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

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gabriele,

> 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.

One interesting example of this is the gallows-as-vinci hypothesis I 
considered for a while. Leonardo da Vinci spent a lot of time devising 
courtly word games and allusions, and his golden vinci (in the Sala Delle 
Asse in Milan) are thought to have been a visual pun on his name. Though 
the name refers to a passage in Dante (where it refers to love as a binding 
force), this (visual) vinci motif first appeared on Leonardo's Lady with an 
Ermine, and from there crossed over into jewellery and musical instruments: 
what greater irony could there be if we had been staring at vinci-shaped 
gallows all this time and not seeing them as Leonardo's own punning 
signature? :-)

I think that's quite a good example of the kind of <<cross-medium semiotic 
audit trail>> Professor Eco likes to assert. However, whether this is true 
or not is another matter entirely - for example, despite extensive 
analysis, (IIRC) there's no actual evidence to link any jewellery or 
musical instrument directly to Leonardo... and AFAIK it's only modern art 
historians who have linked the motif with Dante (but don't take my word for 
it). :-o

There's more detail in the mailing list archive, such as:-
        http://www.voynich.net/Arch/2002/03/msg00148.html

> 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 (...)  could be automatically decoded by a PC (...)
> b) the decoding of the vms (...) needs human intervention to be completed.

FWIW, my chain of reasoning runs something like this:-
*       evidence suggests that the VMS is a copy of existing document(s)
                (a vellum flaw has been duplicated on f112, the poem on 
f81r, etc)
*       therefore, at least some layout information has been retained

*       evidence suggests intra-document references exist within the text
                (starred paragraphs roughly match de Bripio's recipe section)
*       therefore, each page's contents are probably intact (to retain 
folio numbers)

*       the size of the lettering is comparable to that of similar texts' 
lettering
*       the information content of transcriptions (especially h2) seems low
*       the text appears to be written in groups of letters, ie a verbose 
cipher
*       data compression techniques (such as rank compressors) are unlikely

*       therefore, if the VMs text on each page literally encodes 
comparably-sized
        text on a comparably-sized page with comparably-sized lettering, then
        some form of data compression must have been employed in order to fit
        it on. The most likely form is abbreviation/truncation.

Mark Perakh has also argued that much of the difference between Language A 
and Language B might be explained in terms of abbreviation (can't find his 
web address quickly, can anyone give the URL?), though from quite a 
different angle from the above.

Still, these are all suggestive arguments rather than definitive - the VMs 
remains a slippery eel. :-o

You might also differentiate between a private shorthand language (such as 
the "doodling student" hypothesis) and a coding system (such as the 
"cryptographic proof-of-concept" hypothesis): semiotically, these have two 
quite different types of reader (private and public). In fact, you might 
consider categorising different hypotheses by the view (in C++ terms, 
"private, protected, public") they take of the likely reader. :-)

> 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.
> d) the vms is a fake. Glossolalia with no meaning.

Your (d) category seems a little bit too broad: I'd suggest instead:-
(d) Glossolalia, with a kind of rant profile (Sergio Toresella suspects this)
(e) Glossolalia, like channelling / angelic communication
(f) 15th Century alchemical (fake) herbal (Sergio Toresella thinks not)
(g) 16th Century fake, designed to look like a valuable enciphered document
(h) 17th Century hoax, designed to drive Athanasius Kircher mad :-)

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


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