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.
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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.
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Simple : the illustrations are clearly not representation of reality.
Though I suppose it could be the same kind of fiction found in the bible or other religious works - in some cases based on reality, but clearly distorted.
Re:It Hurts (Score:4, Interesting)
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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.
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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: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.
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An artistic autistic savant?
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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
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Well, it could just be a randomly generated joke.
Re:It Hurts (Score:5, Funny)
So she has apparently decoded a manuscript written in a language she does not read (medieval Italian) does not know what a medieval herbal looks like, is not a botanist, a linguist or anything else that would be helpful to decoding a medieval manuscript of any kind .....
For her next trick she will disprove Einstein, and prove the world is flat .....
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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)
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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 ?
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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.
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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!
But maybe the manuscript author didn't. I mean, the whole mystery aside, we all know the level of accuracy of scientific texts of that time. The fact it is hard to decode doesn't mean it is true.
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Seriously, also on page 4, "mushroom"? OK, you could argue that's like the stem of a mushroom. So why are the very similar figures on previous pages marked "forget" (eh? unless in some medieval italian slang that apparently both dante and da vinci spoke a "forget" was a mushroom of some sort), "waste" (eh? this is the bit of the mushroom, or forget, that you're meant to waste? seriously?), "rapid" (evidently if you eat this particular mushroom, or forget, you rapidly produce waste) or two question marks
Makes totally sense. Magic mushrooms. Like, dude, if you eat them shrooms, you'll get rapidly wasted and forget about all that shit'n'stuff, like totally, man.
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This is an interesting possibility, but a problem with this hypothesis is that the Voynich Manuscript exhibits a statistical property of natural languages called Zipf's Law ("the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in a word frequency table"). Possibly the postulated artist produced imaginary symbols following this law? It would be interesting to see if studies of work created by autistic individuals commonly possess this property. If this is not a common pattern then this possibilit
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It is possible for an autistic person to have a unique and fully consistent analog to a real language.
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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.
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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 wa
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Hey! I rather fancy the idea of an 8-year-old getting sperm and egg donors for his research.
Er...
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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:5, Informative)
Since you're not a botanist (nor am I) how do you know what garlic looked like 600 years ago?
Well, here's an illustration from the 15th century [wikimedia.org]. Notice any bulbous feature that is lacking in the Voynich sketch? Notice they don't even bother to depict the root system in the 15th century sketch unlike the Voynich. My point was, not a single one of those plants relayed the distinguishing features you would obvious take care to note on the plant--all she offers is the leaf of stachys that has a hilarious tuber below it in the Voynich sketch but nothing in her botanical book! An obvious stretch of the imagination is the rose bush with no roses.
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.
I'm not sure where you found information that plants have changed dramatically in a few hundred years. While it's true that they have changed dramatically over thousands of years and since the advent of agriculture, 600 years is not the same as 6,000 years [nsf.gov]. While you're kind of right that thousands of years changed plants, I assure you that most if not all of today's plants look the same as they did 600 years ago.
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She's also inconsistent (Score:2)
In one linked prior page, she says
Some people have considered the possibility that Wilfred Voynich forged the Voynich Manuscript. Wilfred Voynich’s business was in buying and selling old manuscripts and again it is unlikely that he would have copied from French and Italian manuscripts written after Roger Bacon’s death or seen early Tarot cards like the Visconti-Sforza pack.
Then three paragraphs later, she says
If Wilfred Voynich considered Roger Bacon a suitable 13th century author of the Voynich Manuscript, ...
She can't have it both ways. Either Voynich was too smart to have made such a clumsy mistake, or he was not. She makes it clear that both of these are her own opinions: first she disagrees that he would have been so clumsy as to fake it in a Roger Bacon style, then she says he considered Roger Bacon a possible author.
Re:It Hurts (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, wikipedia is helpful again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allium_ursinum
The leaves are quite nice in a salad, too
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... along the same lines, do you notice any resemblance between the "soybean" illustration
Re:It Hurts (Score:4, Informative)
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!
http://vegetablesofinterest.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/28/rare_ripe_garlic_shoots.jpg [typepad.com]
http://ballardfarmersmarket.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/green-garlic/ [wordpress.com]
http://inpraiseofsardines.typepad.com/blogs/2006/02/spring_is_just_.html [typepad.com]
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This would explain a lot about Ohio politics. (Score:3, Funny)
obMST3K (Score:2)
The link is at least more likely than to Leonardo da Gary Indiana.
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The link is at least more likely than to Leonardo da Gary Indiana.
or Leonardo da Ninja Turtle
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.
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The article itself doesn't seem to claim it's anagrams. In fact, it's not clear it claims anything at all, besides "cc" standing for "on" wherever it appears (or maybe only some of where it appears). The main thesis seems to be that if you squint at it, read it as sloppy handwriting, replace a few letter-pairs with something else they cipher for, and ignore words that don't fit this scheme (assuming they were thrown in to confuse), it might make sense. But that's a pretty ad-hoc hypothesis, and not much is
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Oh, oops, I was reading the wrong one of her articles (the 2nd one linked). The first one does indeed claim it's anagrams. Which, indeed, don't explain the strange letter-frequency and word-length-frequency distributions (or at least don't by themselves explain it).
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I think letter frequency actually supports the theory of anagrams. If my recollection is correct, the manuscript's frequency of letters and the frequency of the length of words strongly mimics that of a natural language. This is why many people think that it is neither a random hoax, nor something completely made up. Instead, the suspicion is that there is something real going on - the question is though, whether the language is merely transformed, a secret real language, or whether it's just a regular lang
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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.
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Wasn't Voynich Manuscript already solved by Randall Munroe? [xkcd.com]
Not far in fact (Score:3, Funny)
In fact, the working hypothesis of TFA's Author is that the manuscript may have been written by a young - still child - Leonardo, playing around with anagrams and trying to make an imaginary book out of common plants.
Not that far from children playing "Druids & Dicotyledon 1st Edition"
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I have a theory too. (Score:2)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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It also says:
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Presto, Eggs of Satan!
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Mod parent up for best literary reference.
--
BMO
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It says:
Pound pastrami, can kraut,six bagels--bring home for Emma."
NO NO NO! Whoever heard of "A Canticle for Voynich" ?? It just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
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.
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Only if the amount of words is large enough to have said letter frequencies and said relevant letters. I find the examples given very, very convincing. That doesn't mean that other examples are unconvincing, nor that most examples simply aren't given. But there may just be an explanation for that. As in: written in another language, or using another method of obfuscation.
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If the text is sufficiently integral, and the captions match the illustrations, and the amount of languages as limited and relevant, then: yes.
Oh Crap! (Score:3, Funny)
Like we need another lame Dan Brown book+movie.
Also, http://xkcd.com/593/ [xkcd.com]
Debunked almost a year ago (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2009/02/17/edith-sherwoods-anagram-cipher [ciphermysteries.com]
Re:Debunked almost a year ago (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Debunked almost a year ago (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Hey, quit projecting your pompassitude.
How do you know who does and who doesn't think the Voynich manuscript was a hoax? You haven't heard what I think about it.
And I call your Dan Brown and raise you an Umberto Eco.
Re:Debunked almost a year ago (Score:5, Funny)
now it just brings out the "Dan Brown is the realz" crowd and other conspiracy nutters.
Dan Brown IS real. You Dan Brown deniers are the real conspiracy nuts. "It's a ghost-writer" "It's plagiarized from aliens" "My dog is Dan Brown" Nutters all.
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And it says... (Score:5, Funny)
It's a cook book! (Score:2, Funny)
It's a cook book!
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I don't think it's called "How to serve man".. but nice try :]
Possible hoax,,, (Score:2)
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It's certainly possible, but it's incredibly long and detailed to be a hoax.
I'm reminded of a scene from Star Trek DS9 when Dr Bashir is trying to cure an engineered disease and has the following exchange with Jadzia (paraphrased):
Bashir: "There is no cure. The Dominion saw to that. These people have been suffering with this disease for hundreds of years and I arrogantly thought I could cure it within a week.".
Jadzia: "Maybe that was arrogant, but it's even more arrogant to think that there is no cure jus
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It seems highly repetitive (Score:3, Funny)
What the heck? It's that time of the year... (Score:2)
security through obscurity (Score:2)
Doesn't work, you would think he would have been smarter.
I've had this great idea... (Score:2)
We take an infinite number of monkeys, and an infinite number of parchments, and eventually one of them will write a new play by that Shakespeare fellow...
what (Score:4, Insightful)
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Boring... (Score:2)
Have you ever looked at that book? Look at the pictures and you'll know that there's nothing to decode. It's just phantasizing, all made up. There's no reason to waste any time with the text, especially since many people have tried and nobody found any kind of sense in it.
It's still beautiful, mind you.
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Yeap.. it's probably some background work for an early Italian role-playing-game written in the old equivalent version of 'Klingon'...
Leonardo, not daVinci (Score:3, Informative)
Let's try to stay well clear of pot boilers. Art historians refer to the renaissance polymath as "Leonardo," not as "Mr. Da Vinci." Sidmilarly, Dante, rather than "Mr Alligheri" wrote the Divine Comedy.
I happen to be a linguistics major (Score:2, Interesting)
It is obvious! (Score:2)
First two lines decoded (from the article) (Score:3, Funny)
In case you don't want to read the article, here are the first two lines they decoded:
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: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.
Distributed Deciphering (Score:3)
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Neither was a joke, firstly theorems often take pages to prove even though they glisten lke a perfect jewel in the mind and you can't squeeze that into a margin. Secondly it seems to be a code that still puzzles cryptographers because they are far too constrained. We might need a clueless blogger to figure it out after all.
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Regarding Fermat's last theorem, the usual story on that is that Fermat had what he thought was an extremely elegant proof in mind. The trouble was that his proof was wrong.
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Fermat's theorem was that, given a tantalizing-enough hint, mathematicians will spend centuries trying to discover a proof that does not exist. I'd say he was right.
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Fermat's theorem was that, given a tantalizing-enough hint, mathematicians will spend centuries trying to discover a proof that does not exist. I'd say he was right.
That always strikes me as projection. I mean, if you haven't got slashdot to post the most dumb-ass thing you can think of, what *would* a man do to keep his sanity? Invent riddles for future civilizations, with a model of the future based on your historical knowledge of Rome?
It some ways it would have been more intriguing if Fermat had written this in the margin beside the four colour theorem, having realized it could be decomposed into several thousand cases and only a large amount of scribbling stood i
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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.
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Why has no one tried carbon dating this book yet?
Well gee, let me Google that for you [lmgtfy.com].
First result:
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If it were just anagrams, that shouldn't have stymied people trying to crack it as a cipher---symbol-frequencies aren't screwed-up by changing the ordering....
My understanding is that the letter frequencies are correct, as if it is a cipher, but nobody's been able to make much sense of any candidate decodings --- which all seem like gibberish. This is what makes it so interesting. Letter scrambling might explain that, but who knows.
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Horse whinnies in backgroud.
and that's FRAONK-en-steen