VMs: RE: 1400's statistics and (en)coding standards

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rene wrote:

> I could employ one of GC's favourite arguments here:
> don't forget that the Voynich MS is essentially
> a herbal. Why encode it? Existing Arabic ones are
> already illegible enough.
>
> If the VMs is in a complicated code (15th C
> state-of-the-art) then we must seriously consider
> that the book is not about plants or ointments,
> but that the text is unrelated to the pictures
> and has some diplomatic meaning.

I'm not absolutely certain that this is a valid argument.  In the case of
Anthony Askham for instance, he attended Cambridge for 14 years, and he
couldn't have been studying medicine all that time, rather working in the
hospital is my guess.  Nevertheless, he would have known many of the people
who came through the college during those years, and in an academic environ
one picks up a lot of things not necessarily related to their studies.
Askham most certainly knew Dee through his brother Roger, most certainly
studied Greek under Jonathan Cheke, and probably sat in on many of the
lectures as well.

Not necessarily referring to Askham, but to a situation where one may wish
to use cipher but is not able to create it on their own, Askham, and many
others, would have had the opportunity to borrow ideas from someone, modify
them a little, and use them as their own.  Our physician who wrote an herbal
is to some extent a mathematician because he studied astronomy/astrology,
and was familiar with lengthy and difficult calculations, using these on a
daily basis in his work.  He may not have been a cryptologist however.  All
he had to do was know one.

This also brings up something I mentioned earlier, that mathematics was by
and large a subject rejected by those of higher learning, who believed it to
be the realm of clarks and astrologers.  Physicians were not highly revered
either, but since they were the primary users of astrology, they were
commonly also the mathematicians - except of course, those who were clarks!
:-)

GC

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