Re: Voynich research needs

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

sjm (Seth Morabito) wrote:
>  I may be echoing Jacques Guy's complaints,

I did not mean it as a complaint, only an
observation.

> but it seems that we have got nowhere, though certainly not for lack of
> dedication or hard work.  It seems logical that one of three possible
> conditions is true:  

> [1] Either that we're all missing something very
> important which is right in front of our noses, 

>[2] or that we lack some
> vital piece of the puzzle without which we are lost, 

>[3] or that there is
> no answer to be had and the manuscript is a hoax.

If the manuscript is a hoax, I have a gut feeling 
that there should be some way of finding out, of
proving it. But again, I wonder: is there a 
continuum from real, meaningful text to glossolalia?
Perhaps there is. This question has never been
seriously addressed -- I do not mean regarding the
VMS, but in general. It could be a hoax, and still
be meaningful -- like Helen Smith's "Martian" or like
a science-fiction novel depicting a fantastic,
physically impossible world in an artificial 
language; or like a long recipe for producing the
philosophical stone, or diamonds from cow dung!

So, I believe that none of [1], [2], and [3] is
the case. In my view, we simply do not know
enough about language to tell where the VMS
stands. I don't know much about cryptography,
but the repetitive nature of the text, its low
entropy mean to me that -- *IF* it is a cipher:

1) it is full of nulls
2) it is a sort of Bacon cipher

But then, the plaintext would be very short, and
what about the label?

That is why, in my cryptographic ignorance, 
I do not think it can be a cipher proper.
Simple substitution, yes possibly, but beyond
that, no definitely.

Take the Codex Seraphinianus. Its page-numbering
system (base 21) has been cracked. Its author, Luigi 
Serafini, claims that the text is not gibberish.
Ivan Derzhanski has had a go at analysing it...
wait, let me do a search... there:

http://www.math.bas.bg/~iad/serafin.html

In my eyes, it is a very similar problem, and
I am glad that the editor of Dr Dobb's Journal
left in my remark that this (the VMS) is the
sort of problems which we must know how to solve
if we are ever to make contact with  alien
intelligences (extraterrestrial or not -- we very
possibly have some right under our noses now).

Frogguy