2,000 Greater & Lesser Mysteries/2,000 Greater and Lesser Mysteries.iso/voynich/mys02411.txt

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Date: Mon, 30 Dec 91 09:09:54 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jacques Guy)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Currier: Some Important New Statistical Findings

          Some Important New Statistical Findings

                             by

                Captain Prescott H. Currier

             (from the Proceedings of a Seminar
                 held on 30th November 1976
                    in Washington D.C.,
           edited by  Mary D'Imperio, moderator)

I will start out by saying that I don't have any
"solution." I have a succession of what I consider to be
rather important facts which I would like to review briefly.
The two most important findings which I think I have made
are the identification of more than one hand and the
identification of more than one "language." The reason they
are important is that, if the manuscript were to be
considered a hoax as it is by some, it's much more difficult
to explain this if you consider that there was more than one
individual involved, and that there is more than one
"language" involved. These findings also make it seem much
less likely that the manuscript itself is meaningless.

TWO HANDS AND TWO "LANGUAGES" IN THE HERBAL SECTION.

When I first looked at the manuscript, I was principally
considering the initial (roughly) fifty folios,
constituting the herbal section. The first twenty-five
folios in the herbal section are obviously in one hand and
one "language", which I called "A." (It could have been
called anything at all; it was just the first one I came
to.) The second twenty-five or so folios are in two hands,
very obviously the work of at least two different men. In
addition to this fact, the text of this second portion of
the herbal section (that is, the next twenty-five of thirty
folios) is in two "languages," and each "language" is in its
own hand. This means that, there being two authors of the
second part of the herbal section, each one wrote in his own
"language." Now, I'm stretching a point a bit, I'm aware;
my use of the word language is convenient, but it does not
have the same connotations as it would have in normal use.
Still, it is a convenient word, and I see no reason not to
continue using it.

"LANGUAGES" A AND B STATISTICALLY DISTINCT.

Now with this information available, I went through the
rest of the manuscript -- some two hundred and ten pages --
and in four other places I discovered the same phenomena I
had associated with "language" B. Before I go on, the
characteristics of "languages" A and B are obviously
statistical. (I can't show you what they are here, as I
don't have slides prepared. We can go into this matter in
much greater detail in the discussions this afternoon.)
Suffice it to say, the differences are obvious and
statistically significant. There are two different series of
agglomerations of symbols or letters, so that there are in
fact two statistically distinguishable "languages."

HANDS AND "LANGUAGES" ELSEWHERE IN THE MANUSCRIPT.

Now to go briefly through the manuscript: in the
astrological section, there seemed to be no real differences
that I could detect. The biological section [i.e. those
folios featuring female figures. -- Ed.] is all in one
"language" (B) and one hand. The next section in which I
noted a difference was the pharmaceutical section. Right in
the middle of it, with ten folios on one side and ten on the
other, there are six pages (two folios, folded so that there
are three pages on each) which show a very obvious
difference in hand: cramped, slanted, having quite a
different character, very obvious even to the untrained eye.
The frequency counts on this material bore out pretty much
the same sort of findings that I had gotten in the herbal
section. So we now have, in the pharmaceutical section, two
"languages" and two hands. The recipe section at the end of
the manuscript is somewhat of a mixture and didn't show the
differences so neatly. It contains only one folio on which
the writing differs noticeably to the eye from that on the
other folios; the statistical evidence gives some support to
a "language" difference as well.

HOW MANY SCRIBES WERE THERE ALTOGETHER?

Summarizing, we have, in the herbal section, two
"languages" which I call "Herbal A and B," and in the
pharmaceutical section, two large samples, one in one
"language" and one in the other, but in new and different
hands. Now the fact of different "languages" and different
hands should encourage us to go on and try to discover
whether there were in fact *only* two different hands, or
whether there may have been more. A close examination of
many sections of the manuscript revealed to me that there
were not only two different hands; there were, in fact, only
two "languages," but perhaps as many as eight or a dozen
different identifiable *hands*. Some of these distinctions
may be illusory, but in the majority of cases I feel that
they are valid. Particularly in the pharmaceutical section,
where the first ten folios are in a hand different from the
middle six pages, I cannot say with any degree of confidence
that the last ten pages are in fact in the same hand as the
first ten.

Taken all together, it looks to me as if there were an
absolute minimum of four different hands in the
pharmaceutical section. I don't know whether they are
different than those two which I previously mentioned as
being in the herbal section, but they are certainly
different from each other. So there are either *four* or
*six* hands altogether at this point. The final section of
the manuscript contains only one folio which is obviously
in a different hand than all the rest, and a count of the
material in that one folio supports this; it *is* different,
markedly different. I'm also positive it's different from
anything I had seen before. So now we have a total of
something like five or six to seven or eight different
identifiable hands in the manuscript. This gives us a total
of two "languages" and six to eight scribes (copyists,
encipherers, call them what you will).

A NEW SLANT ON THE PROBLEM.

These findings put an entirely different complexion on this
problem than any that I think I have noted before in any
other discussions or solutions. It's curious to me that a
calligraphic or paleographic expert in one of the writings I
have seen ["Some Impressions of the Voynich Manuscript,"
unpublished notes by Prof. A.H. Carter (Former technical
historian, Army Security Agency), 1946, p.1 -- Ed.] says
that the writing is consistent throughout, and is obviously
the work of one man. Well, it obviously *isn't*, and I don't
see how anyone who had any training could make any such
statement, but there it is!

THE LINE IS A FUNCTIONAL ENTITY.

In addition to my findings about "languages" and hands,
there are two other points that I'd like to touch on very
briefly. Neither of these has, I think, been discussed by
anyone else before. The first point is that the line is a
functional entity in the manuscript on all those pages
where the text is presented linearly. There are three things
about the lines that make me believe the line itself is a
functional unit. The frequency counts of the beginnings and
endings of lines are markedly different from the counts of
the same characters internally. There are, for instance,
some characters that may not occur initially in a line.
There are others whose occurrence as the initial syllable of
the first "word" of a line is about one hundredth of the
expected. This by the way, is based on large samples (the
biggest sample is 15,000 "words"), so that I consider the
sample to be big enough so that these statistics are
significant.

The ends of the lines contain what seems to be, in many
cases, meaningless symbols: little groups of letters which
don't occur anywhere else, and just look as if they were
added to fill out the line to the margin. There is, for
instance, one symbol that, while it does occur elsewhere,
occurs at the end of the last "words" of lines 85% of the
time. One more fact: I have three computer runs of the
herbal material and of the biological material. In all of
that, which is almost 25,000 "words," there is *not one
single case* of a repeat going over the end of a line to the
beginning of the next; not one. This is a large sample, too.
These three findings have convinced me that the line is a
functional entity, (what its function is, I don't know), and
that the occurrence of certain symbols is governed by the
position of a "word" in a line. For instance, there is a
particular symbol which almost never occurs as the first
letter of a "word" in a line except when it is followed by
the letter that looks like "o."

EFFECT OF "WORD"-FINAL SYMBOLS ON THE INITIAL SYMBOL OF THE
FOLLOWING "WORD"

The final point I will make concerns restrictions I
noticed, especially in the Biological section, on symbols
that can end one "word" and symbols that begin the next
"word." This occurs in other sections of the manuscript,
especially in "language" B, but not as definitely as in
"Biological B." [see appendix for details]

THESE FINDINGS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED BY ANYONE WHO STUDIES
THE MANUSCRIPT.

These findings are definite enough, I think, to warrant
much further study by anyone who is going to be involved in
seriously attacking the text of the Voynich manuscript. I
have no interpretations of them, by the way; I have no
solutions. All I know is that they are significant -- and
*damn* significant. Anyone who attempts to work on the text
without considering these, ignores them at his own peril.
They are *there*, and they are very definite. No matter
which one of the forms which Mary [D'Imperio] originally
mentioned [earlier on during the seminar] the material is
considered to be, all of these other facts must be taken
into consideration before anyone continues. The validity of
text produced by any method at all must, I think, be judged
against this statistical background,

That, I think, is all that I am prepared to say now, but
this afternoon any of you who do come can review the points
and ask me any questions you choose. I have a fairly large
collection of statistical charts which will bear out most of
the points that I have made. These have been reproduced, and
with them my very brief notes on the four points I have
made this morning. Some of you now have copies of them. I
think that the discussions this afternoon can be, indeed,
quite fruitful if those of you who do have copies of my
material would undertake to go through it and make up in
your own minds any questions or discussions that you'd like
to go into this afternoon. Thanks very much.


(Afternoon session)

        Further Details of New Statistical Findings.

1. THE NATURE OF THE SYMBOLS.

I've looked at most of these letters under a magnifying
glass, so I think I know how they were all actually made.
These letters: <o>, <8>, <9>, <z>, all seem to start with a
"c"-curve, which was made first, in this direction
[counter-clockwise], so we have: <o> = [<c> written first,
counter-clockwise, next its mirror-image, clockwise], <8> =
[<c> first, then horizontal line starting from its top,
going right, looping up and counter-clockwise, continued
with a down flourish ending below the line, to the left],
<9> = [first <c>, then flourish at top of c, going down,
ending below the line], <z> = [first <c>, then flourish at
top of c, going up and counter-clockwise]. The forms all
have counterparts starting with <i>: <ig>, <x>, <2>, etc. We
also have <a> = <c>+<i>. All the letters containing an
initial "c"-curve are also the only letters that can be
preceded in the same word by the little letter that looks
like "c," e.g. <c89>, <ccc89>. On the other hand, the
letters <x> and <2> (which have very high frequencies) can
*never* be preceded by <c>, *ever*; they are instead
preceded by <a>.

The final letters (that is, the ones I call finals, although
they can also occur elsewhere) are in two series, one
preceded by <a> and the other by <o>, giving a series of
sixteen:

       < v    iv    iiv     iiiv   >
       < x   (ix)  (iix)   (iiix)  >
       < 2    i2   (ii2)   (iii2)  >
       < ig   iig  (iiig)  (iiiig) >

The ones in parentheses are very low-frequency; the others
all occur with respectable frequency. In addition, these
combinations of symbols which appear as finals may occur
separately -- "unattached finals", as I call them. A large
number of unattached finals is a characteristic of
"Language" B, and *not* "Language" A, by the way.

All this indicates to me that considerable thought was put
into how this mess was made up. We have the fact that you
can make up almost any of the other letters out of these two
symbols <i> and <c>; it doesn't *mean* anything, but it's
interesting.

2. ORIGIN OF THE SYMBOLS.

This symbol <9> is a common Lating abbreviation for CON,
CUM, or -US, so that it can come at both the beginnings and
ends of words. For example, "continuus" might be written
"9tinu9." Now <9> is one of the few symbols in the
manuscript that does in fact occur at beginnings and endings
of frequent words, especially in combination with the <qp>,
<lp> series. It looks as if whoever designed the alphabet
used <9> because this symbol resembled the one used
throughout medieval Latin for CON, -US, a frequent initial
and final. I think that's the source of that particular
letter.

As for <8>, it is a frequent letter in Etruscan, in Lydian,
and in the Lemnos alphabet, but there that letter always had
the value "F", never "S." In medieval Latin on occasion it
did represent "S." This symbol could have been taken from
these other alphabets.

You can pick out resemblances between Latin abbreviations
and other alphabets for most symbols except for the series
<qp>, <lp>, <q;>, <l;>. The symbol <lp> looks very much
like a medieval Latin abbreviation for "tinus." The last two
look as if they are simply variations of the first two, with
the second vertical stroke pushed back. They (<q;>, <l;>)
appear 90-95% of the time in the first lines of paragraphs,
in some 400 occurrences in one section of the manuscript.

One might conclude that <q;>, <l;> are an elaborate form of
<qp>, <lp>, with the same value. This is often the case in
medieval manuscripts, especially in illuminated ones;
certain letters have magnified, aberrant, beautified forms.
But, not true! These two letters <q;>, <l;> are *not* the
same as those two <qp>, <lp>, as the statistics show. The
letters <qp>, <lp> are followed anywhere in a "word" by our
little friend <c> about half the time (say 750 out of a
total of 1500), including initially. These two, <q;>, <l;>,
are *never*, *ever*, *anywhere* in the manuscript, followed
by <c>. These latter symbols are much less frequent than
the first two, but their occurrence followed by <c> is
*zero*. I don't have to calculate sigmages on that!
Therefore, <q;>, <l;> are *not* aberrant or variant forms of
<qp>, <lp>, but separate letters in their own right. This
holds true through the whole manuscript. That is one of the
peculiar things about the manuscript: we have two
"languages" -- they are definite, not doubt about it at all
-- but there are features like this that follow through from
one "language" to another. That's just an item of incidental
intelligence; there it is, for what it's worth.


Question (D'Imperio): I wonder about the cases where the two
loops of <qp> and <q;> are separated from each other, and
one end comes down in the middle of another word, often on
top of that little letter like a table, <ct>?

Currier: That may be a way of abbreviating two of those
looped letters. It doesn't happen frequently enough to
bother me. (Example: <cqto9.cpt89>)

3. DIFFERENT FREQUENCIES OF SYMBOLS AT BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES,
AND ENDS OF LINES.

At beginnings and ends of lines, we have skewed frequencies.
For example, let's take these two letters <ct> and <c't>.
(This letter <ct>, by the way, is in fact made like this:
<c> <-t>) Here are statistics from "Herbal A" material,
about 6500 words, 1000 lines, averaging seven words per
line:


"word"-initial  total frequency    expected in   actual, in
  symbols       as "word"-initial    any "word"  first "word"

  <ctqp>            118               20           3
  <ctoqp>           212               38          26
  <c'tqp>            24               4, 5         0
  <c'toqp>           45               10          10

If its occurrences as an initial were random, we would
expect it to occur one seventh of the time in each word
position of a line. Actually, it is a very frequent word
initial at the beginning of a line, except when there is an
intercalated o. This applies only to "Language" A, by the
way; words with this initial group are low in "Language" B
(<ctoqp>, for example, occurs only 5 times in Herbal B, but
212 times in Herbal A).

4. THE NATURE OF THE SYMBOLS <cqpt>, <clpt>, <cq;t>, <cl;t>

My next point concerns the so-called "ligatures" based,
apparently, on the series <qp>, <lp>, <q;>, <l;>. They are
made like this, by the way: <c><-t>, with <qp>, etc.,
written on top of it. In Herbal A material, in fact in all A
material, this series is initially high; in B, it is very
low -- another way of identifying the two "languages." In
Herbal A, the word-initial occurrences are as follows:

          all "word"    first "word"
symbol     initials       of line

<cqpt>       326            3
<cq;t>        67            1
<clpt>        82            0
<cl;t>        14            0

These "ligatures" seem to behave almost, but not quite, like
<ct>, <c't>. In contrast, whether or not followed by <9>,
<o>, <a>, or <ct>, the series <ap>, <lp>, <q;>, <l;> are
*very* high in both "languages," and frequently as paragraph
and line initials. The "ligatures" can *never* occur as
paragraph initial, almost never line initial.

Therefore, <cqpt>, <clpt>, and the like are symbols in their
own right, and are *not* equal to <qpct> or <ctqp>, etc.
These statistical considerations are the reason why I made
up my alphabet the way I did; I restricted it as much as
possible to letters in their own right, not ligatures.

5. EFFECTS OF THE ENDINGS OF ONE "WORD" ON THE BEGINNING OF
THE NEXT "WORD".

You remember I mentioned that some "word"-finals have an
obvious and statistically-significant effect on the initial
symbol of a following "word." This is almost exclusively to
be found in "Language" B, and especially in "Biological B"
material. For example, we have:

"words" ending in:      Next "word" begins with:

                       <4o>      <x>       <ct>
                               or <2>     or <c't>

 <x> series             13        7         91
 <2> series             10        2         68
 <v> series             23        0        275
 <9> series            592      184        168

"Words" ending in the <9> sort of symbol, which is very
frequent, are followed about four times as often by "words"
beginning with <4o>. That is a fact, and it holds true
throughout the entire twenty pages of "Biological B." It's
something that has to be considered by anyone who does any
work on the manuscript. These phenomena are *consistent*,
*statistically significant*, and hold true throughout those
areas of text where they are found. I can think of no
linguistic explanation for this sort of phenomenon, not if
we are dealing with words or phrases, or the syntax of a
language where suffixes are present. In no language I know
of does the suffix of a word have anything to do with the
beginning of the next word.

(At this point, Captain Currier's presentation was
concluded, and questions were raised by listeners. The
lengthy and interesting discussion that followed,
transcribed in its entirety from our tape record, comprises
the next section of these notes. -- Ed.)

QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION

Question (Speaker not identified): How do you account for
the full-word repeats?

Currier: That's just the point -- they're *not words*!

Child: I don't think you can say that doesn't happen. Now,
it may not happen with the languages in a more or less
consistent, normative writing system. But it does when a
scribe is noting rapid speech, with all its slurs and
elisions, rather than the facts of grammar. The sounds at
the end of one word can influence those at the beginning of
the next.

Currier: Not this much.

D'Imperio: Could I suggest that it may be related to the
constraints on groups in a system like a code or synthetic
language, when words from certain pages or parts of the code
combine preferentially with words from certain other parts
of the code?

Currier: Precisely, precisely; yes, right.

Valaki: What about sounds at the beginning of one word being
changed by neighboring sounds, at the end of the previous
word? This happens in some languages (examples from Greek
which are not audible on the tape. --Ed.)

Currier: I don't think it would happen to this extent... Has
anyone seen my computer run on "Biological B?"

D'Imperio: I haven't seen that -- I'd certainly like to get
a copy!

Currier: "Biological B" is by far the most interesting;
*very constrained*, very interesting from a statistical
point of view. (Some examples, not clear on tape --Ed.) I
have a whole notebook of statistical charts at home: things
I want to look into, and took various samples of limited
areas of text. But I think anyone who's really interested
ought to do their own. These are the best kind of evidence
for valid conclusions. If you want to make an assumption of
a value for some particular symbol, with an index you can
try it out and see what happens. Certain things will also
arise from taking these statistics which will provide
evidence for a new theory. If you view all these statistics
as basic background evidence on which to base theories, you
can come up with a hypothesis which can be tested, rather
than *starting* with a hypothesis and then looking for
evidence to back it up. This statistical background is the
sort of evidence anyone who is going to work on this
document should be aware of. It gives you something against
which you can compare the material and test your hypotheses.

Question (Speaker unidentified): Have there been any studies
on the lengths of words?

Currier: Not specifically. I've got it all at home... but it
hasn't suggested anything to me.

D'Imperio: I made a partial study of word lengths on a small
scale (15,000 characters); few words were longer than seven
or eight symbols or shorter than two.

Currier: But there *are* a lot that are exactly two long.
(Examples from "Herbal A" and "Herbal B," not audible on
tape --Ed.) Certain groups -- a different one in A than in B
material -- are repeated four times in a row; they would
*have* to be numbers, I can't think of anything else. If the
one were "zero" in "Herbal A," the other might be "zero" in
"Herbal B," and this would be what you'd look up in your
artificial language system. I don't believe that, by the
way.
  This statistical data of mine is available -- my notes and
observations. I've come to no real conclusions, except that
this can't be, as far as I can see, a straightforward simple
encipherment of any linguistic data; there has to be an
intermediate step somewhere as far as I can see.

Question (Speaker unidentified): You said that each line was
a separate sentence unto itself...

Currier: An annoying little circumstance: words beginning
with <ct> almost never seem to occur first in a line. I
thought perhaps I might try numerals one to ten for the
letters that come before <ct> in line-initial position, but
I can't make it work. But this kind of thing makes it look
as if the line is a functional entity; that is what bothers
me. I can't interpret the data!

Question (Speaker unidentified): Is that true all the way
through the manuscript?

Currier: Yes, it is basically true, but especially in
"Biological B."

D'Imperio: There seem to be very strong constraints in
combinations of symbols; only a very limited number of
letters occur with each other letter in certain positions of
a "word."

Currier: Yes... (Examples, not clear on tape. --Ed.) By the
way, if anyone does transcribe any more text, I wish they
would use my alphabet; then we can put all the data and
results together.

D'Imperio: I have a copy of Captain Currier's alphabet and
sorting sequence.

Currier: You don't need to bother about the sorting
sequence. I had a particular reason for it back when I did
the earlier work but you don't need it now. I'd like to see
someone do more with the problem, in the "Recipe" section
for example. You should be careful when you transcribe,
though; you have to make some judgements of what a letter
is, and it takes practice to get the hang of it.

Miller: I'd like to bring up something related to Mary's
introduction this morning, where she associated my name with
the theory that the manuscript was meaningless. I would
object to the phrase "meaningless doodles," because I think
this is *purposeful but inarticulate* writing; doodles are
simply to pass the time away...

D'Imperio: But the point I was emphasizing was that this
theory considered the manuscript meaningless within our
context of *trying to decipher it*...

Miller: The meaning is irrecoverable. If there is such a
school of thought, [of people who believe that the meaning
of the manuscript is inherently and essentially
irrecoverable --Ed.], who else is in it besides me?

D'Imperio: There are some people who come pretty close: Dr.
MacClintock, for example, thinks it's almost entirely
irrecoverable, I believe...

Miller: Has this been argued on the basis of a careful
analysis of the text, or merely because it isn't readable? I
don't think the thing is a hoax. But no details have been
given of the theories (that the meaning is irrecoverable)
and I would like to read more about it.

D'Imperio: I think it's primarily exasperation on the part
of people that have been frustrated time and again in
attempting to decipher it, and they just end up saying "Oh,
fooey! How can the thing mean anything, with all these weird
repeats and such...?"

Miller: But with all these statistics that Captain Currier,
Brigadier Tiltman, and Mr. Friedman have given -- hasn't
anyone...

D'Imperio: The trouble is, how *can you prove* that
something is meaningless, or that its meaning is
irrecoverable? That is just what is left after you've
disproven all the specific positive decipherment theories
you or anyone else has thought of so far. But another good
one might still always come along. (Editorial comment: If we
were to prove scientifically that a text's meaning is
irrecoverable, we would require either (1) a theory that
provided for certain observable criteria or characteristics
that strings having recoverable meanings must have, and a
proof that this particular text *does not* exhibit those
criteria; or (2) a theory providing for certain observable
criteria which strings having irrecoverable meanings must
have, and a proof that this particular string before us
*does* exhibit those criteria. This would constitute a sort
of "uncomputability" or "undecidability" theory for the
*semantics* of textual strings. Is this possible? At our
present state of knowledge, I sincerely doubt it. Still, it
raises some highly interesting philosophical questions that
deserve further attention from someone qualified to explore
them. There are, of course, tests for "psychological random"
characteristics of various sorts, which would provide some
strong support for a hypothesis that the text had been
*fabricated*, independently of any semantic or linguistic
structure having a recoverable meaning; these tests and
hypotheses ought certainly to be applied to the Voynich
text.)

Valaki: Some time ago I saw a screen for sale at a
furniture store. It was a four-panel screen; on one panel
there was writing in Greek, which I read and found to be one
of Aesop's fables. When I tried to read the second panel, I
couldn't make any sense out of it -- nothing went with
anything else. I finally realized that they were just
individual Greek words copied off at random. The third panel
was just Greek letters, and the fourth panel was imitation
Greek letters!

D'Imperio: I wish you had bought it -- what a beautiful test
case! We could have made some frequency counts on it and...

Valaki: Maybe that's like the Voynich -- it could turn out
to be a good straight copying job.

D'Imperio: But still, back to Doris' point, how can we
demonstrate that? You see, the way you realized that about
the screen -- the fact that the other panels were
meaningless -- was because you knew Greek and you read the
fable on the first panel. Then, when you looked at the
others, you saw the degradation...

Valaki: I really thought my Greek had gone! Nothing was
matching anything else; words didn't go together. I sort of
went backwards to attack it.

D'Imperio: Well, with the Voynich, we are in the position of
having something we can't read any part of, to any degree,
and that doesn't look like anything we've ever seen before.
How cna we show, demonstrate, that it is meaningless?

Miller: You don't have to demonstrate...

Currier: Nobody has tried, not that I know of.

D'Imperio: No, not that I've ever seen.

Currier: Evidence that it can't be "doodles" is the minimum
of six people involved in their production. I can prove four
beyond a shadow of a doubt. I'm not a paleographer; I
wouldn't stand up in court and try to defend myself against
a paleographer. But I'm positive, particularly in the Herbal
Section. I imagine it to have happened something like this:
some sixty-five folios were prepared ahead of time with
drawings on them. They were placed on a a table *so*. The
first twenty-five folios were taken, one a t a time, off the
top and filled in with writing by one individual. At the end
of those twenty-five, he got very tired and he called for
help. Another man sat down opposite him at the same table.
And they took them off, one at a time: one man took one off
and did his thing, in his own "language," while the other
man did *his* thing with another in *his* "language." And
they went through the second stack and interleaved them; one
man did it one way and the other did it the other way. When
they were done, they had the Herbal Section!

Question (Speaker unidentified): Are you convinced that the
page numbering is correct?

Currier: Yes. I am sure the page numbering is that of the
original...

Question (Speaker unidentified): What about the fact that
there were no erasure? That makes it look like a copying
job.

Currier: It must be a copying job. But how do two people
copying from a single source produce material in two
different "languages" simultaneously? I can just see them
sitting there! I'm absolutely positive this is the way it
was done. The folios were prepared in advance by someone
else with the drawings on them. Sometimes the writing
overlaps the drawings somewhat. The pictures of the Herbal
Section look as if they were drawn by a single individual,
but this I couldn't prove. The writing on folios 1 to 25 was
done by one man. On folios 25 to 65, it was done by two men,
one who worked a little faster (the man who did the first
batch did more of the second batch; he was more
experienced).

Buck: It was noted that some pages are missing, and the
cover is missing. Do you have any ideas about the reason?

Currier: No, I have no theories.

Miller: Somebody stripped off the beautiful pictures!

Currier: Then he left a lot of beautiful pictures behind!

D'Imperio: One of the missing folios was for the zodiac
signs of Capricorn and Aquarius; maybe that was somebody's
horoscope?

Question (Speaker unidentified): When a new hand taked over,
do you see variations in the mode of writing the symbols?

Currier: Yes, but it's the overall impression of the
writing. In general, for example, in "Herbal A," the writing
is upright, rounded, lines are well-spaced, it looks clean,
clear, with no extraneous material. "Herbal B," in contrast,
is uphill, slanted cramped writing. It's obvious to me. The
first thing I noted looking at the manuscript as a whole was
this difference in the writing in the Herbal Section, before
I had taken a single count. I separated the pages by sight
first, then took a ten-page sample in each of the two
separate writings, and made separate counts. It stared me in
the face -- there it was: all my selections were correct. It
was a sufficiently controlled procedure to make me think
these conclusions are valid. Anyone can see it -- just lay
the pages and look. I can't prove the pages are in the right
order, but I just *feel* that they are. In the Astrological
Section, the signs of the zodiac are in the right order.

D'Imperio: There is some evidence in the folio gathering --
the numbers in the bottom corners of some pages, about every
eight folios. They agree well with the folio numbering at
the beginning of the manuscript, at least. They also show
some relatively early forms of the numerals. This gives us a
bit more evidence that some of the pages at least are in the
right order.

Buck: I would like to speculate about where the missing
pages are...

D'Imperio: Maybe they'll show up some day, among somebody's
papers!


                         APPENDIX A

                   The VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT
                Some Notes and Observations

                     Capt. P.H. Currier
                                              October 1976

1. THE MATTER OF 'HANDS'

It was noted early in the study of the Herbal Section (pp
1-112) that the handwriting characteristics of several pairs
of adjacent folios varied perceptible, even to an untrained
eye. A few elementary frequency counts showed that the
statistical profiles of the textual material on these folios
also differed significantly. Further investigation of all
the folios in the section revealed that there were two
different 'hands' in use throughout the entire section, each
writing in its own 'language,' hereinafter called Languages
A and B.

With this evidence at hand a check of the remaining sections
of the Manuscript turned up the following:

(a) In the Astrological Section (pp 113-146) there seemed to
be no significant difference in the writing on any of the
folios except that there appeared to be a 'foreign' element
evident in the inclusion of a few symbols which occur
nowhere else in the Manuscript. The 'language' throughout is
mostly A but without some of the more pronounced 'A'
features found in Herbal A.

(b) The Biological Section (pp 147-166) appears to be the
work of a single scribe, all in language B, with strong,
sharply delineated statistical characteristics.  The language
of this section is more restricted, perhaps even more
'regular' than the language 'B' in other sections of the
Manuscript. This could conceivably be the result of this
section being the product of only one person.

(c) In the Pharmaceutical Section (pp 167-211), pp 167-173
and two folios (pp 193-198) in the mid-portion of the
section are in Language 'B'; the remaining folios are in
Language 'A.' An interesting point here is the fact that
there seemed to be more than the expected two 'hands,' one
for each 'language' as in the Herbal Section. The difference
between the 'B' writing of the mid-portion (pp 193-198) and
the 'A' writing of the surrounding folios (pp 179-192; pp
199-211) is obvious and easily discernible and was noted on
the first quick pass through the Manuscript. But it is not
at all clear that the initial Language 'B'-folios (pp
167-173) are in the same hand as pp 193-198 nor can it be
said with certainty that the Language 'A'-folios (pp 179-192
and pp 199-211) are all the work of a single individual.
Additionally, p 174 is in Language 'A' and in a hand
different from any other in the Pharmaceutical Section.

The Newbold foliation indicates that the Biological Section
extends through ff 85-86 and it would appear from the
illustrations that the Pharmaceutical Section does not begin
until f 87. However, frequency counts before and after the
break at f 84/f 85 indicate a change from Biological
material to something else. For example, the final <o89>,
which does not occur in the Biological B text, shows up in
ff 85-86 with quite a respectable frequency and matches the
frequency of this final in the Pharmaceutical 'B' text on ff
94-95. I am reasonably certain that the handwriting on ff
85-86 is not the same as that on ff 95-96 but I cannot be
sure that it differs from the Biological B hand. In sum, I
would venture a guess that there are at least three and
perhaps as many as five or six different hands in evidence
in this section. On the other 'hand' it may all be an
illusion.

(d) The Recipe Section (pp 212-234) contains only one folio
on which the writing differs noticeably from that on the
other folios. This difference is supported to a degree by
statistical evidence. The 'language' throughout the Section
is 'modified B' (i.e. contains certain 'A' characteristics).
It might be worth noting, however, that there seem to be
some less discernible handwriting variations on many other
folios in the Recipe Section. I cannot be sure that these
are valid differences but the frequency counts of the
material on the folios in question are just slightly
supportive.

2. THE MATTER OF 'LANGUAGE'

I should be noted before going on that the word 'language'
is quite loosely used here and throughout these notes. It
connotes only a marked statistical difference between two
sets of text. It in no way implies the existence of any
underlying language. Being convenient, however, it will
continue to be used.

As previously stated in paragraph 1 above, the Herbal
Section contains both Langauge 'A' and 'B.' The principal
differences between the two 'languages' in this Section
are:

(a) Final <89> is very high in Language 'B'; almost
non-existent in Language 'A.'

(b) The symbol groups <ctox> and <cto2> are very high in 'A'
and occur repeated; low in 'B'.

(c) The symbol groups <ctaiv> and <ctaiiv> rarely occur in
'B'; medium frequency in 'A.'

(d) Initial <ctoqp> high in 'A'; rare in 'B.'

(e) Initial <cqpt> very high in 'A'; very low in 'B.'

(f) 'Unattached' finals scattered throughout Language 'B'
texts in considerable profusion; generally *much* less
noticeable in Language 'A.'

These features are to be found generally in the other
Sections of the manuscript although there are always local
variations; which of course could imply a 'subject-matter'
effect.

The discovery of the two 'languages' in the Herbal Section
was the principal reason for transcribing and indexing this
material. It was hoped that by application of comparative
techniques to the Herbal A and B texts, ostensibly dealing
with identical subject matter, some clue to the nature of
the two 'systems of writing' might be forthcoming. The
results were completely negative; there was no sign of
parallel constructions or any other evidence that was useful
in this regard. It was impossible not to conclude that (a)
we were not dealing with a 'linguistic' recording of data
and (b) the illustrations had little to do with the
accompanying text. Study of other sections of the Manuscript
where 'A' and 'B' texts are found has produced nothing to
alter this conclusion. Further, it has so far proved
impossible to categorize or to classify grammatically any
series of 'words' or to discern any usage patterns that that
would suggest any recognizable syntactic arrangement of the
underlying text. Perhaps even more important, I have been
unable to identify 'words' or individual symbols in either
'language' to which I could assign even tentative numerical
values. It seems quite incredible to me that any systems of
writing (or a simple substitution thereof) would not betray
one or both of the above features.

3. THE EFFECT OF WORD-FINAL SYMBOLS ON THE INITIAL SYMBOL OF
THE FOLLOWING 'WORD'

This 'word-final effect' first became evident in a study of
the Biological B index wherein it was noted that the final
symbol of 'words' preceding 'words' with an initial <4o> was
restricted pretty largely to <9>; and that initial <ct> or
<c't> was preceded much more frequently than expected by
finals of the <iiv> series and the <x> series. Additionally,
'words' with initial <ct> or <c't> occur in line-initial
position far *less* frequently than expected, which perhaps
might be construed as being preceded by an 'initial nil.'

This phenomenon occurs in other sections of the Manuscript,
especially in those 'written' in Language B, but in no case
with quite the same definity as in Biological B. Language A
texts are fairly close to expected in this respect.

I can think of no interpretation of this phenomenon,
linguistic or otherwise. Inflexional endings would certainly
not have this effect nor would any other grammatical feature
that I know of if we assume that we are dealing with
*words*. If, however, these word-appearing elements are
something else, syllables, letters, even digits,
restrictions of this sort might well occur.

4. THE LINE AS FUNCTIONAL ENTITY

As mentioned in paragraph 3 above, 'words' with initial <ct>
or <c't> are unexpectedly low in line initial position (on
average about one tenth of expected); other 'words' occur in
this position far more frequently than expected, particularly
'words' with initial <8ct>, <9ct> etc., which have the
appearance of <ct>-initial 'words' suitably modified for
line-initial use. Symbol groups at the ends of lines are
frequently of a character unlike those appearing in the body
of the text, sometimes having the appearance of fillers.
Further, in only one instance so far noted has a repeated
sequence (of 'words') extended beyond the end of one line
into the beginning of the next.

All in all it is difficult not to assume that the line, on
those pages on which the text has a linear arrangement, is a
self-contained unit with a function yet to be discovered.