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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?"
So she has apparently decoded a manuscript written in a language she does not read (medieval Italian) does not know what a medieval herbal looks like, is not a botanist, a linguist or anything else that would be helpful to decoding a medieval manuscript of any kind .....
For her next trick she will disprove Einstein, and prove the world is flat .....
Goodness, gentlemen and ladies, I am astounded by the skepticism and nay-saying that is on this thread. Isn't anyone else actually inspired by what this person has done here? It sounds like the old American dream analogized into the field of science to me: despite the odds, the obstacles, the reputation of the problem for complexity, this person bravely took the problem on nonetheless and actually had a measure of success by coming up with a pretty damn good idea that nobody else did.
It reminds me of the Star Trek episode where the Enterprise encounters that world full of genetically engineered humans... each person specifically bred for a task, nobody allowed to stray away from their "destined" field of work. Yet, they are hundreds of years behind un-genetically-engineered Earth technology for the very reason of their prejudice and entitlement syndrome. They think they are better qualified to do the job, so they never allow anyone else to have a go; never allow anyone to surprise them, never allow stray sparks of genius to infect their genetically engineered perfection. And lo and behold, in comes Geordi LaForge with his VISOR, which contains the technology they needed to solve their technical problem and save the day. All that was needed, right there in the fake eyes for a blind man - a source of inspiration they'd never have expected.
Please don't buy into the idea that nobody else could or should "do" science except those with a PhD or 18 articles published. Science is for everyone. It is a method, not a club. The very day we start evaluating peoples' ideas SOLELY on the basis of the person's status, as opposed to the merit of the idea, is the day we should just go ahead and shoot ourselves, because we have become idiots.