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The Voynich Manuscript May Have Been Decoded
MBCook sends word on a possible solution to the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript, which we last visited nearly 6 years ago. "The Voynich Manuscript has confounded attempts to decode it for nearly 100 years. A person named Edith Sherwood, who has previously suggested a possible link to DaVinci, has a new idea: perhaps the text is simply anagrams of Italian words. There are three pages of examples from the herb section of the book, showing the original text, the plaintext Italian words, and the English equivalents. Has someone cracked the code?"
I know nothing about this manuscript except what is written in this article, but if it's anagrams, a simple analysis of the letter frequency would have revealed that.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Hypothesis: The manuscript is anagrammatic Italian.
...
...
Corollary 1: The manuscript should contain appropriate letter frequencies for said language.
Corollary 2: The manuscript should contain all relevant letters.
Conclusion: Neither Corollary 1 nor 2 are true, thus hypothesis is rejected.
???
Add to the annals of the internet.
Then why does she only offer up a single page of plants as decoded anagrams? What about the other ~199 pages? What about the pages of block text?
She calls for help from people knowing medieval Italian. Apparently she used a reference book on the medieval Italian name of certain plants ot get these hints. She makes the interesting suggestion that this was written by a child, maybe mimicking scientists he knows be drawing "obvious" stuff, i.e. the plants in the garden and in the kitchen, and "hiding" his discoveries using a code used by scientists of the time.
You found that on Wikipedia? Call Yale University, you've decoded it. Citing Wikipedia for a fact while analyzing centuries old manuscripts? Why you bother to put PhD after you name bewilders me.
She referred to Wikipedia as an inspiration to explore an anagram-based lead. Not such a bad thing to do.
If you want my theory, we're dealing with an unknown autistic artist's work.
That was the theory that sounded the most plausible to me too, but these new leads and discoveries call for more investigation, I would say.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
It seems like you're being a bit harsh. She seems like an amateur doing amatuerish work that has found something suggestive. It's not like she tried to get it published in a journal or claims to be a some sort of professional. Sure she has a phD after her name but that doesn't mean she is trying to claim he phD applies to Voynich Manuscript. Maybe I'm being naive.