Voynich proto-optics...?

I've been reading up on the pre-history of the telescope recently (hence my reviews of Eileen Reeves' Galileo's Glassworks and Albert van Helden's The Invention of the Telescope), but have omitted to mention why I thought this might be of relevance to the Voynich Manuscript.

The answer relates to Richard SantaColoma's article in Renaissance Magazine #53 (March 2007) with the title "The Voynich Manuscript: Drebbel's Lost Notebook?", which claimed to find a persuasive familial similarity between the curious jars arranged vertically in the pharma sections and Renaissance microscopes, specifically those described or designed by Cornelius Drebbel. His (updated) research also appears here.

The biggest problem with Voynich hypotheses is that, given 200+ pages of interesting stuff, it is comparatively easy to dig up historical evidence that appears to show some kind of correlation. In the case SantaColoma's webpage, this category covers the stars, the hands, braids, caps, colours, four elements, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis and handwriting matches suggested: none of these is causative, and the level of correlation is really quite low. All of which is still perfectly OK, as these parallels are only presented as suggestive evidence, not as any kind of direct proof.

It is also tempting to use a given hypothesis to try to support itself: in the 1920s, William Romaine Newbold famously did this with his own circular hypothesis, where he said that the only way that the manuscript's microscopic cipher could have been written was with the aid of a microscope, ergo Roger Bacon must have invented the microscope. All false, of course. Into this second category falls the "cheese mold", "diatoms" and "cilia" of SantaColoma's webpage: if these are to used as definitive proof of the presence of microscopy in the VMs, the level of correlation would need to be substantially higher. But these parallels are, once again, only presented as suggestive evidence, not proof.

Strip all these away, and you're still left with the real meat of SantaColoma's case: a set of striking similarities between 17th century microscopes and the curious devices in the Voynich Manuscript's pharma section. Even if (as I do) you doubt that all the colouring on the pages was original (and upon which some of SantaColoma's argument seems to rest), it's an interesting observation.

Having said that, no actual proof or means of proof (or disproof) is offered: it is just a set of observations, resting upon a relatively little-tested tranche of history, that of the microscope. Can we do better? I think we can.

Firstly, modern telescope historians (I'm thinking of Albert van Helden here, though he is far from alone in this respect) now seem somewhat dubious of the various Janssen family claims: and so I'm far from comfortable with placing the likely birth of the microscope with the Janssens in 1590. As Richard SantaColoma points out, Cornelius Drebbel is definitely one of the earliest documented microscope makers (from perhaps a little earlier than 1620, but probably not much before 1612, I would guess).

Secondly, it is likely that the power of the lenses available for spectacles pre-1600 was not great: Albert van Helden calculated that a telescope made to della Porta's (admittedly cryptic) specification could only have given a magnification of around 2x, which would be no more than a telescopic toy. I would somewhat surprised if microscopes constructed from the same basic components had significantly higher magnification.

Thirdly, the claimed presence of knurled edges in the VMs' images would only make sense if used in conjunction with a fine screwthread, to enable the vertical position of an element along the optical axis to be varied: but I'm not sure when these were invented or adapted for microscopes.

All in all, I would assert that if what is being depicted in the VMs' pharma section is indeed microscopes from the same family as were built by Drebbel from (say) 1610 onwards, there would seem no obvious grounds for dating this to significantly earlier than 1610: even if it all came directly from Della Porta, around 1589 would seem to be the earliest tenable date.

The problem is that there is plenty of art historical data which places the VMs circa 1450-1500: and a century-long leap would seem to be hard to support without more definitive evidence.

As always, there are plenty of Plan B hypotheses, each of which has its own unresolved issues:-
(a) they are microscropes/telescopes, but from an unknown 16th century inventor/tradition
(b) they are microscropes/telescopes, but from an unknown 15th century inventor/tradition
(c) they're not microscopes/telescopes, they just happen to look a bit like them
(d) they're not microscopes/telescopes, but were later emended/coloured to look like them
(e) it's all a Dee/Kelley hoax (John Dee was Thomas Digges' guardian from the age of 13)

Despite everything I've read about the early history of the telescope and microscope, I really don't think that we currently can resolve this whole issue (and certainly not with the degree of certainty that Richard SantaColoma suggests). The jury remains out.

But I can offer some observations based on what is in the Voynich Manuscript itself, and this might cast some light on the matter for those who are interested.

(1) The two pharma quires seem to be out of order: if you treat the ornate jars as part of a visual sequence, it seems probable that Q19 (Quire 19) originally came immediately before Q17 in the original binding.

(2) The same distinctive square "filler" motif appears in the astronomical section (f67r1, f67r2, f67v1), the zodiac section (Pisces, light Aries), the nine rosette page (central rosette), and in a band across the fifth ornate jar in Q19. This points not only to their sharing the same scribe, but also to a single (possibly even improvised) construction/design process: that is, the whole pharma section is not simply a tacked-on addition, it is an integral part of the manuscript.

(3) Some paint on the pharma jars appear original: but most seems to be a later addition. For example: on f99v, I could quite accept that the palette of (now-faded) paints used to colour in the plants and roots was original (and I would predict that a spectroscopic or Raman analysis would indicate that this was probably comprised solely of plant-based organic paints), which would be consistent with the faded original paint on the roots of f2v. However, I would think that the bolder (and, frankly, a little uglier) paints used on the same page were not original.

Put all these tiny fragments together, and I think this throws doubt on one key part of SantaColoma's visual argument. He claims that the parallel hatching inside the ornate jar at the top of f88r (the very first jar in Q17) is a direct indication that it is a lens we are looking at, fixed within a vertical optical structure. However, if you place Q19 before Q17 (as I believe the original order to have been), then a different story emerges. The ten jars immediately before f88v (ie at the end of Q19) all have vertical parallel hatching inside their tops, none of which looks at all like the subtle lens-like shading to which SantaColoma is referring. For reference, I've reproduced the tops of the last four jars below, with the final two heavily image-enhanced to remove the heavy (I think later) overpainting that has obscured much of the finer detail.

This is the "mouth" of the top jar on f102r: the vertical parallel hatching seems to depict the back wall of a jar, ending in a pool of faintly-coloured yellow liquid (probably the original paint).

This is the mouth of the bottom jar on f102r, which appears to have vertical parallel hatching right down, as though the jar is empty near the top (or perhaps its contents are clear).

This is the top jar on 102v, enhanced to remove the paint. I think some vertical hatching is still visible there: it would take a closer examination to determine what was originally drawn there.

This is the bottom jar on f102v, again heavily enhanced to remove paint. Vertical hatching of some sort is visible.

"The Invention of the Telescope" update...

OK, so it's not exactly Wikileaks: but following on from my very recent review of Albert van Helden's monograph, a (how shall I put it?) well-placed insider has dropped me a line...

Apparently, the American Philosophical Society is planning to republish "The Invention of the Telescope" in an "augmented edition" next year (2009, the International Year of the Telescope), for which van Helden has been asked to put together a new introduction. My guess is that this will come out at about the same time as the book on Galileo's sunspots which Eileen Reeves and van Helden have been working on (which itself was delayed by Reeves' "Galileo's Glassworks", according to her acknowledgments section).

However, I should flag that a big problem with long publishing pipelines like this is that it only takes one really interesting piece of work to come out to make everything in it seem instantly outdated: and with the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescopic breakthroughs imminently upon us, right now there are doubtless several (2? 5? 10?) historians out there finishing up their shocking alt.history revisionist accounts of the telescope's genesis.

For me, the most surprising aspect of this whole story is that van Helden's work has lasted 31 years without being significantly overturned (as far as I can see): but in the field of ideas, things can change (and they often do, rapidly). We shall see what happens next...

Incidentally, I wish I knew of a book like the first half of "Galileo's Glassworks" that covered the literary prehistory of the microscope, and/or an equivalent of van Helden's monograph covering the microscope's birth. Was the romantic lure of seeing tiny things ever as great as that of seeing afar?

All of a sudden, I'm transported Proust-like to the Trigan Empire comic strip in the "Look & Learn"s of my childhood, where one storyline revealed whole subatomic galaxies to explore (might Oli Frey have drawn that?)...

Review of "The Invention of the Telescope"...

It may seem a little odd to be reviewing a 31-year-old monograph, but stick with it, you'll see where I'm going soon enough...

The whole sequence starts with the review I posted here of Eileen Reeves' brand new "Galileo's Glassworks: The Telescope and the Mirror" (2008, Harvard University Press). Though overall very fascinating, one aspect of this book confused me: why it should be structured in two so radically different (dare I say almost schizophrenic?) halves. You see, while the first 50% covers the amorphous literary pre-history of the telescope, the second 50% deals with the textual minutiae of who told Galileo what and when, and what Galileo probably believed in 1608-9: so the book swings sharply from a super-broad cultural reading to an ultra-close textual reading. An uncomfortable mixture.

Now, the first half particularly intrigued me, so it made sense for me to move on to Reeves' major source for it: Albert van Helden's (1977) brief (but magisterial) "The Invention of the Telescope". If you want your own copy, there are still a couple under £25 available on BookFinder.com (though be quick, the rest are over £50).

Van Helden (for whom Dutch is his first language) had started out by translating Cornelis de Waard's relatively little-known book "De uitvinding der verrekijkers" (The Hague, 1906), which laid out a lot of new evidence on the genesis of the telescope as we know it in the Netherlands: much of the story revolved around the town of Middelburg (which held one of the largest glassworks in Europe), with nearly all key documents written in Dutch.

But de Waard's conclusions - that the telescope had probably been invented in Italy circa 1590, that Raffael Gualterrotti had built such a device in 1598, and that one of which had surfaced in Holland circa 1604, before being replicated by various spectacle-makers and inventors in 1608, leading to an unseemly patent rush - seemed to van Helden not quite to be supported by the evidence. And so he decided to take a fresh look at the documents: and his 1977 monograph was the result.

Having said that, van Helden's final conclusions are practically the same as de Waard's, though not quite as specific: that Giovanbaptista della Porta's claim to have built a telescope (to which his "Magia naturalis libri XX" (Naples, 1589), Book XVII, Chapter 10, p.269 circumspectly alludes) probably does hold up, as does Gualterrotti's claim (perhaps more weakly), though given that the best magnification possible pre-1600 would (argues van Helden) have been only around 2x, the resulting device would have been unspectacular - a telescopic amuse-bouche, rather than the Galilean feast that was to come. And so van Helden concludes that Italians (specifically della Porta) probably did invent the telescope, though they didn't realise it at the time.

Thirty years on, and I think van Helden's monograph stands as a great piece of writing: clear, lean, thoughtful, honest. Best of all, the majority of it (pp.28-64) consists of transcriptions (and English translations) of the important sections of all the relevant documents; so if you don't like his conclusions, feel free to go right to the primary sources (they're pretty much all there), knock yourself out. Perfect.

It should now be clear what I think happened with "Galileo's Glassworks". The elephant in the room (who was not mentioend, but around whom all the furniture was carefully arranged) was van Helden's monograph: this forms a bridge between Reeves' two distinct sections. And so if you add the two books together, you get what amounts to a single coherent work, going from medieval and early modern notions and claims of vision-at-a-distance and burning mirrors (Reeves), through to the myriad claims and counterclaims of the Dutch "inventors" (van Helden), through to Galileo's reception of the new device (Reeves again). At only 231 pages (with endnotes starting on p.167), Reeves' book originally felt to me to be about 60-70 pages short: how curious to find that van Helden's monograph exactly fits the dimensions of that lacuna.

In her acknowledgments, Reeves says that she "benefited most of all... from the intellectual guidance and constant friendship of Albert van Helden, whose own work... is the basis of and inspiration for my own" (p.220). I'd say that while Reeves' book gives context and consequence to van Helden's monograph, reading the former without the latter doesn't really make sense. In fact, I would strongly recommend to Harvard University Press (who publish "Galileo's Glassworks") that they negotiate with the American Philosophical Society to reprint Reeves' book with van Helden's excellent (but scarce) work as an appendix. Now that would be a book truly worthy of the International Year Of The Telescope.

Review of "Galileo's Glassworks"...

Back to the non-fiction grindstone, and next up on my list to read was the very promising-looking "Galileo's Glassworks", by Eileen Reeves: though this has as its main focus the issue of what Galileo knew (and when) about the Dutch telescope, I was told (by Peter Abrahams on HASTRO-L) that it also covers the pre-history of the telescope, which I was more interested in. I was intrigued to see how it would blend these two topics together: it sounded quite ambitious.

And indeed, just as promised, the book turned out to be a game of two very distinct halves. The first half was a kind of wide-roaming literature review of the classical, medieval and early modern texts that promised some kind of proto-telescopes or burning mirrors to their readers: that this was built on broadly the same foundations as Albert van Helden's 1977 monograph "The Invention of the Telescope" is made completely clear in the acknowledgements at the end. Let's be clear: the primary sources for this form a fragmentary, piecemeal soup, whose components interlock and separate eternally - despite all Reeves' hard work, there is no emergent narrative, no thread, no causal proof to be had here. Yet she gives the impression of needing to draw out a story based on the 16th century reception of travellers accounts of the Pharos, in order to give a structural punchline to this section: but unfortunately this never quite hits the spot.

The second half is very much more focused, and reads quite differently: it focuses on the minutiae of correspondence of Galileo and his circle circa 1608-9, as they received (possibly unreliable) reports of mirrors and telescopes coming from France and Holland (often embedded in pro- or anti-Jesuit propaganda), and tried to make up their minds what to make of them - was the new Dutch telescope truly something amazing, or based on the mirror, or was it yet another tall tale?

In the end, Reeves' central point (which hinges on whether Galileo thought the new telescope was built with a mirror or purely with lenses) is well argued, but extremely marginal: and it fails to mesh comfortably with the first half of her text. I came away feeling like I had read two 90-page monographs in quick succession: I desperately wanted her to find a way to knit the two together, to redeem her choice of structure - but this never really happened.

Look: "Galileo's Glassworks" is a lovely, compact, readable book, and pleasantly affordable too (a snip at £14.20 for the hardback). But Reeves can't really reconcile the broad generalities of the pre-history of the telescope with her ultra-close reading of Galileo's "Starry Messenger" and his letters. Ultimately, what's going on is some kind of mismatch in epistemological tone: the first half raises many open-ended issues, while the second half answers a single (quite different) question.

I suspect that somewhere along the way, Reeves lost track of whom she was talking to, and about what: the book ended up being just as much about Sarpi (or even about the ghost of della Porta!) as about Galileo himself, which is surely a sign that her aim drifted off true. Perhaps in the end she simply didn't have enough to say about Galileo in the second half that hadn't been amply said before: which would be a shame, as I would say the first half of her book is really very good, well worth the cover price on its own.