Voynich Authorship

[Mark Knowles]

Yes, especially in the plant part, the encryption actually seems unnecessary.

Getting into the realms of the psychology and thought processes of the authors(s) in deciding for example that it was necessary to encrypt the Voynich is very difficult. Understanding human motivations can often be hard, I find. Frankly I sometimes don't understand why I do some of the things that I do, so constructing a rationale for other people can also sometimes be very tough. Why are we here commenting about the Voynich manuscript instead of playing sports or gardening or doing something else? Why do we find this topic so interesting when someone else might not? Why do we all have different perspectives on the manuscript?

From my perspective I really think it was most probably quite unnecessary to encipher the Voynich manuscript, so why did the author(s) think it necessary or desirable? My best guess is that they had developed the most advanced cryptography of anyone ever in the history of the world at that time in their professional capacity and they couldn't resist using that skill to write a scientific document that they were intending to write anyway.

I enjoy speculating about the mindset of the authors, but ultimately it is just speculation. Human beings are very complex and their behaviour is often hard to understand and can vary a lot from one human to another. So unless we find writing by the author(s) saying why they chose to write the Voynich in cipher or why they drew so many nude women, I think we should be careful of making presumptions about it.