Re: Back to basics - or musings of an old bore

[reeds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jim Reeds)]

I feel qualified to jump in here, as a fully paid-up, card
carrying old bore. 

About this discussion of "Manly's solution" and the possibility
of self-delusion:


On Feb 25, 12:44, Jorge Stolfi wrote:


> 
>     > [stolfi:] I would not put too much hope on [Manly's] "solution";
>     > it sounds like another case of self-delusion.
> 
...
> 
> Apparently Manly's "solution" did not yield any useful information
> about the book's origin or contents (otherwise we would surely know it
> by now). Therefore, my guess is that he (like many others after him)
> obtained only snippets of "plaintext" by fiddling the rules locally,
> and was unable to find a master rule that would apply to the whole
> text.

Manly did not claim a solution. I have his 1931 Speculum paper in
front of me. The last paragraph (on p.391) says:

  We can only hope that some one with equal courage and devotion
  [to Newbold's] but with a sounder method will be found to renew
  the attack upon the mysterious cipher of the Voynich manuscript.
  If at present the cipher seems insoluble, this is because the
  attack has proceeded on false assumptions.  We do not, in fact,
  know when the MS. was written, or where, or what language lies at
  the basis of the encipherment.  When the correct hypotheses are
  applied, the cipher will perhaps reveal itself as simple and easy,
  and the fortunate decipherer will add an interesting chapter to
  the history of science.  It is greatly to be desired that the
  manuscript should be placed in some public institution from which
  photostats could be furnished to persons properly equipped for 
  attacking the problem of decipherment, and that scholars equipped
  with the necessary armament of knowledge and ingenuity and
  patience should renew the attack upon the mysterious manuscript.

I have read several solution claims, and this is not at all like
them. He uses the word "perhaps" to describe what he hopes might be
the case. With the exception of Manly's assumption that the VMS is
a cipher (natural to someone reviewing Voynich & Newbold's recent
work, who himself had been a cryptanalyst) I don't think there is
anything in this paragraph that Stolfi (say) would disagree with,
and indeed, this paragraph touches many of the issues discussed on
this list all the time: what language could it be in, and the need
for photocopies.



-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178