Re: VMs: Ryland 228

[Gordon Rugg <g.rugg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hmmm..... There are many theories which fit some of the evidence. The
challenge is to find evidence which gives us good reason to eliminate
possibilities and therefore to reduce the problem space down to one
sensible explanation.

There are a lot of features of Voynichese which are inconsistent with the
VMS being in an exotic, non-encoded, natural language. If it's a code,
then it's resisted decipherment for much longer than any other code of the
same period. The third main possibility is that it's a hoax.

The hoax explanation has tended to be dismissed as requiring too much
complexity and time. However, apart from the mechanism for producing
Voynichese itself, every other alleged indication of complexity in the
manuscript itself can be produced quite easily and quickly using
fifteenth/sixteenth century methods. The overall planning could have been
done in a couple of weeks, including labels with cross-references between
sections; the transcription and illustration could have been done in two
or three months.

I think that the issue of who might have hoaxed it is a side-issue; the
key question is what type of evidence would either disprove the hoax
hypothesis, or show that it is the most reasonable explanation for the
VMS.

Best wishes,

Gordon

GC wrote:

> Nick wrote:
> >
> > I think Rafal Prinke is totally correct to strongly
> > question the
> > Dee-centric view of VMS' history - many of the supposed
> > pieces of evidence
> > don't quite "stack up":-
> >
> >          http://hum.amu.edu.pl/~rafalp/HERM/VMS/dee.htm#9
> >
> > Having said that... I do think the quire-marks are
> > Dee's, and the foliation
> > is Kelly's: but this doesn't mean I think the "600/630
> > ducats" evidence
> > links the sale with Dee.
>
> Of course there's always that *third* option that the manuscript
> was from an English source?  Dee bought several books from
> dissolved monasteries in England, and if indeed the VMS were ever
> in his hands, this would be a much simpler explanation of how he
> obtained it.  Even simpler, if it was written by Ascham, then
> Roger would have obtained it after Anthony's death, a much more
> direct line of transference from author to Dee? :-)  Theories do
> indeed abound!
>
> GC
>
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