Fwd: RE: Re: Toresella

[philip.marshall@xxxxxxxx]

Perhaps I was too critical of O'Neill's paper, but there is a great deal 
of controversy over his identifications. Stolfi discusses the 
"sunflower" on his site(http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/ 
98-01-17-sunflower/) with the conclusion that it could not be a 
16th-century depiction of a sunflower, and as a botanist myself I am not 
convinced that the "Capsicum" on folio 101v is even botanical (despite 
the red color, and a similar figure elsewhere in green, it looks like a 
piece of laboratory equipment to me). That said, a 16th-century date 
does seem correct to me (the MS is certainly not medieval). I wonder 
what can be gained from the study of elements of costume worn by human 
figures in the MS.

Philip Marshall

---------Included Message----------
>Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 04:40:52 -0500
>From: "ddhopper" <ddhopper@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: "ddhopper" <ddhopper@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: <philip.marshall@xxxxxxxx>
>Subject: RE: Re: Toresella
>
>The botanist Hugh O'Neill, a friend of R.G. Kent, did publish his
>identifications as "tentative", and drew his speculation on that 
cautious
>phrase.  I don't think his identifications were "careless" or his 
writing
>presumptuous or "provocative".  He simply chose the two most 
identifiable
>plants and wrote his brief pamphlet as a guide for researchers.  
Countless
>people have identified the flower as a sunflower, and the capsicum is 
very
>distinctive.  When Dana's views are added to O'Neill's identification 
of
>only a couple of plants, a pattern builds toward early to middle 16th
>century.  Perhaps it is not O'Neill who was careless, but other 
researchers
>in ignoring or not pursuing the more obvious.  Perhaps...
>
>In O'Neill's unpublished notes he identifies quite a few more plants to 
my
>understanding.
>
>DDHopper
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: philip.marshall@xxxxxxxx [mailto:philip.marshall@xxxxxxxx]
>Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 12:13 AM
>To: voynich@xxxxxxxx
>Subject: Fwd: Re: Toresella
>
>
>If the VMS were penned in the second half of the XVI
>>> century, then I have no difficulty in accepting the presence of
>botanical
>>> samples from the Western Hemisphere; however, I am not convinced
>that
>>> the sunflower identification is accurate.
>>
>>	It was Brumbaugh that said that the sunflower and pepper showed that
>>it was written after the discovery of the New World.  He thought that
>>the text
>>was nonsense, written by Dee and Kelly to make money.  He did think
>that
>>the
>>labels were meaningful, Latin enciphered in a rudimentary cipher.  We
>no
>>longer
>>accept any of this.
>>
>>
>
>More precisely, I believe that it was Hugh O'Neill who first 
identified
>(carelessly, I would say) the "sunflower" and "pepper" and emphasized
>that they would date the MS to after 1493 (when Columbus returned to
>Europe with seeds). Brumbaugh was responsible only for the
>popularization of O'Neill's provocative claim.
>
>-Philip Marshall
>
>
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