30-11-2025, 12:35 PM
I voted one person penning the Manuscript.
Although I think the evidence LFD presents for 5 distinct handwriting styles is compelling and makes sense, I think the jump in conclusion to this correlating to 5 distinct people is based entirely on speculation. While this speculation is based on LFD's experience with other medieval manuscripts, expertise in other medieval manuscripts tells us essentially nothing about the Voynich. The Voynich is such a singularly strange and unprecedented object in history, that expertise has been all but useless in telling us much relevant or verifiable information about the Voynich.
I would not consider deference to experts being any more justifiable in the case of handwriting analysis than analysis of the meaning of the text. We should take seriously the observations, but not the conclusions necessarily.
I find it generally more plausible, given various other observable facts of the Manuscript, that it was made over the course of a long duration. If someone wrote the Manuscript in bursts, over the course of decades, that could also plausibly explain the variations in topics ("languages") and handwriting style.
What I find plausible, is that the 5 distinct scribes identified by LFD correspond with 5 distinct eras where the author wrote the various sections.
Compare your handwriting now to when you were in grade school. Imagine not only changing as a person, but also developing and refining an entire custom conlang or cipher writing system over the course of many years. Perhaps the author experimented over time with different methods of holding their pen. We just don't know, and can't know without more information. I find assertions of "likelihood" of this vs multiple scribes inadequate, because it's all ultimately speculation.
Although I think the evidence LFD presents for 5 distinct handwriting styles is compelling and makes sense, I think the jump in conclusion to this correlating to 5 distinct people is based entirely on speculation. While this speculation is based on LFD's experience with other medieval manuscripts, expertise in other medieval manuscripts tells us essentially nothing about the Voynich. The Voynich is such a singularly strange and unprecedented object in history, that expertise has been all but useless in telling us much relevant or verifiable information about the Voynich.
I would not consider deference to experts being any more justifiable in the case of handwriting analysis than analysis of the meaning of the text. We should take seriously the observations, but not the conclusions necessarily.
I find it generally more plausible, given various other observable facts of the Manuscript, that it was made over the course of a long duration. If someone wrote the Manuscript in bursts, over the course of decades, that could also plausibly explain the variations in topics ("languages") and handwriting style.
What I find plausible, is that the 5 distinct scribes identified by LFD correspond with 5 distinct eras where the author wrote the various sections.
Compare your handwriting now to when you were in grade school. Imagine not only changing as a person, but also developing and refining an entire custom conlang or cipher writing system over the course of many years. Perhaps the author experimented over time with different methods of holding their pen. We just don't know, and can't know without more information. I find assertions of "likelihood" of this vs multiple scribes inadequate, because it's all ultimately speculation.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)