Hi Jan,
Seems that you are right about the Digges, here are some relevant links pertaining to their connection to John Dee :
http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/08-2/sanddane.htm http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/References/Digges.html http://www.chocky.demon.co.uk/oas/diggeshistory.htmlNot sure after all that Friar Roger was the only discoverer of telescope
( J ).
Jean
jan <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Hello Jeff,
======= You wrote:
>These MSs are examples of a long standing tradition that was not just used
>in diplomatic or church correspondance. Don't take my word for it, as I
know
>you won't, but keep digging. It is a fascinating subject.
>
=============
I would say that the first part there is rather alphabetical, while second part -
diplomatic cipher - looks more like a rather complicated shorthand.
Fascinating of course is the dating of the scripts - so old!
I was once toying with idea that VM may really use the shorthand, however
there are only few characters there while the shorthand must use quite a lot. Of
course, EVA is using more than 25 letters, but is comfortably close enough to
normal alphabet. Next I noticed that the parts (segments) of some VM signs
are used in other signs as w! ell, some of them even as an independent
characters - that's why each character is separated from the other by space
(connected script would cause a real confusion). On the other hand, there is a
very low no. of segments, so they themselves cannot create the full alphabet.
However, there can be other reason for separation between characters - they
may be simply codes by themselves. One suggestion was made - they may be
Roman numerals which in turn would create numbers (i.e. words) with some
coded meaning. There is a lot of work to be done there.
Now the desperate efforts of the linguists to find the language of the VM
(without considering the additional encoding) itself proved - I think quite
sufficiently - that there is no such language. The repetition of certain
characters, groups of characters and even the "words" suggests there must be
some encoding present. The theory of suffixes and prefixes ( now cordially
embraced by Gord! Ruggs :-) could not explain SO MANY of them and so
many words with one letter change only. The idea of chopping the "words"
in segments and mixing them on his favorite grille has one big problem: it is
only a transposition cipher and the frequency count will be same - we should
be able then to find the corresponding letters fitting some known language, right?
The important question: is the VM encoded on the basis "one-to-one" ?
1) Lets check the words - true, the longer "words" are missing, but if the
transposition cipher (including the spaces) or additional nulls are used, the
term "words" is meaningless.
2) The "sentences": they are actually paragraphs - there are no full stops, no
commas - and these paragraphs are long enough (and short enough) to be real
sentences.
It does look like the encoding is really on the basis one-to-one, that is the number
of characters is probably same as in the plaintext. What are the other o! ptions, say
each "word" represents one or say two letters? Then the number of real
words in the plaintext will be quite short and the VM would be to short for
even an short essay. Unless it is the sample of some novel approach to encoding (
they surely were smart enough!) we may assume - or at least start with -
one-to-one approach. Only then, if we fail, we may look for more complicated
systems.
As I posted on my page some time ago, I did the frequency chart - for VM
characters, not words! - and got a close approach to Latin. I used EVA -
there is nothing better yet - and got some comparison alphabet. The result of
course was not Latin text - so I believe there is an transposition cipher present
which keeps the frequency intact. That does not eliminate the grille, on the contrary,
is the smartest way to write the transposition cipher: it is easy to use, it
almost eliminates the mistakes and it is VERY DIFFICULT to solve. On
! top of it, there may be errors in transcript and in my "closest" frequency
alphabetical equivalent as well, so trial and error may return more errors than
we bargained for.
Now we may get some help from pictures, tags and horoscopes. As for plant
tags, it is really puzzling: there are very few really same and mostly are of one
word only, something irregular in botanic. As for horoscopes, it is different:
most stars and planets names consist of one word , there could be comparison possible.
------------
I discovered something in the book THE SCIENTISTS, by John Gribbin,
Random House 2002, originally printed in UK, Penguin Books. IN SHORT, IT
SAYS THIS ((my comments are marked as such):
Leonard Digges, father of Thomas Digges, is the author of several books, written in
English, rather unusual in his time( e.g. 1553, General Prognostication, with
perpetual calendar). He invented theodolite around 1551, invented reflecting
! telescope and as the author says "almost certainly the refracting telescope", but no
publicity was given to it. The reason was that he was rebelling
against Queen Mary (the Wyatt rebellion), sentenced to death and got pardon, but
lost all his possessions).
When he died, his son Thomas was 13 years old and John Dee was his
guardian. Thomas had access to all Dee's books (one thousand manuscripts)
( and I would guess to all work his father did but not yet published, comment j.h.)
Thomas published his first mathematical work in 1571 and the
same year he got posthumously published the book of his father (Pantometria).
1572 he observed Supernova and his readings were used by Tycho de Brahe
in his analysis 1576 he published Prognostication Everlasting, his most
important book, with detailed description of Copernican system. HE STATED
IN THIS BOOK THAT THE UNIVERSE IS INFINITE and shown picture
with Sun in center, planets around and the st! ars in all directions and
distances outside the Solar system.
(Note that it was the first time mnetioned the infinity - as far as I know - Copern ic us never went
so far, How did get Thomas this notion? Apparently by some observation of
the sky and maybe from some calculation for the Supernova, comment j.h.). The author suggests
he was looking at the Milky way and saw so many stars, so that's how, but Thomas does
not give any reason or proof of it. He was prominent protestant, suffered
while Mary was the Queen, then all changed under Elisabeth and he even became
the member of Parliament.
He died 1595, when Galileo was stablished professor in Padua.
About Bruno: author thinks he was burnt for heresy and hermetism, not for
support of Copernicus, but he admits the records of his trial were lost.
Strangely enough the author does not mention Bruno's idea that the Universe
is infinite, while Wikipedia says that in his book In De l'Inf! inito, Universo e
Mondi, he argued that the stars we see at night were just like our Sun and that the
universe was infinite, with a "Plurality of Worlds".
Regards,
Jan
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