Re: VMs: [LONG] Voynich & semiotics (early notes)

["Gabriele Ferri" <gabriele.ferri@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi there!

Nick Pelling wrote:
>All the same, I think that - as you alluded to - a rather more >practical
>research angle would be to look at the semiotics of the various >VMs
>hypotheses. These at least have a cultural milieu, text, >encoding, etc.
:-)

Yes, you're right, I'm going to start a start a plain-text analysis (that
would be impossible, as you wrote) but I'm going to (well, actually I'm
trying to figure out if it's possible) start from a much lower level of
interpretation and I'm going to follow a different approach.
The main subject of Eco's exam, and therefore my paper's main subject, is
the theory of translation. His goal is to elaborate a theory which can
semiotically explain and describe every possible kind of translation (from
an Italian text to an English text, from a plain text to an encrypted text,
from a book to a painting, from a painting to a song...). I'd like to
analyse the efforts in decoding the vms and use them as an extreme
case-study.

My first step is to isolate some hypotesis, such as:
a) the vms is encoded using a algorithm that could be more or less complex
but doesn't require any interpretation [I'm using "interpretation" following
Peirce and Eco --> "a link that is established or activated in the reader's
mind, such as the word _dog_ is linked to _mammal_"; anyone with a few
knoledge in philosophy of language could bash me for this poor and quick
explaination but sometimes I've got some problems in expressing complex
concepts in english]. In other words, this hypotesis is true if, given the
right algorithm and the right transcription, the vms could be automatically
decoded by a PC.

b) the decoding of the vms, even if the right algorithm is found, needs a
human intervention to be completed. The simplest example is a text with no
vowels: the reader has to make arbitrary decisions about which vowel insert
and where.

c) the vms is written in an artificial language or some kind of
transcription of a non-european language using ad hoc charaters and syntax.
It's possible that, if hypotesis C is true, the vms is the only specimen of
a new code [I'm using "code" as a rough equivalent of "method for linking
the expression A1, expressed in a media, to the expression A2, expressed in
another media (such as the spoken-word _dog_ is linked to the three
written-letters D O G)", all the philosofers of language out there please
don't bash me :-) ].

d) the vms is a fake. Glossolalia with no meaning. And, I'll tell you,
that's semiotically the most fascinating hypotesis. Semiologists study the
meaning of a text, how meaning is generated, perceived, interpreted, shifted
from culture to culture and from individual to individual. If the vms had
originally NO meaning (assuming that it's possible to have no meaning
whatsoever, which has been long long debate between semiologist, linguists
and philosophers of language), meaning has been added to it over the
centuries by the many different people who tried to decode it... but that's
rambling is going to be another essay I'm going to write later :-)

I think that hypotesis A B C and D are a good and comprehensive
generalization of the possible approaches at the decoding of the vms. I'll
start my work analysing these hypotesis from a semiotic point of view.
Do you think I've missed something? (remember, I'm talking about models, not
just single personal guesses)


______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list