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+--- Thread: Voynich mnemonics (/thread-1435.html)
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Voynich mnemonics - Anton - 11-01-2017
I decided to open a thread about Voynich mnemonics in general. There is a number of threads discussing various manifestations thereof and individual interpretations as well. But seemingly there was no thread about the general paradigm underneath which frames it into a system (yet to be revealed).
First and foremost, mnemonics apparently reveal themselves in the botanical section of the VMS, which gives to some plants rather weird appearance.
Three major questions present themselves from scratch:
1) What is the purpose of mnemonics? Namely: if there is text there (no matter if plain text or ciphertext), everything can be expressed by means of text. So why bother with the additional layer of complexity and introduce graphical mnemonics?
2) What is the information conveyed by mnemonics? Is it plant names, plant usage or otherwise?
3) Is there any system in mnemonics, or it is all ad-hoc? Namely, is there any repetitively applied "logic" that produces graphical shapes from the information as per item 2) above?
Regarding items 2) and 3), I recently proposed a hypothesis in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread, which I will repost here:
Quote:I got a novel idea that can be named "heads and tails" paradigm. With this paradigm:
a) the look of the Voynich plants is explained by that the primary purpose is mnemonics;
b) the roots of the Voynich plants are used as mnemonics for one language/usage (say, Latin/"scientific") and the tops of the plants are used as mnemonics for another language/usage (say, German/"folklore")
For You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. this would be the (provisional) Lysimachia and Schirmkraut, respectively.
With this concept, there may be no plant names mentioned in the botanical folios at all (so my PPN idea would need to be discarded), because they would actually be not needed there anymore.
So, according to this paradigm, questions 2 and 3 receive the following answers:
- The information conveyed is plant names. The end result is that one is able recall the plant's name by looking at the image.
- There is the system as follows. There are two levels of mnemonics generally (although for some plants only one of them may be in place): one in tops of the plants, the other in the roots. The former deals with common "folk" names of plants, the latter deals with "scientific" Latin names, being linked to descriptions in previous textual sources (such as the Natural History by Pliny the Elder).
This is highly provisional yet, and, as of now, is more or less confirmed by one plant only (f5r).
After that, an idea came to me of a most simple yet elegant answer to question 1. It implies that the text is a cipher.
It is often noted that drawings in the botanical section were made prior to putting down the text. But what if all botanical section drawings were made before putting down all the text? In that case, with 100+ plants out there, the author would have liked some means of identification, in order to avoid confusion. Normally, one could just put down captions when creating figures. But with the intention to encrypt the text, the author could not proceed with plain text labels, because that would reveal information. So he turned to mnemonics - for his own use - to be able to identify plants later when returning to the work with the text.
Why not place encrypted labels at once? Well, it's basically the same question as why not encrypt the whole last line of f116v. Indeed, why not? But it's not wholly encrypted still.
RE: Voynich mnemonics - Davidsch - 11-01-2017
RE: Voynich mnemonics - Koen G - 11-01-2017
RE: Voynich mnemonics - Anton - 11-01-2017
RE: Voynich mnemonics - Davidsch - 12-01-2017
RE: Voynich mnemonics - Davidsch - 12-01-2017
RE: Voynich mnemonics - Anton - 12-01-2017
RE: Voynich mnemonics - Koen G - 12-01-2017
RE: Voynich mnemonics - Davidsch - 12-01-2017
RE: Voynich mnemonics - Anton - 12-01-2017