Video-Fix: the Voynich Manuscript and other mysterious books

1758

Why would someone write a book which cannot be read?
There are multiple reasons behind such a choice, like for instance the interpretation of the book as an artistic medium, intended for conveying aesthetic pleasure by means of asemic writing. This is the case of the Codex Seraphinianus, where the Italian artist Luigi Serafini combined puzzling and fascinating drawings with long paragraphs written with glyphs of his own invention. He has been very plain about it: those oracular texts that look like descriptions mean absolutely nothing.
Nonetheless, it is legit to consider that such an use of the object-book could be meaningful and affordable only in current times.
In the past centuries, when paper and ink costed just too much, using them from purposes different from the conveyance of actual information should be considered absolutely crazy, or at the limit an extrovert action of a very rich personality with a huge sense of humour and a poor sense of measure.

Thanks to this video you will make acquaintance of the most bizarre books in the world, most of them written in a secret language which has not been decoded yet. Indubitably, the most famous among them is the Voynich Manuscript. Discovered at the beginning of the past century by the Polish antiquarian book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, this enigmatic treatise contains many pictures regarding mainly botany and astronomy.
A deeper analysis with radiocarbon dating has shown that the book is to be dated between the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century.
Many hypothesis regarding its author attribution and its content have been done until now. Only in the last century a countless cohort of philologists, linguists, cryptologists and computer scientists have ventured into the translation of the most mysterious existing book, without success.
Recent attempts made by means of Machine Learning proceedings seem also to have failed to achieve the goal. What do you think? Is the voynichese an existing natural language, or a language which does not exist anymore?
Is it a language at all, or it is just a joke, a fake book written in this way for peculiar reasons? Tell us your opinion in the comments below!

Here you can find another introduction video about the Voynich Manuscript. But if you really want to know more about it, this is the absolute online bible you should consult in order to demystify the huge amount of fake news that periodically appear on the web regarding its decryption.

References

The Mysterious Book NO ONE Can Read: Ancient Voynich Manuscript, Youtube, Accessed date: 16/08/2019

The Voynich Manuscript, Accessed date: 16/08/2019


Written by Cosimo Palma

I studied philosophy, historical philosophy, philosophical history and history in the redundant Naples, computational linguistics and informatics in the city of Marx.
Language enthusiast and chess player in the free time, until the end of August I will spend my busy time in the Tower A of the European Parliament in Luxembourg, trying to do my best in the communication as well as in the operational department of the Terminology unit.