the photocopiers of the day.


I did have a dream about a book which was obviously inspired by my knowledge of the VM. I mentioned it here on the bbs last year some time. In my dream, I managed to decipher the book..

What the book was was this: Somebody had invented a shorthand language, a phonetic language, to enable them to write down and record a specific type of sound, which was the sound of bird songs.

As I got my computer to generate the sounds from the strange markings on one of the pages, it played back to me these blackbird songs, and it was really soul touching, to think that these songs had been sung by some little blackbird maybe 1000 years ago and recorded in this book all these years.

And I thought at that time, that such beauty is worthy of publication as much as anything from Mozart, but how easily we overlook it. I felt I really understood the author's motives, and totally respected him/her for this achievement, by inventing a language which worked so successfully.

For those of you in parts of the world without blackbirds, here is what their song is like. It is one of the most beautiful.

But if we assume that it's nonsense...

The content is just a random jumble of symbols taken from pre defined set of 50 or so. Pictures of plants and star charts are products of the imagination. There's nothing erudite about creating either. It would have required an imagination, devotion and the skillset of a scribe.

Could it have been that one of those monks had lost his marbles, but the others were sympathetic to the fact that this scribble was what he was devoting himself to writing and kept him quiet. They couldn't bare to throw it away when he had gone, so filed it in their archives, while the story about it was lost.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I've sometimes wondered if it was the product of a medieval idiot savant -- perhaps one secluded in a monastery as you suggest. I like the birdsong transcription idea -- but it's still a mystery why the entire text would be in that form without any form of key.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I'd never heard of this before. Fascinating stuff. I suspect it's either a hoax or the product of a mind almost totally disconnected from reality.

 

[TheSeeker]

William's Shatner's "Weird or What?" did a segment on this. They had a language expert on who demonstrated how easy it would have been to fake it.

 

[scotpens]

. . . Now, I'm very skeptical of UFOs, bigfoot and other cryptozoology, John Titor, and so on. Nonetheless, I believe this manuscript to be the only existing piece of evidence for the existence of parallel universes, that somehow this book has ended up here from... somewhere else. An alternate Earth, with different peoples, languages, even plants.

Parallel universes? It's far more likely that the book is nothing but total gibberish with no meaning whatsoever, and that it's either the product of an abnormal mind (as suggested upthread) or some 15th-century scribe's idea of a practical joke.

And if there's an afterlife, he's laughing his ass off right now.

 

[danellis]

Maybe it's the HeavenTrek Technical Manual <scratches head>

dJE

 

[Australis]

Parallel universes? It's far more likely that the book is nothing but total gibberish with no meaning whatsoever

Oh, I know, my mind just runs that way. Having said that, keep in mind we consider parallel universes a distinct probability. Or are they really just thought exercises for scientists with too much time on their hands?

I like Jadzia's idea of birdsong transcription.

Some of the investigators say about the same letters being repeated, or words with only a letter different, so obviously gibberish. But if you take this sentence: "Though the thought went through fast enough, it was ploughed up", you can see just about ewvery 2nd word has the same letters with a few changes but a completely different meaning.

The plants thing is a bit odd too. Two plants are recognisable, the others apparently jumbles of known plants (Leaves from one, roots from another). Why do that?

The thing that struck me was that this would have to be a leisure time activity. In those days you REALLY had to work for a living, not like today. It could possibly have taken years to get it to its current stage.

Idiot savant? Madman? Distinct possibilities. The problem with this book is of course there's no Rosetta Stone. We might still be stumbling over hieroglyphics if it hadn't been found.

What I'd like to know is this (and I've sent an email to this effect): it's printed on vellum. What kind of animal? If they can do a DNA analysis, not only will they know what type, they may be able to narrow it down to a region, and that should tell them something.

 

[Australis]

An extra thought on this, which I thought I'd drop in because you guys and your Google-fu is pretty good.

As I said above, DNA. Any chance you guys can scout around and see if there is some kind of report out there? I emailed the Library where it's kept, but they said they don't know (why, I have zero idea, you think that kind of info would be useful).

So if you have any ideas, suggestions or web addresses, let me know.

 

[Jadzia]

DNA sounds far fetched to me.

How would we explain a book about DNA appearing in medieval times without entertaining supernatural/extraterrestrial hypotheses?

 

[scotpens]

^^ Australis was suggesting that DNA analysis of the book's parchment could provide clues as to when and where it was written, not that the book contained knowledge of the DNA molecule five centuries before Watson and Crick.

But would the process of bleaching and liming used to turn animal skin into parchment or vellum have destroyed any recoverable DNA?

 

[Australis]

Jadzia, I didn't think the book was that advanced!

I know, I know, my hypothesis about "from a parallel universe" is out there, but it's more a thought exercise and a form of amusement. The Camel has it right. By knowing where it came from, it might help narrow down potential creators.

I hadn't thought of the bleaching destroying the DNA. Maybe they can tell something from cellular structure?

 

[Guitarded]

 

[TheSeeker]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpzLhmH0UYs[/yt]

 

[Myasishchev]

DNA sounds far fetched to me.

How would we explain a book about DNA appearing in medieval times without entertaining supernatural/extraterrestrial hypotheses?

As others said, not the issue, but it's an interesting question. Can DNA (or a coding language) be derived without modern chemical knowledge? Probably. I mean, if you accept an atomistic elemental theory, you're already halfway there, and as infinite divisibility offends the reason, an atomistic theory is what you've got left. Then, given that houseflies and people and horses and trees and so forth aren't born fully formed, something must program them to take the forms they do, and a proto-DNA hypothesis is superior to anything else since it doesn't require any additional made-up crap.

I don't suppose you're going to get a treatise on the interactions of guanine and adenine, but I reckon you can at least get to a layman's idea of DNA through pure reason.

Anyway, I always reckoned that the Voynich Manuscript was someone's idea of a joke.

I also like the RPG sourcebook idea (and maybe close to the truth, inasmuch as there's little real qualitative difference between a list of angels, for example, and a D+D monster manual).

The parallel universe idea is pretty great as a springboard for a SF story.

 

[Lonemagpie]

The plants thing is a bit odd too. Two plants are recognisable, the others apparently jumbles of known plants (Leaves from one, roots from another). Why do that?

Pharmacology.

Or, indeed, a recipe.

I love the VM - it's history is fascinating, and I've been thinking about ideas featuring it for a while...

 

[robtclements]

Re: They Voynich Manuscript - A Discussion

JADXIA wrote:

But if we assume that it's nonsense...
The content is just a random jumble of symbols taken from pre defined set of 50 or so. Pictures of plants and star charts are products of the imagination. There's nothing erudite about creating either. It would have required an imagination, devotion and the skillset of a scribe.

Not necessarily. Copying required labour; but it was often simply a mechanical process-there are manuscripts which appear to have been copied by scribes who didn't understand a word of what they were writing-& illustrations could be done by cloistered people with no observational connection with the things illustrated. It's possible that much of what appears to be imaginative in the manuscript is just confused-try comparing it with the drawings of girls in the work of Henry Darger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger), for eg

I've been fascinated with the Voynich for some time; but feel confident we'll never confidently know what-let alone why-it really is. Or maybe, i just hope that ignorance will remain bliss

With regards
Robert