22-08-2020, 12:02 AM
I was just watching a video with the facsimile in it where the reader was saying the Voynich manuscript looked amateurish. This and looking at the facsimile got me thinking if I was trying to make something for sale then I would have thought it should look professional rather than amateurish. If I was trying to produce some manuscript with magical indecipherable writing for sale I would either make something which deliberately looks arcane or something which looks beautiful.
Something amateurish would be something like a notebook for personal use. This would fit with the idea that the author(s) was not particularly interested in sharing the contents of the notebook with the outside world and in fact had gone to means of making it more difficult.
This would also fit with the fact that we don't know who wrote the Voynich and why we have no record of it around the time of writing. If the author(s) had no interest in making it public and in fact had gone out of the way to conceal it from the public then it is hardly surprising that we don't know much about its early history. Also, because it is a scruffy notebook it is easily overlooked, it seems that only when one looks at the script is one struck by the manuscript.
However reconciling the idea of an amateurish creation with something hard enough to decipher that modern professionals have failed, seems difficult, though not impossible. Maybe the appearance is amateurish, but that doesn't mean the contents was. I am sure that some great scientists made their own scruffy notebooks. I am not saying the author(s) was a great scientist, but still a certain amount of the contents appears quite original.
I know others will certainly disagree, but that is my thinking.
Something amateurish would be something like a notebook for personal use. This would fit with the idea that the author(s) was not particularly interested in sharing the contents of the notebook with the outside world and in fact had gone to means of making it more difficult.
This would also fit with the fact that we don't know who wrote the Voynich and why we have no record of it around the time of writing. If the author(s) had no interest in making it public and in fact had gone out of the way to conceal it from the public then it is hardly surprising that we don't know much about its early history. Also, because it is a scruffy notebook it is easily overlooked, it seems that only when one looks at the script is one struck by the manuscript.
However reconciling the idea of an amateurish creation with something hard enough to decipher that modern professionals have failed, seems difficult, though not impossible. Maybe the appearance is amateurish, but that doesn't mean the contents was. I am sure that some great scientists made their own scruffy notebooks. I am not saying the author(s) was a great scientist, but still a certain amount of the contents appears quite original.
I know others will certainly disagree, but that is my thinking.