Re: VMs: Latin abbreviations

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Matthew,

At 18:30 10/07/2003 +0100, Matthew Platts wrote:
> Does the idea of Latin abbreviations not raise questions about who the 
> Voynich manuscript was intended for? If it's a write-only document with 
> incomprehensible abbreviations, only understood by the author(s), then the 
> neatness, the lack of crossings-out, the exotic drawings of nymphs and the 
> like do not make much sense. Why would the author go to the trouble of 
> ensuring that the VMS was a more-or-less pristine copy with precise 
> diagrams if it was only a set of notes for his own benefit?

Excellent - we were discussing a type (4) approach [looking at the VMS from 
its "user interface", ie its functionality] only a few days ago, and here's 
a prime example of it! :-)

I've long thought the lack of crossings out may be a red herring: my 
opinion is that the cipherbet (with all its shorthand-like single-stroke 
characters) was designed to be written quickly on a wax tablet (by an 
encoder whose time was relatively expensive), but then copied slowly onto 
vellum (by a scribe whose time was relatively cheap). True, this is a kind 
of business school inference, but what the hey. :-)

Basically, if the VMS is a copy, then a scribe writing onto vellum would 
have time to check for errors before drying the page out (over a small 
fire): any errors noticed then can be quickly scraped off with a pen-knife 
(the same knife was used for sharpening quills, hence its name) and sorted out.

Also: we've all noticed low entropy (or rather, high redundancy) in the 
text - but this might also be acting as a kind of error correction code 
(compsci speak for a code where you can lose pieces but still retain the 
whole - CDs have this, so that even a scratched CD can still (usually) play 
cleanly). This might mean the encoder wasn't too worried about scribal 
errors, so perhaps didn't even bother to proofread it. :-)

FWIW, when my maths lecturer covered error correction codes at Uni, he 
talked about the signals sent back to Earth by Voyager 2: here's a quick 
page discussing the history of them:-
        http://www.ams.org/new-in-math/cover/errors6.html

> If, on the other hand, the VMS is intended for someone else, maybe for 
> posterity, it might be ciphered so that only men of learning could 
> understand it. This would require the cipher to be logical, and 
> context-dependancy wouldn't help matters.

Many people have proposed the VMS-as-time-capsule hypothesis over the years 
- naturally, this is a favourite motif of novelists (and even computer 
game-makers in York!) appropriating the Voynich as a mechanism by which 
"Occult Knowledge Which Might Save (Or Destroy) The World" can be 
transported to the present day. Bless 'em. :-)

But I do agree: I too see the VMS as being written in a robust cipher, 
rather than in a flaky one.

> Is it possible that the characters in the VMS represent syllables, 
> perhaps, or whole words? This might be a method of encoding to save space. 
> Vellum, after all, is, and always was, expensive.

It's possible: though the apparent cipherbet is quite small, and used in a 
quite structured manner, and all suggestions have to fit the reality of 
what we observe: so, it's basically a question of *how*.

I'm really not sure what the last word on the economics of it is: that is, 
if an encoder was writing blocks of text onto wax tablets, and a scribe was 
tracing/copying pictures and copying encoded text onto the vellum, I'm 
unsure how [in]expensive a part of the whole process the vellum would have 
been (in our 1450-1550 time frame). Certainly, paper was far more 
accessible by 1550, & that might have altered the relative value of vellum: 
but literacy was far greater... I don't know.

>  Alternatively the symbols in the VMS might not be plaintext at all. They 
> could indicate symbols used in, for instance, predicate logic, or 
> mathematics, or alchemical formulae. If I were to write OOsOsl&Of, for 
> instance, I have no doubt you would all be puzzled; but I might say that 
> there was no problem at all: it's a quadratic equation, s^2 + s = -f.

While I'm sure a modern logician would have no problem writing a document 
in predicate logic (for my sins, I did logic at University), I'm not quite 
so sure how it would square with the history of (representations of) 
symbolic logic - if the dates for the Voynich are (say) 1450-1550 
(depending who you ask), you'd need to make sure that wasn't too 
unreasonable. Any proposed solution of the VMS that requires a 
constellation of Leonardo-like firsts to be in place would naturally be 
fairly unlikely (cf Roger Bacon's telescope etc). :-0

> Alternatively, perhaps f116's "michiton oladabas multos te tær cerc 
> portas" indicates the decryption method. To me it looks (but remember, I 
> am a new amateur) like a scribbled note, maybe translating a portion of 
> text back into Latin, "michi dabas multas portas", dropping some null 
> characters, "ton ola te tær cerc". This might indicate that the decryption 
> algorithm leaves some null characters in the translation.

Everyone transcribes this differently: come back to it in six months, and 
you'll almost certainly see something else again. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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