[Ansteorra] Need Help...

William Meriic wmeriic at tx.rr.com
Sat Dec 8 19:43:05 PST 2007


No, it is actually the statistical analysis that keeps us from simply
dismissing the manuscript as a hoax.

About three years ago I actively worked on the Voynich manuscript along with
an international team.  This team's primary communication mechanism is a
mailing list that's open to anyone.  We also employed several Web resources
to aiding communication.  What I found was horrifying.

While some were dedicated to scientific procedure, most on the list were
less than rigorous.  Every other month someone would exclaim that they have
solved the Voynich manuscript.  People would press them for information but
the alleged solver would become quiet and secretive.  Eventually this person
would come forward with a bunch of garbage and ask if this makes sense in a
certain language.

Occasionally someone will manage to wrangle a few words that look like
Italian, Latin, or Spanish and claim a victory.  However no one has been
able to translate even one page of the book or identify its imagery.

I can't remember the name of the guy at the moment but someone was written
up in a number of magazines as having derived a method that could re-create
the Voynich manuscript's statistical features while providing garbage (this
person was trying to demonstrate that the Voynich manuscript was written as
a hoax).  But the reality of the situation is he was no closer to being able
to reproduce the manuscript than anyone else. He was simply the idiot du
jour.

After being bombarded with fake after fake I finally threw in the towel!
Maybe the situation has improved some but when I left research on the
subject was generally a joke.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Voynich manuscript it is a
document containing several hundred pages written in a completely unknown
language and alphabet and contains many extraordinary and unusual images.
No one knows the origin of the book or its purpose.  Significant effort was
made in the 50s and 60s to translate the book.  Lack of success has
convinced some of it was a hoax -- that the text is garbage.  However,
statistical analysis of the text shows that it is not random and has
features behind it only found in natural language.

Hoax or not it was likely written in the SCA's time period.  I taught a
class about this in the Northlands a few years ago.  If people down here are
interested I'd be willing to put together a class for an event.  It is a
very exciting and unusual document and will stretch the imaginations of any
good SCAdian.

Will Meriic



Betsy Marshall betsy at softwareinnovation.com
Sat Dec 8 18:18:53 PST 2007

I thought that a statistical analysis had pretty much proven that was a
hoax- admittedly a medieval hoax, but a flim-flam/scam all the same(human
nature really doesn't change does it?) which I had the reference handy..

Try a google on hoax and voynich

For medieval astronomy, check out how many star names are derived from
Arabic languages...
HTH, Pyro




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