The great tragedy of Science

The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas Henry Huxley, “Biogenesis and abiogenesis” (1870)

Steel True, Blade Straight

In the wake of the latest VM dating results, my old research buddy Rich SantaColoma has admitted defeat of his “New Atlantis” theory about the VM.

Rich has for several year pursued his theory which first assumed that the VM was a notebook on optics and early microscopy by Cornelius Drebbel, and in the light of ongoing examinations modified this to the more comprehensive concept of the VM being a “prop book” to enhance the credibility of Francis Bacon’s work on New Atlantis.*)

While Rich was able to gather quite some impressive circumstantial evidence, the crucial point of this theory was that the VM would have to have been created in the early 17th century, some 200 years after what mainstream considered the VM origin. This has brought him into much conflict with other VM researchers, and Rich had to fight an uphill battle for his ideas against the odds, the numbers, and at times also against stupidity and ignorance.

While I was sympathetic with his ideas, I never made them mine (due to just the dating problems), but I always had the highest respect for Rich’s pluck and mettle in the face of adversity, and for his professional, reasonable and courteous stance.

Now Rich has done something unheard of in the history of VM research: He has withdrawn his theories in the consequence of conflicting evidence — namely the VM dating, which would have required huge leaps of faith to stay in line with the NA hypothesis.

This has earned Rich even more respect in my eyes. So many people out there will, in the light of adverse evidence, modify their own theories and go to ever wilder lengths to keep them alive. Rich has simply done the right, honest, and straightforward thing. No whining, no bitching, no twisting of facts.

The downside is that he has announced that he probably will take a step back from VM research. (Holy cow, this is beginning to sound like an obituary. To the best of my knowledge, the man is still alive!) It would be sad if he did so, because it is my conviction that not only has he already contributed greatly to VM research in the past, but that he would also do so in the future. While I understand the disappointment and the frustration, I’d love to continue to see Rich on the web, coming up with new ideas for the VM, and bringing us all closer to our goal.

“You lost today, kid. But that doesn’t mean you have to like it.”

*) I hope I correctly summarize Rich’s theories here. Apologies if I don’t!

Okay, so 1st Half of the 15th Century it is…

… say these sources in English and German.

And the Winner is…

Austrian TV has just published a summary of the scientific analysis performed on the VM in the frame of its upcoming programme.

Unfortunately, the tone of this scoop is sensational and there is a dearth of actual information, aside of a compilation of the VM’s history from Wikipedia.

The only lines regarding the actual results of the dating tests are:

Alle bisherigen Theorien sind falsch. Denn das Buch ist viel älter als gedacht!

All theories developed hitherto are wrong. The book is much older than previously thought!

So, apparently there is no winner at all. Though “much older than previously thought” would place the VM in ancient Greece, considering that initially 13th-century Roger Bacon was considered to be involved.

I dare say the Austrian show will not be the final word on the VM. Especially not if it carries on in this tone.

Information kindly provided by Rich SantaColoma.

Outbacks of Sanity

Should I ever write a book not on the VM itself but one the research which is done on it (and the people doing it), I’ll call it In the Outbacks of Sanity.

I’m not sure: Either only people with a peculiar mindset are attracted to the VM, or the VM corrupts otherwise sane minds into something which “isn’t really mad, but definitely bipolar on weekends”.

Entropy Wonder

I wonder in how far the correct or wrong transcription system affects the observed entropy of the VM text, namely the observed “low information content”.

Obviously, there are two major ways in which the transcription can be wrong: Either ciphertext character strings are broken up or joined at the wrong position (Is qo really one letter or two? What about dain, daiin and daiiin?), or characters which are identical are treated as different, or vice versa. (C/e/cc/ch come to mind. How many different gallows are really there?)

What would the effect on entropy be? Perhaps I should look up the old statistics books and see what difference a larger/smaller word length and/or character set would make.

Elmar’s Lemmas for Voynich Research

Weak Lemma:

Your theory is most likely wrong, if you’re unable to discuss it with at least a trace of humour.

Strong Lemma:

Your theory is most likely wrong.

Don’t be the First to Read About…

… the results of the Voynich carbon dating. At least, you won’t be if you stick around here.

René Zandbergen has kindly provided the broadcast date of the long-awaited Voynich documentary (December 10th), which will contain the even-longer-awaited results of the carbon dating performed on the VM earlier this year.

Unfortunately, the broadcast is with austrian station ORF2, which my cable provider carries not (which sucketh like only a vacuum cleaner made by Microsoft could suck). Thus, this blog will only able to mirror the information, but can’t be the premier source.

Stick to Nick Pelling’s blog to get the details and be up-to-date!

Churchill, Stalin, and Edward Elgar

The following developed out of a discussion lead elsewhere with regards to a possible breaking of the Dorabella cipher. (I wonder if anybody ever followed the original point of the post, namely the link to Sarah Goslee’s site?)

I challenged the codebreaker’s method (applying a simple subsitution cipher and then “processing” the resulting intermediate text), and asked him to give me a random string of characters, and I would transform it — just for the kick, and to show the arbitrariness of it all — into a message from Churchill to Hitler using the same processing techniques he applied, namely the reversal of letter sequences, and the heavy use of slang (“Backslang” — Not being a native speaker, I replaced it with mock German).

Thereby I wanted to show that those techniques would always render something readable, no matter whether the previous substitution had been correct or not.

The message I had been given was a string of 87 characters which looked like this:

kinljtvlaqoefmeueetiiemrqrsod
vevtrlalneentsfveoetwdfmraarod
ndtwd’nmwxsdnetwfdmlisdtlsrl

First, I noticed that letters b, c, g, h, p, and z were missing, which altogether comprise about 14% of volume in english texts. The lack of “h” was most dearly felt, because it wouldn’t allow me to write “the”, “this”, or “thespian”, so I decided that “v” was actually “h”. (Since it is derived from a simple substitution, some guesswork is surely allowed?) I couldn’t really do a lot about the fact that the whole 28 characters of the last line contained only two vowels.

I then decided that Churchill would have written a mocking message to Hitler, and to do so he would use phonetical spelling and faux-German words. I also assumed that the “l” would have to stand in as an exclamation mark at times. Furthermore, character strings of the text may have been reversed, as in Dorabella.

Having done that, I arrived at the following (bottom lines in all caps):

kinljthlaqoefmeueetiiemrqrsod
KINJ!THLAQOFEMEUEETMEIIRQRSDO

hehtrlalneentsfheoetwdfmraarod
HTHERLALTNEENSFEHOTEWDFARMARDO

ndtwd’nmwxsdnetwfdmlisdtlsrl
NTDWD’NMWXSDENT….LISTDLSR!

This parses as follows:

• “KINJ!” — A mock address of Hitler as “King!” (deliberately misspelled, to put him in contrast with Churchill’s ‘real’ king)
• “TH” — “The”
• “LAQ” — Faux spelling of “lack”
• “OF”
• “E” — “your”
• “MEUEET” — Mock spelling of the German word “Mut” (“courage”)
• “MEII” — Faux “may”
• “RQRS” — A contraction of “requires” (with mock faulty grammar)
• “DOH” — “do”, with a pun on “duh”
• “THER” — “their”
• “LALTNEENS” — “latreens”
• “FE” — “Stalin” (The chemical sign for iron is “Fe”, and it is well known that Stalin translates as “man of steel”)
• “HOT”
• “EWD” — A contraction of “ewe’d” (“ewe” as in “female sheep”)
• “FARMAR” — mock spelling of “farmer”
• “DONT”
• “DWD” — “Dude”, a mock spelling together with the fact that “w” originated as “double-u”, ie DWD=”duud”. Perhaps “dud”.
• “NMWXS” — “Nijmegen’s”, in German “Nimwegens”. Speaking the consonants as a single string renders something like the german pronounciation
• “DENT”
• “WFDM” — I couldn’t transcribe. A very similar string (“wdfm”) appeared in the previous line, though in a different context.
• “LISTD” — “listed”, as in “recognized, being listed in a directory”
• “LSR!” — “loser!” Again, speaking the consonants as a string, renders the (english) pronunciation.

Which leads us to –

“‘King!’ The lack of your “mut” (courage) may requires: Do (duh!) their latreens! Stalin a hot-ewe’d farmer? Don’t, dude! Nimegen’s dent … Listed loser!”

Churchill seems to warn Hitler not to underestimate Stalin as a farmer with “ewes in heat” (a vulnerable farmer?). “Nimegen’s dent” probably refers to the failed operaton Market Garden, where the Allies lost large amounts of paratroopers in the area around Nimegen; “wfdm” might be an abbreviated vow of revenge. “Listed Loser” requires no further explanation.

Compare this to the supposed Dorabella solution —

B Hellcat ie a war using effin henshells! Why your antiquarian net diminuendo? Am sorry you theo o’ tis god then me so la deo da — aye

This took me about 90 minutes, plus time to write it up.

If that post title won’t attract readers, I don’t know what will.

Are You Tired of the Strokes yet?

You probably are.

Well, in this case, let me point you to a mostly overlooked gem in Voynich research, namely Sarah Goslee’s website. Not only is she a fellow SCAdian*) (Hail from Drachenwald!), but she has also put together a few nice statistical tests on the VM. As always, caveat emptor!, and honestly I haven’t figured out what “principal coordinates ordination on Euclidean distances of row-standardized frequencies” is supposed to be, but I’ve been in the game long enough to be suitably impressed by a procedure with a name of that length.

No, seriously, I’m still struggling to understand what exactly Sarah did and what the results mean, but this has all the appearance of a very interesting and competent piece of research which has up to now not received the mention it deserves, IMHO.

Hence, my usual piece of advice: Check it out, bros!

*) No, it’s not this.

“Booby Traps of the Mind”

If I should ever write a book about the Voynich manuscript, this is what I’m going to call it.