The Voynich Manuscript

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I watched an intriguing video last night on my iPad's Curiosity Stream app - which I am sad to report is not available on Dish. It was about a strange manuscript called the Voynich Manuscript. I had seen other reports about it, but this one seemed more current and in-depth. Briefly Wikipedia tells us this:

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an otherwise unknown writing system, referred to as 'Voynichese'.^[18] The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and stylistic analysis indicates it may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance.^[1][2] The origins, authorship and purpose of the manuscript are debated. Various hypotheses have been suggested for the text, including: an otherwise unrecorded script for a natural language or constructed language; an unread code, cypher or other cryptography; or simply a meaningless hoax.

Last night's episode, entertaining as it was, added nothing of significance to that Wikipedia entry, except perhaps to report how throughly the manuscript has been studied. It concluded by saying, in essence, this is a fascinating document, but we have no idea what it means. That put me in mind of the Holmesian fallacy, attributed to Sherlock Holmes, but, of course, penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his famous detective:

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

It strikes me that this may well be the case with the Voynich manuscript, and the remaining improbable truth is that the manuscript has no meaning - at least not it the traditional "these characters translate to these letters, which make words that create sentences in this language that have this meaning." It strikes me as far more probable that the document is a fantasy construction, literally a fanciful construction of - given the cost of the various elements at the time of its construction - a wealthy member of the gentry who became enchanted with the way the various media could come together to create "something like" the idea of these new things called "codexes."

We tend to guess at the meanings in mysteries by looking at them through the eyes of our own experiences. My guesses about the Voynich manuscript are no exception. There was a time when I lived in Vienna, Austria. 1959- 1961. I attended school at The American International School.  I’m not sure how early the grades started. I, the youngest in our family, attended 5th and 6th grades. My brother, the eldest, graduated from high school, so perhaps 1st through high school?  Classes were held in English, and there were students and faculty from perhaps a dozen countries. The families were drawn from mostly the diplomatic corp or the military.

It was here that I invented my "fantasy script." I’m not sure why I invented it. Perhaps to make me appear somehow unique in this very varied cluster of kids, some of whom wrote in languages using symbols that were, well, Greek to me.   I say “script” as opposed to alphabet or language because the my symbols were completely random, although I would construct them on a page as though I were taking notes. I used no consciously English symbols and any resemblance to other scripts was purely accidental. Now when I encounter other fictional linguistic constructions, Elvish, Klingon, etc., I am reminded of my youthful gibberish. Yet I realize that those literary “languages” had/have real, complex structure and meaning. Mine did not, I simply liked the way it looked and the feel of writing it. The symbols seemed to glide over the pages. It was really fun. As both my sister and I are "mid-moves" I am relatively certain that no examples of my secret language exist in boxes in attics anywhere. I sort of see it in my "minds-eye," but that is far from 20-20.

So my curiosity remains. Perhaps the very serious and erudite scholars, linguists, code breakers and technologists seeking to reveal the meaning hidden in the mysterious Voynich manuscript have eliminated the impossible, and the improbable truth that remains is that there is no conscious meaning, no "real message" there.

Now, just why someone would go to the time, effort, and expense to create such an elaborate artifact does raise interesting questions - but the answers to those questions may be more amenable to examination by art scholars, philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists.

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