More fully, it is the habit of looking at the Voynich manuscript way too closely in the conviction that its secrets will only be revealed under magnification.
More fully still, it is the habit of looking at the Voynich manuscript way too closely in the conviction that its secrets will only be revealed under magnification, and that such secrets include lost, valuable scientific insights (because the work is a long lost tome by some early scientific genius.)
The wider field of Voynich studies has been stricken throughout by Newbold’s syndrome from the outset. Today it is still rife in the Voynich space.
To recap: Wilfred Voynich gave the work to the well-known scholar William Newbold to study in 1919.
The mischief really began with Voynich himself. He harbored – and promoted - the book collector’s hope that the manuscript was a lost scientific treasure, and therefore exceedingly valuable. He decided – hoped – it was by none other than Roger Bacon. If only we could read it, it would reveal new pathways in science…
His interest in this story, to be clear, were pecuniary. This is what he wanted his manuscript to be, and what he presented it as.
Newbold confirmed the attribution immediately. It must be by Roger Bacon. And Newbold’s Syndrome takes hold at that point:
It must be a work on Bacon’s interests in cryptography and optics.
Those strange things in the middle sections must be Roger Bacon’s early microscopes.
The secrets of the work have been encoded under magnification. We must look deep below the surface to unlock them.
Newbold set out his theory in The Cipher of Roger Bacon and the mystery was widely celebrated as solved.
Drawing on a hint he detected on the final page of the manuscript, Newbold developed a highly elaborate system of decoding and claimed to have finally revealed the meaning of the text.
The entire scheme was utterly demolished by John Manly in 1931, and since then carbon dating has ruled out Roger Bacon, and his optics, altogether.
Newbold’s theory – vastly complex, annotated, scholarly – has been shown to be comprehensively wrong.
But at the time it did serve Wilfred Voynich’s purposes: it confirmed the exalted status of and increased the value and mystique of his manuscript.
Regrettably, it set modern Voynich studies off on entirely the wrong path. And worse, it infected the field with bad habits and assumptions.
Since then, people have been looking at the work very, very closely in the belief that its real meaning is hidden beneath a deceptive vaneer. There are things hidden in the illustrations. Tiny variations in glyph strokes encode secret messages.
In reality, the book is quite small. It is not much bigger than a modern paperback. But online, we are always looking at it under magnification. It seems bigger and more spacious than it is.
If we keep it at scale, micro-codes of any kind seem much less likely in such a work.
Many people will practice writing out portions of the Voynich text to see how it was done. It is quite easy. It is not a difficult script to master.
But now do it at correct scale. Could you hide micro-codes in your quill strokes at that scale? Not without writing with a magnification device.
But there is no evidence of that. The text is clear, even and open, and written at a steady pace. And it is small. There is not the slightest evidence it was written under magnification.
Newbold’s Syndrome distracts us from the obvious. It introduces the unwarranted suspicion that the surface level of the manuscript is entirely deceptive, and it leads us to ignore plain evidence in preference to cryptic evidence.
Again: this is rife in the Voynich space.
This is, plainly, a picture of nymphs in a pond, or river. But to some, this is mere deception. If we remove the green overcolouring, we will see that the empty space shows the face of someone… a bit like the way the Virgin Mary can sometimes appear on pieces of toast.
Never mind about the nymphs. The real secret is hidden. We need to look very closely and we will see things hidden underneath the illustrations.
This frees the researcher from any obligation to provide a meaningful and cogent account of what the nymphs are doing. The surface illustrations are irrelevant. Dig deeper!
The same Syndrome takes hold in the study of the text. For some, this is a job for paleographers. Let’s look at the script very, very closely.
This draws attention to the variables in the (handwritten) text – all manner of small variations between glyphs, and multiple scribes, and so on – but this draws attention away from the fact the text is actually remarkably uniform, and there is a coherent set of about 20 or so glyphs that are used consistently throughout and constitute a good 98% of the text.
Such detailed studies have their place, but to grant too much status to them, and overlook the wood for the trees, as the saying goes, is a case of Newbolding the text.
Of course there is value in looking closely at all aspects of the work, but such a forensic approach alone is unlikely to solve the puzzle and it may only add to an already substantial and confusing dataset.
Another feature of Newbold’s Syndrome comes into play: scientism. The (demonstrably false) belief that scientific method can solve all problems and all problems should be solved with scientific method.
In this view, there is only one place to study a work like this: the Lab!
Newbold’s Syndrome is a textbook case of Goethe’s dictum: The microscope will make us blind.
When one eye is peering into the microscope, what is the other eye missing?
As a point of method, why detect strange faces in the spaces between the pictures rather than giving an account of the pictures themselves? Never mind the crude green coloring job, what about the nymphs???
But the Age of Suspicion is upon us, and this quaint but enigmatic early Renaissance herbal book has become a focus of the malady.
Many people will practice writing out portions of the Voynich text to see how it was done. It is quite easy. It is not a difficult script to master.
But now do it at correct scale. Could you hide micro-codes in your quill strokes at that scale? Not without writing with a magnification device.
But there is no evidence of that. The text is clear, even and open, and written at a steady pace. And it is small. There is not the slightest evidence it was written under magnification.
Newbold’s Syndrome distracts us from the obvious. It introduces the unwarranted suspicion that the surface level of the manuscript is entirely deceptive, and it leads us to ignore plain evidence in preference to cryptic evidence.
Again: this is rife in the Voynich space.
Here is an example.
This is, plainly, a picture of nymphs in a pond, or river. But to some, this is mere deception. If we remove the green overcolouring, we will see that the empty space shows the face of someone… a bit like the way the Virgin Mary can sometimes appear on pieces of toast.
Never mind about the nymphs. The real secret is hidden. We need to look very closely and we will see things hidden underneath the illustrations.
This frees the researcher from any obligation to provide a meaningful and cogent account of what the nymphs are doing. The surface illustrations are irrelevant. Dig deeper!
The same Syndrome takes hold in the study of the text. For some, this is a job for paleographers. Let’s look at the script very, very closely.
This draws attention to the variables in the (handwritten) text – all manner of small variations between glyphs, and multiple scribes, and so on – but this draws attention away from the fact the text is actually remarkably uniform, and there is a coherent set of about 20 or so glyphs that are used consistently throughout and constitute a good 98% of the text.
Such detailed studies have their place, but to grant too much status to them, and overlook the wood for the trees, as the saying goes, is a case of Newbolding the text.
Of course there is value in looking closely at all aspects of the work, but such a forensic approach alone is unlikely to solve the puzzle and it may only add to an already substantial and confusing dataset.
Another feature of Newbold’s Syndrome comes into play: scientism. The (demonstrably false) belief that scientific method can solve all problems and all problems should be solved with scientific method.
In this view, there is only one place to study a work like this: the Lab!
Newbold’s Syndrome is a textbook case of Goethe’s dictum: The microscope will make us blind.
When one eye is peering into the microscope, what is the other eye missing?
As a point of method, why detect strange faces in the spaces between the pictures rather than giving an account of the pictures themselves? Never mind the crude green coloring job, what about the nymphs???
But the Age of Suspicion is upon us, and this quaint but enigmatic early Renaissance herbal book has become a focus of the malady.
The less said about cryptologists in this context the better. These are people who, like Freudian analysts, will, by profession, tell you your cigar is not really a cigar.
Voynich Studies has certainly been undistinguished as an academic field, and one fears that the best days of the Academy are over, and the opportunity for a clear overview of the work from the Humane disciplines has gone.
In any case, from the beginning – from the day Wilfred Voynich selected William Newbold as the scholar to study his treasured manuscript – it has been studied by the wrong people.
When somebody decided the work might contain valuable encoding systems that we need to crack before – God help us! - the Russians get it, and so it was handed over to the Spooks at the FBI and CIA and marked ‘Top Secret’ – that’s a case of Newbolding the text.
It’s a great pity that the work ended up in America, by the way. That was Voynich’s gravest error: he took the manuscript away from its European context and placed it in an intellectual environment ill-equipped to deal with such a work properly, where someone like William Newbold was the go-to scholar.
No one takes Newbold’s work seriously anymore, but alas Newbold’s Syndrome continues to infect and impede the study of the Voynich, both among academics and among independent researchers and curious amatuers.
Instead:
The book is what it looks like: a medieval herbal.
We have little reason to mistrust the author or the illustrator, in the first instance.
The cartoonish illustrations are not a clever ruse to fool us.
The text and the illustrations go together, as it appears.
It is a small work and at scale it is very unlikely to contain microcodes of any kind.
The glyphs are more solid than a forensic focus would suggest.
It is very unlikely to contain great scientific secrets.
There are no microscopes.
It is best studied phenomenologically: as it presents itself, as a whole, holistically, with a deep appreciation of the early Renaissance mind-set, in historical context, cautiously informed but not overwhelmed by forensic studies.
Voynich Studies has certainly been undistinguished as an academic field, and one fears that the best days of the Academy are over, and the opportunity for a clear overview of the work from the Humane disciplines has gone.
In any case, from the beginning – from the day Wilfred Voynich selected William Newbold as the scholar to study his treasured manuscript – it has been studied by the wrong people.
When somebody decided the work might contain valuable encoding systems that we need to crack before – God help us! - the Russians get it, and so it was handed over to the Spooks at the FBI and CIA and marked ‘Top Secret’ – that’s a case of Newbolding the text.
It’s a great pity that the work ended up in America, by the way. That was Voynich’s gravest error: he took the manuscript away from its European context and placed it in an intellectual environment ill-equipped to deal with such a work properly, where someone like William Newbold was the go-to scholar.
No one takes Newbold’s work seriously anymore, but alas Newbold’s Syndrome continues to infect and impede the study of the Voynich, both among academics and among independent researchers and curious amatuers.
Instead:
The book is what it looks like: a medieval herbal.
We have little reason to mistrust the author or the illustrator, in the first instance.
The cartoonish illustrations are not a clever ruse to fool us.
The text and the illustrations go together, as it appears.
It is a small work and at scale it is very unlikely to contain microcodes of any kind.
The glyphs are more solid than a forensic focus would suggest.
It is very unlikely to contain great scientific secrets.
There are no microscopes.
It is best studied phenomenologically: as it presents itself, as a whole, holistically, with a deep appreciation of the early Renaissance mind-set, in historical context, cautiously informed but not overwhelmed by forensic studies.
R.B.
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