As the “world’s most mysterious book,” the Voynich Manuscript is like an inkblot test: whatever people make of it tends to reveal more about them than it does about the manuscript itself. Its study shares resonances with pareidolia, akin to seeing recognizable shapes in clouds or wood grains, and with the Law of the Instrument,…
The Voynich Manuscript has been called the world’s most mysterious book, and with good reason. An illustrated codex written on vellum carbon-dated to the early fifteenth century, it contains page after page of text in a unique and unidentified script, provisionally called “Voynichese,” that has frustrated efforts at decipherment by seasoned cryptanalists for many decades. …
Given that it’s April Fool’s Day, I guess I should be cautious about unveiling anything readers could suspect of being too good to be true. Some of the animations I’ll be sharing below might seem to fall into that category; after all, we’ll be seeing some centuries-old works of art “come to life.” But my…
