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?"
It Hurts (Score:5, Interesting)
perhaps the text is simply anagrams of Italian words.
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?
More importantly, why does the Voynich Manuscript flip between things derived from plants like gallic acid, oil and then return to naming the plants? Furthermore, I call the labeling of the plants to be absolute complete bullshit. Yes, I said it. I'm not a botanist but I grew up on a farm and I know many of these plants very well and I can't tell any distinguishing characteristics apart from the drawings. This is what a garlic plant looks like [wikispaces.com]. Not like this [edithsherwood.com]. I mean, come on! Did Edith Sherwood ever stop to think that maybe -- similar to numerology in The Bible -- she'd be able to make words out of any strange text regardless of its true origin?
Here's a real gem:
This brief sentence indicated that the use of anagrams should be investigated. This was further supported by reading Wikipedia’s report that anagrams were popular throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and that some 17th century astronomers, while engaged in verification of their discoveries, used anagrams to hide their ideas.
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.
This is the game that will be played with the Voynich Manuscript. Every so often people will claim to have 'decoded it' by offering up a small part of the manuscript which very imaginative minds have pulled together 10+ very very flimsy clues that point to some individual. The fact that there are so many coincidences will add weight to it being the real explanation. But it oddly won't work for 99% of the manuscript. Now if the manuscript is ever decoded, a hell of a lot more than two pages is going to make sense. In fact, when someone figures it out, 99% of the manuscript will make sense.
If you want my theory, we're dealing with an unknown autistic artist's work. Someone lost in a period of time where autism was misunderstood and they are forever lost to anonymity except they'll get the last laugh because we'll never understand what message they were trying to get to us. And some of us might go mad spending hours and hours and hours trying to figure this out with no luck.
Important texts are ultimately communicated (Score:1, Interesting)
A message is encoded with the ultimate goal of its being decoded and transmitted. A message that is not decoded is a failed message. This means that someone has the key, if one exists.
A code that has no key is a joke or a puzzle. It has no important information to convey.
Fermat once wrote "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain." If he did indeed discover such a proof, he would have written it down somewhere else. This was a joke.
So too is a whole book written in an undecipherable code. Whatever the roots of this manuscript are, there is no doubt that it was the work of a prankster (or team of pranksters) playing a trick on posterity.
Re:It Hurts (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, she does say she doesn't speak Italian ... If this is true then I'm sure someone familiar with medieval Italian will come along and decode the whole thing. As for the labeling, yes of course it's 'bullshit', the manuscript is recognized as being fiction for a long time now.
Re:It Hurts (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want my theory, we're dealing with an unknown autistic artist's work.
That's an interesting idea, with the key word being "artist". The almost complete lack of errors and corrections in the text strongly suggest that it's nonsense rather than any kind of encoded message. Considered as a weird kind of autistic art, that might be kind of cool, although by far the more likely solution is that John Dee or one of his associates created the thing as a fraud to bilk gullible aristocrats or royalty (Charles V gets mentioned as a possible target, if I recall correctly.)
Seriously: an error-free exotic MS with bizarre and suggestive (in the broadest sense) drawings that we are pretty sure passed through the hands of known "magicians" at least some of whom almost certainly accepted in their own minds that much of what they sold was fraudulent (many probably at least half-believed in what they were doing, but still...)
Never assume intelligence when venality will do, or something like that.
Re:Possible hoax,,, (Score:1, Interesting)
Forget scholars. Confound the laity and the common man.
Make up a fancy book that you can claim to read, practice fortune telling or medicine! Earn a living through fraud.
The only mystery is how you would get someone with a practiced hand and good penmanship to slog through helping you.
Unless... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if the manuscript is ever decoded, a hell of a lot more than two pages is going to make sense. In fact, when someone figures it out, 99% of the manuscript will make sense.
That is, unless the manuscript is using a collection of ciphers (one for each section perhaps?), in which case, one key won't unlock everything.
Just a thought.
Re:It Hurts (Score:5, Interesting)
Since you're not a botanist (nor am I) how do you know what garlic looked like 600 years ago? When corn was first cultivated, it looked like what we call "baby corn" today. It wasn't until centuries of selection and cross-breeding that we got the much larger corn that everyone knows.
That said, I agree with your premise that this is a shaky "solution", but I wouldn't rule it out based on that evidence.
Re:It Hurts (Score:3, Interesting)
There's an Italian song about the manuscript - maybe it holds some clues...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00&feature=player_embedded [youtube.com]
(not a Rickroll)
Re:It Hurts (Score:2, Interesting)
I happen to be a linguistics major (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It Hurts (Score:4, Interesting)
there are known cases of cyphers being broken by someone who does not speak the language in with the original message was written. some classical cypers can be decoded using frequency tables for the language. this requires the breaker to know (or guess) the original language, but it can be done.
now, do you really think _ALL_ workers of bletchley park were fluent in german ?
Re:Really now (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know how well this would apply to other languages, but imagine if someone took English and wrote it purely phonetically.
Yu myt wynd up with sumthing riten lik this, wich cud ezily thro of a leter frekwense analisis, uspeshule if yu hav vareashinz in pronunseashin for diferent reginz.
Da Vinci makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that she used tools available on the web to help her out in areas where she's not an expert, ought not be held against her. Personally, I think it shows that she's pretty damn clever.
Re:It Hurts (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Da Vinci makes sense (Score:1, Interesting)
Or perhaps all the obvious "personal" quirks are simply how text was written back then and you are missing all the more subtle ones. Try comparing it with other mideival text.
Re:It Hurts (Score:4, Interesting)