The Voynich Manuscript May Have Been Decoded 320
MBCook sends word on a possible solution to the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript, which we last visited nearly 6 years ago. "The Voynich Manuscript has confounded attempts to decode it for nearly 100 years. A person named Edith Sherwood, who has previously suggested a possible link to DaVinci, has a new idea: perhaps the text is simply anagrams of Italian words. There are three pages of examples from the herb section of the book, showing the original text, the plaintext Italian words, and the English equivalents. Has someone cracked the code?"
Really now (Score:5, Insightful)
I know nothing about this manuscript except what is written in this article, but if it's anagrams, a simple analysis of the letter frequency would have revealed that.
Hypothesis testing (Score:5, Insightful)
Corollary 1: The manuscript should contain appropriate letter frequencies for said language.
Corollary 2: The manuscript should contain all relevant letters.
Conclusion: Neither Corollary 1 nor 2 are true, thus hypothesis is rejected.
???
Add to the annals of the internet.
Re:It Hurts (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why does she only offer up a single page of plants as decoded anagrams? What about the other ~199 pages? What about the pages of block text?
She calls for help from people knowing medieval Italian. Apparently she used a reference book on the medieval Italian name of certain plants ot get these hints. She makes the interesting suggestion that this was written by a child, maybe mimicking scientists he knows be drawing "obvious" stuff, i.e. the plants in the garden and in the kitchen, and "hiding" his discoveries using a code used by scientists of the time.
You found that on Wikipedia? Call Yale University, you've decoded it. Citing Wikipedia for a fact while analyzing centuries old manuscripts? Why you bother to put PhD after you name bewilders me.
She referred to Wikipedia as an inspiration to explore an anagram-based lead. Not such a bad thing to do.
If you want my theory, we're dealing with an unknown autistic artist's work.
That was the theory that sounded the most plausible to me too, but these new leads and discoveries call for more investigation, I would say.
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Insightful)
C'mon, this article can't be serious. Anyone with a bit (and I mean a BIT) of knowledge about cryptography knows this can't be true, for all the motivations that many have already posted above.
And, I'm Italian, and we study Italian literature for 10 years in school, and I can swear that the italian language wasn't that different than the actual one 700 years ago. I mean, a letter frequency analysis would have already solved this.
Re:It Hurts (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It Hurts (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like you're being a bit harsh. She seems like an amateur doing amatuerish work that has found something suggestive. It's not like she tried to get it published in a journal or claims to be a some sort of professional. Sure she has a phD after her name but that doesn't mean she is trying to claim he phD applies to Voynich Manuscript. Maybe I'm being naive.
what (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It Hurts (Score:3, Insightful)
This picture also depicts the union of a sperm with an ova, indicating an extraordinary insight into human reproduction.
and then
I postulate that Leonardo da Vinci wrote the Voynich Manuscript circa 1460 when he was about 8 years old.
Meanwhile [wikipedia.org],
An early microscope was made in 1590 in Middelburg, The Netherlands.
How exactly did a youthful da Vinci figure out what an ova and sperm look like? If Leonardo da Vinci (as a child) could sketch sperm and ova over 100 years before a crude microscope was invented and almost 200 years before Hooke and Leeuwenhoek, then that alone would be an astonishingly significant discovery. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Leonardo would build a microscope, discover cell biology, and not bother to write something up about it as an adult. He was, after all, interested in pretty much everything. The more reasonable conclusion is that Edith Sherwood is willing to interpret images very "liberally" (meaning here, without much evidence), without making even simple checks for logical consistency. This is a single example, but the carelessness calls the rest into question. (As you have already indicated)
Re:Debunked almost a year ago (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont know why people cant accept that this thing is just a fun little hoax from 500 years ago. 16th century people had senses of humor and mystery too. Someone concocted it for shits and giggles or perhaps from a serious mental illness. Its a shame this person isnt around today to hear these tales of connections with da vinci, aliens, etc. Shame, for now it just brings out the "Dan Brown is the realz" crowd and other conspiracy nutters.
Re:Important texts are ultimately communicated (Score:3, Insightful)
yes, so by your reasoning, the egyptian hieroglyphs were just an elabore prank on future generations right ? and it remained like that untill the roseta stone was found.
there was a single bi-lingual stone tablet left in the world with the key to understand those symbols, and it remained lost for centuries.
unfortunately, a "rosetta" document for the voynich manuscript, if it was ever written, may never be found.
Re:Debunked almost a year ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Da Vinci makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of how much it does or does not look like Da Vinci's hand, I very much agree with your second paragraph. She sounds like a lovely armchair investigator; happily and quietly posting her suppositions on her own website (though the website begs for a CV; it'd be nice to know in what field and from where that Ph.D originates). I find it no different from my enjoyment in tinkering with the Millennium Prize Problems [wikipedia.org] when I have no business doing so.
The problem I have is with the story submitter. Would it have been so difficult to discover that this paper specifically was debunked 10 months ago, and what was written like the first few days of a breakthrough has yet to come to any fruition. I think it's a little mean to force her to stand up to slashdot peer review. Worse and plain irritating for the summary to be so exaggerant of the claim. If it was like "Here's a cute theory, she thinks it was Da Vinci, and believes she has a couple lines translated!" then a fun discussion would be had by all sans the unwarranted excitement.
Re:It Hurts (Score:2, Insightful)
The almost complete lack of errors and corrections in the text strongly suggest that it's nonsense rather than any kind of encoded message.
You mean just like those funny "Hieroglyphics" that are supposed to be the written ancient Egyptian language. What a hoot.
Re:It Hurts (Score:3, Insightful)
How about the flood? I don't recall hearing anything about a worldwide flood in my history books, or geology class. What about the creation story? We know we evolved -- seems to me to be completely wrong.
If anything, I'd think you're the troll.
Re:It Hurts (Score:2, Insightful)
There are parts of the bible that are based on reality?
Re:It Hurts (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, not so long ago *everyone* familiar with Greek history was absolutely sure that Troy was just a figment of Homers imagination, until a ridiculous (much laughed about in the archaeological circles) nut-case named Heinrich Schliemann [wikipedia.org] came along.
Fresh ideas are good. I guess 99.9% of them will most likely turn out to be bullshit, but the 0.1% that make it are the things that advance science.
Re:It Hurts (Score:1, Insightful)
I think I'll go to starbucks and order up a venti latte and write about it in my encrypted diary along with a picture. Then, if the world gets blown up, and future armchair pedants are discussing my decrypted diary, they can argue over how the translation: "twenty milk" is obviously wrong because milk is white and the fluid depicted is brown and what sense does it make to call it twenty. I'm going to have to assume that, for a start, you're monolingual or are at least hopelessly clueless about language. For one thing, meanings of words change over time, or, at least, they accrue meanings. For example, you're complaining about the possible translation of a plants name being "forget" as if it's some ridiculous concept for a plant (or maybe a fungus) to be named that, when we have a plant named a forget-me-not. Plants that are just starting to grow from a seed are called shoots. That means to fire a gun! How ridiculous!! Mushrooms tend to form ring colonies that we call fairy rings. If I drew one and labeled it as such, would you scoff because I hadn't drawn a picture of dancing fairies? How about if I drew a picture of a locust, and labeled it as such? I don't mean the insect, I mean the tree that is also called the locust, would the label be wrong? How about the columbine flower, hares-ear, mouse-tail, buttercup, etc. Do I need to get into what the heck is gopher wood?
Anyway, in the end, this theory about translation of the document obviously has a lot of obstacles to clear before it can be accepted as any sort of proof. A meaningful translation of some of the block text, for example. A theory has been posited, but the person with the theory doesn't have the expertise required to prove or disprove it, the best they could do was go after some labels on some illustrations. Nevertheless, it's a starting point, and maybe someone with the right expertise can now, at the very least, attempt to disprove it. You clearly don't have the necessary expertise, and your attacks on the translations are weak to the point of naiveté.