TPO 35 Integrated Writing Task

Both the reading and the lecture discuss potential writers of a mysterious book illustrated by Wilfrid M.Voynich. The passage mentions three possible options for the author. However, the lecturer casts some doubts about pointed out statements by illaborating strong reasons.

To begin with, the passage asserts that a sixteenth-century biologist and botanist can be the man behind this magical book which was written in a complex secret code. On the other hand, the speaker disapproves this assertion by demonstrating that the writer should have had the desire to keep an important data from others to make so much effort to code the data. However, the biologist mostly researched on common plants and never proposed any original idea.

Furthermore, the passage states that the book can be fake and it may not contain any valuable context. For instance, he mentions Edward kelley who pretended some objects had magical powers to earn money from them. The speaker disputes this claim emphasizing that fooling in that day and age was rather easy and there was no need for such a complex code algorithm to achieve this goal.

Last but not least, the passage establishes that the seller may have had created a fake old manuscript to receive a valuable offer in exchange. The passage refutes this suggestion and brings further evidence proving that both the ink and the vellum were investigated and they dated back to 400 years ago. So, even if Wilfrid could find an vellum, he was not able to use a 400 year old ink. Therefore, this idea is logically impossible.