Why Voynich Manuscript is Important

[bi3mw]

I have a similar point of view as Helmut ( "The journey is its own reward" ). On the way to the solution I have already looked at the MS from many different angles and learned a lot about medieval manuscripts and the time period in general. This makes the VMS important to me personally. It is the anchor, so to speak, for my interest in this subject area.

If the VMS is decrypted one day, it is quite possible that the content will be rather trivial from today's point of view. But this does not mean that the author did not consider his (encrypted) work to be very important.

[Pardis Motiee]

I want to know the general views on why the manuscript is important and why solving it matters.

I will try to rephrase this question:

"I want to know the general views on what are the most historically important things about the manuscript and what a decipherment of the manuscript might yield."

PLEASE DO NOT REPHRASE 

If you are spending time on VM then it is important. But why is it important. Everyone thinks different, and these "all" would make a general view.
why is it important? for me it's  important because everything about biology is important. Since I see plants I must find what is there and I spend time. And solving it matters as it can show others the old herbal knowledge. If for example we know people of this region use this plant for this illness, we would research about the effects of plant on this particular disease and it can help people's health.

So why is the manuscript important? Why does solving it matter? Write everything you think.

[Mark Knowles]

"The journey is its own reward".

That could be said of so much research, whether important or not. If one is researching fundamental physics or microbiology I think those researchers would feel that the work is its own reward even though it may well have practical applications. The journey of discovery is attractive in many fields.

[farmerjohn]

I think the manuscript is important because its solution might have important consequences.

No doubt, the solution will be thoroughly examined to find out points where the solver was fundamentally right and others were fundamentally wrong. These may be trivial, but may also have impact on our perception of concepts like language, code, solution, etc.

People will definitely try to solve other ciphers the same way VMS will be solved. And if the solution has any non-standard, weird elements, we will be quickly overflown with plenty of weird solutions to other yet unsolved ciphers. Discarding them will be both wrong and impossible: the reference to VMS solution will be enough to protect many (good and bad) crazy ideas. For example if VMS is solved by an amateur, this will excite a lot of other amateurs and somewhat scatter the notion of "serious researcher".

Persons who propose a lot of theories ("solution trolls") are likely to play increasing role. Today it's much easier to generate and spread hundreds of theories, hoping that one will somehow intersect the solution and you will have a chance to stick to something important. A few years ago I was contacted and accused of plagiarism (for using vowellessness idea). Just imagine how many accusations will face the actual VMS decoder.

[nickpelling]

Because we don't know what it says (or even what it refers to), the VMs is still only potentially important, rather than actually important.

However, as an example of how impossible it is for people to collaborate on difficult subjects, it's arguably priceless.

[joben]

The VMS is important like any unexplainable artefact.
It might teach us something new.

As a complement, I also think this question should be asked: 
"Why is the Voynich Manuscript NOT important?"
It should be asked to the people aware of the Voynich but who aren't here.
It is so dissappointing to read on /r/AskHistorians for instance how some people disregard it as a hoax as a knee-jerk reaction 

[gentlemanANDscholar]

so they gave us all chromebooks now in school but since i always get my work done fairy fast i have bugger all to do except sit there and stare at the skies. I found this and though it was interesting to research.

tldr: bored