VMs: RE: Hexadecimal

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff,

Hopefully narrowly focused is not the same as close minded, so I'll bite.

Why did George Boole or his daughter concoct a fake manuscript?  It can not
have been "as a proof of his concepts of the logic of thought and how
language follows logical rules and can therefore be synthesized".  If this
purist reasoning were behind it, the manuscript would have had a modern
theme, look and feel.  Attributing this to Boole or his daughter means that
one of them created the VMS with the clear intention of creating a fake, and
this implies that one or both of them were of questionable character.  This
also implies that Voynich himself would have known about this, and yet he
too pawned this off on the world as a Roger Bacon manuscript.  Were all
three of these people crooked?

Why did Boole choose a 15th/16th century tone for his treatise?  Why did he
choose a medical format instead of one more associated with logic, along the
lines of Giordanno Bruno?  Was Boole especially fascinated with naked women?
Why the overall astrological tone for a man who was bent on formulating a
universal language?  Did Boole have an interest in plants, and what part did
they play in his theories on logic and language?  The questions could go on
for pages.

Okay, let's say Boole did write it.  He went out of his way to choose vellum
as a medium instead of more modern material.  He chose second grade vellum
instead of top grade, and carefully sewed up cuts and tears in the odd-sized
folios. A lot of work went into scraping and preparing the vellum, maybe he
had his daughter do this part.  Then he chooses an arcane medical format to
present his ideas on logic, and sets them to vellum.  What next?  Oh yes,
then he has someone else write marginalia in 17th century script and
non-English languages.  Was this part of his logic presentation?

Boole goes to a lot of trouble to write this thing, so you'd think he'd set
it on a shelf to protect it and bring it down once in awhile to show to
friends.  But no, that's not how it went.  A few pages had to be removed to
give it an air of mystery, and then there was the weathering it had to be
subjected to in order to produce bleed-through, fading, aging of the corners
of the pages, etc.  Was this treatment also a part of his treatise on logic?

Then there's Voynich and his wife.  I remember someone saying recently that
the VMS was on an inventory of books purchased, but if it was done by Boole,
why would it be there?  Voynich would not have had to purchase the book. Was
this fake too, and still part of the treatise on logic?  Knowing the source
of the manuscript, why would Voynich put it forward as a Roger Bacon
manuscript, and why would Ethel Voynich never cop to its origin even after
Voynich died?

Then there's the whole "hexadecimal" thing.  Our modern use of binary and
hex has nothing to do with a progression of logic theory, but is tied
directly to the hardware available.  First manual switches, then tube
switches, then transistors, all of which have two positions, on and off
(high and low).  If a transistor had more than two usable states, we
wouldn't be using binary at all.  So of all the choices Boole had from the
countless possibilities, why did he choose an offshoot of binary, when
something based on three, for instance, is far more flexible and conducive
to information storage and transmission than binary?  It's been awhile since
I read Boole's books, but if I remember correctly, his algebraic expressions
involved a lot more than TRUE, FALSE, AND, OR , etc.  It's true they lend
themselves well to binary, but they would be just as valuable in other forms
of expression.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still trying to be open minded.  Skeptical is not
close minded.  I'm sure you have answers for all of these questions and a
lot more.  The first question in need of an answer would be why the fake?
Not a treatise, but an outright fake, pawned off on the world in a
fraudulent manner, apparently for the purpose, not to enlighten the world to
a new form of logical expression, but for simple monetary gain.  What do we
know about any of the people involved that would lead us to believe they
were of this character?

GC






> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx]On
> Behalf Of Jeff
> Sent: Friday, July 04, 2003 4:34 PM
> To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: VMs: Hexadecimal
>
>
> In response to GC. Yes that is a twentieth century view but I believe this
> manuscript WAS written in the twentieth century, by George Boole or his
> daughter as a proof of his concepts of the logic of thought and
> how language
> follows logical rules and can therefore be synthesized.
>
> So have a think about that carefully and never dismiss a new approach too
> quickly. It is far too coincidental that George Boole the champion of the
> logic of thought would not have experimented with artificial language
> construction. That was what the guy was all about.
>
> Close minds walk in a narrow corridor.
>
>
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