When the hidden remains hidden (a comment on the paper On Bacon's biliteral cipher)

Abstract

The paper here commented upon examines one of the fragments of Francis Bacon's 1623 book De Augmentis Scientiarum (On the Advancement of Learning), where the philosopher explains his invention of the method of hiding a secret message by means of a specially devised biliteral alphabet. The author of the article shows that along with the principle of imperceptibility of the hidden message present in writing, a good illustration of which gives his famous method of biliteral cipher, Bacon also adopts the opposite strategy where apparency of the hidden is the instrument of concealing. It is the latter principle that underlies the method of hiding the cipher by using the two alphabets. Unfortunately, the existing Russian translation of the chapter expounding this method, which is contained in two-volume academic edition of Bacon's works published in 1977, is so imprecise that no adequate understanding of Bacon's invention can be derived from it. The article On Bacon's biliteral cipher discusses the existing text and suggests a corrected translation of the relevant passages.