Open Questions

Open Salamander

Why It Is Open The Persian compound reading (sam, "fire," plus andar, "inside") most Persian lexicographers now treat as a later back-formation from the Greek word rather than its source, and the standard modern authority on Greek etymology, Beekes, classifies salamandra itself as Pre-Greek, meaning no successful Indo-European derivation for the word has been established.

What Would Settle It Either a securely attested Pre-Greek Aegean word the name can be shown to derive from, or new philological evidence settling the direction of borrowing between Greek and Persian rather than leaving it a rejected folk etymology on the Persian side.

Expertise Needed Historical and comparative Indo-European linguistics, Pre-Greek substrate studies, Iranian philology

Question posed in Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Robert S. P. Beekes, with Lucien van Beek.

Open Scylla and Charybdis

Why It Is Open Standard etymological reference works record both Skylla and Kharybdis as of unknown origin. Scylla's traditional folk association with skylax ("young dog") and skyllein ("to tear") fits her description but is not treated as a confirmed derivation, and no comparable folk etymology exists for Charybdis at all.

What Would Settle It A securely attested Pre-Greek or other substrate source for either name, or a phonologically sound Indo-European derivation succeeding where the traditional dog-and-tearing folk etymology for Scylla has not been confirmed as more than an apt later association.

Expertise Needed Historical and comparative Indo-European linguistics, Pre-Greek substrate studies

Question posed in Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper.

Open Telepathy

Why It Is Open The original series reported dream content correlating with a sender's target image above chance, but no other laboratory reproduced the effect, and the series itself was never repeated at a comparable scale. Irvin Child argued in 1985 that the result was dismissed rather than evaluated, which is a claim about how the field responded rather than a claim that anyone has since run the missing replication.

What Would Settle It A preregistered, multi-night sleep laboratory replication with automated target selection, blind judging of dream transcripts against a randomized image pool, and a sample size and analysis plan fixed in advance.

Expertise Needed Sleep research; experimental psychology; meta-analytic methodology

Question posed in Dream Telepathy: Experiments in Nocturnal Extrasensory Perception, Montague Ullman, Stanley Krippner and Alan Vaughan.

Open Second Sight

Why It Is Open The entire evidentiary record for second sight is testimonial, collected by folklorists across three centuries of Highland tradition. No experimental or quasi-experimental protocol comparing a claimed seer's forewarnings to ordinary hit or miss chance has ever been devised, so there is no data from which any verdict could be drawn either way.

What Would Settle It A prospective, blinded elicitation study: predictions attributed to second sight logged in advance, scored against subsequent events by an independent judge, and compared to a stated chance baseline.

Expertise Needed Folklore studies; parapsychology; statistics

Question posed in The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, Robert Kirk.

Open Apparitions and Crisis Apparitions

Why It Is Open The 1889-1894 Census of Hallucinations argued that apparitions coinciding with a real death occurred more often than chance, but the finding rests entirely on retrospective self report gathered by volunteers approaching people they knew, against a chance baseline its own authors had to construct. No prospective, controlled test of crisis apparitions has been conducted since.

What Would Settle It A prospectively registered study defining in advance what counts as a qualifying apparition and a chance baseline independent of the reporting population, run forward in time rather than reconstructed from memory.

Expertise Needed Statistics; survey methodology; history of psychical research

Question posed in Report on the Census of Hallucinations, Henry Sidgwick, Eleanor Sidgwick, Frederic W. H. Myers, Frank Podmore, Alice Johnson.

Open Saint

Why It Is Open The comparative literature has not settled this. Using one tradition's word for the others carries with it a juridical, posthumous and universal notion of holiness that the wali, the tzadik, the sant and the arhat do not each share, and specialists in those fields regularly object to the translation. There is no agreed replacement term.

What Would Settle It A sustained comparative study working from each tradition's own vocabulary outward rather than from the English word inward, and testing whether any set of features is genuinely shared across them.

Expertise Needed Comparative religion; religious studies

Question posed in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, John Bowker (ed.), s.v. Saint.

Open Saint

Why It Is Open The Consulta Medica is asked whether a recovery is explicable by the medicine of the day, and the medicine of the day changes. No public record shows whether findings have been revisited as diagnostic categories moved, and the acts of individual causes are not generally published in full.

What Would Settle It Access to the medical dossiers of closed causes, or a published retrospective by the Congregation itself, examined by clinicians against current diagnostic criteria.

Expertise Needed History of medicine; canon law

Question posed in Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn't, and Why, Kenneth L. Woodward, Chapters on the medical consultors.

Open Marabout

Why It Is Open Colonial officials applied the word to a very wide range of Muslim religious figures, and the ethnography written under that administration is the channel through which most of the outside literature received it. Historians of the archive and specialists on the orders read the evidence differently and both readings are current.

What Would Settle It A systematic comparison of pre-colonial Arabic-language sources from the Maghreb and the western Sahel against the colonial administrative record, to establish the indigenous range of the term independently of the reporting.

Expertise Needed History of West and North Africa; Arabic manuscript studies

Question posed in The Sufi Orders in Islam, J. Spencer Trimingham, Chapters on the orders in North and West Africa.

Open Aries 26

Why It Is Open Charubel gave a picture to every other degree of Aries. Here the entry opens straight into the reading and no image is set at all. Two independent transcriptions of the book agree, and the second of them does preserve his picture-less lines elsewhere, such as "This is a blank degree." and "Too revolting to be given.", so this is an absence in the printing rather than a loss in a scan. Whether the degree was ever set with an image, and whether Charubel withheld one deliberately, is not settled by the copies consulted.

What Would Settle It Collation of this degree against a copy of the 1898 first printing, and against the serialisation Charubel published in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, either of which would show whether an image line was ever set and later dropped.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Aries 26.

Open Scorpio 27

Why It Is Open The neighbouring degrees carry pictures, a mole at Scorpio 26 and a crouching tiger at Scorpio 28, but this entry opens straight into the reading with no image set. Two independent transcriptions agree, and the second preserves Charubel's picture-less lines elsewhere, so the gap belongs to the printing rather than to a damaged scan. Whether an image was ever set for the degree is not settled by the copies consulted.

What Would Settle It Collation of this degree against a copy of the 1898 first printing, and against the serialisation Charubel published in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, either of which would show whether an image line was ever set and later dropped.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Scorpio 27.

Open Pisces 24

Why It Is Open Where every neighbouring degree carries a picture, this one carries a row of stars in the printed source, and the reading that follows opens by saying the degree is not capable of being described in words. Whether the stars are Charubel's own mark for something he would not put into a picture, or a compositor's rule standing in for matter that never reached the page, is not decided by the printing itself, and the two transcriptions consulted here render the mark differently from each other.

What Would Settle It Collation against a copy of the 1898 first printing and against the serialisation in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, together with any surviving correspondence or editorial note that explains the mark.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Pisces 24.

Open Enochian Calls

Why It Is Open Secondary sources agree the sixteen calls between the two general openers and the Aethyr call work the four Elemental Watchtowers (earth, water, air, fire), but they disagree on the exact call-by-call assignment, and some later schemes (Golden Dawn) elaborate a finer subdivision (24 sub-angles) that is a 19th century systematization rather than Dee's own division. c2-esoterica declined to assign a specific element to any of the sixteen individual calls on 2026-07-27 rather than pick one scheme and present it as settled.

What Would Settle It A direct reading of the relevant Sloane manuscript folios (the calls proper, distinct from Sloane 3191's Heptarchia material) cross checked against Casaubon's 1659 print, or a specialist secondary source that states its own call-by-call table and its manuscript basis explicitly.

Expertise Needed Early modern manuscript studies / history of Renaissance magic

Question posed in A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits, John Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon.

Open Sabian Symbols

Why It Is Open The phrasing in general circulation, including every row stored in this atlas, is Dane Rudhyar's from An Astrological Mandala (1973), verified verbatim against the book for all 360 degrees. Jones published his own text in The Sabian Symbols in Astrology (1953), but no accessible per-degree transcription of it was found. Without it, Jones's contribution cannot be distinguished from Rudhyar's rewriting for any individual degree.

What Would Settle It A copy of Jones 1953, or a scholarly edition collating the two. This would also let the atlas describe the symbols in wording that is not in copyright until 2069.

Expertise Needed History of twentieth century astrology, and archival or library access to a 1953 imprint.

Question posed in An Astrological Mandala, Dane Rudhyar, Page 19.

Open Aqidah al-Tahawiyya

Why It Is Open Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi's own lifetime, 853 to 933, is well established, but no source pins the creed's actual composition to a specific year or even a decade within it.

What Would Settle It A securely dated manuscript, a contemporary reference to the work's composition, or a philological study anchoring its text to a particular stage of al-Tahawi's career.

Expertise Needed Islamic intellectual history

Question posed in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.).

Open The Threefold Refuge (Tisarana)

Why It Is Open Tradition places its first use at the very start of the Buddha's teaching career, but the Buddha's own chronology is unsettled among historians, and no source assigns the formula a specific year.

What Would Settle It A firmer scholarly resolution of the Buddha's own chronology, or textual evidence dating the formula's earliest use independently of the traditional narrative that carries it.

Expertise Needed Buddhist studies

Question posed in The Foundations of Buddhism, Rupert Gethin.

Open The Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Why It Is Open A 1.5 billion euro annual budget figure circulates in press coverage of the Order with no cited source or methodology. As a sovereign entity the Order is not subject to any national financial regulator, and no public consolidated financial statement was located.

What Would Settle It A published consolidated financial statement from the Order itself, for example through its Receiver of the Common Treasure, or independent reporting that traces the 1.5 billion euro figure to a primary source.

Expertise Needed International sovereignty studies and nonprofit or humanitarian-sector financial journalism.

Question posed in Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Distinct From Malta Itself, Assists Worlds Poor, Larry Luxner.

Open Holy See

Why It Is Open The Vatican's most valuable holdings, Saint Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museums' collections, are inalienable and never appraised for sale, so there is nothing to price against a market the way an ordinary asset is valued. The Holy See's own financial disclosures (APSA's patrimony report, the Secretariat for the Economy's consolidated statement, the IOR's own report) each cover a defined administrative scope and none of them attempts a valuation of the art or the buildings themselves.

What Would Settle It There is no method that would settle this honestly, since a genuine market valuation would require a willingness to sell that the Holy See has never expressed and that the objects' religious and cultural status makes very unlikely ever to exist. What would change the picture is not a single figure but a named methodology the Holy See itself adopted and published for insurance or heritage purposes, stating clearly that it is not a sale value.

Expertise Needed Cultural heritage economics and museum insurance valuation practice, in dialogue with the Holy See's own financial administration.

Question posed in How Much Money Does the Catholic Church Have?.

Open Basque

Why It Is Open Basque is the last pre-Indo-European language of western Europe and has no demonstrated relative. Proposals linking it to the Caucasian languages, to Iberian and to a wider Vasconic substrate have each been made and none has convinced. R. L. Trask, who assessed them, concluded that none of them meets the standard and that the honest answer is that we do not know, rather than that the relatives are contested. Aquitanian, the ancestor of Basque or its near relative, is attested only in Roman-era personal and divine names on inscriptions and reaches no further back.

What Would Settle It New epigraphic material in Aquitanian or in a neighbouring undeciphered language, long enough to show grammar rather than names alone, would give the comparative method something to work with. A decipherment of Iberian that showed grammatical morphology rather than a shared writing system would settle the Iberian question either way. Failing new text, the answer is likely to stay open, because the comparative method cannot reach the required depth on the evidence that survives.

Expertise Needed Historical linguistics, with palaeohispanic epigraphy

Question posed in The History of Basque, R. L. Trask.

Open Sumerian

Why It Is Open Sumerian is recorded in quantity from the late fourth millennium BCE and is the earliest written language anywhere, yet no genetic connection to another language or family has ever been demonstrated to the standard the comparative method requires. Proposals linking it to Dravidian, to Uralic, to the Caucasian families, to Sino-Tibetan and to Basque have each been published and none has been taken up. There is no camp to join and no argument in progress, which is what separates this from a contested classification: the absence is of an answer, not of agreement.

What Would Settle It A set of regular sound correspondences between Sumerian and another attested language or reconstructed proto-language, covering basic vocabulary and grammatical morphology rather than isolated look-alikes, and surviving the usual controls for borrowing and for chance resemblance. Failing that, a substantial text in a related language recovered from the same region and period would give the comparison something to work from. At present Sumerian's nearest neighbours in the record are Akkadian, which is Semitic and demonstrably unrelated, and Elamite, which is itself an isolate.

Expertise Needed Historical linguistics; Assyriology; comparative philology

Question posed in The Sumerian Language: An Introduction to Its History and Grammatical Structure, Marie-Louise Thomsen.

Open Gallium

Why It Is Open The discoverer gave the patriotic reason, that he had named the element for Gallia, the Latin name for France. The coincidence that gallus is Latin for a rooster, and that his own surname, Lecoq, is French for the rooster, was pointed out at once and has been repeated ever since. Whether the second reading was intended, quietly enjoyed, or only ever imagined by other people cannot be settled from the naming announcement, which offers the patriotic reason alone.

What Would Settle It A statement of intent in Lecoq de Boisbaudran's own correspondence or working papers. Failing that, the question concerns a private intention and may simply not be answerable.

Expertise Needed History of chemistry, and French archival work on the Lecoq de Boisbaudran papers.

Question posed in Periodic Table: Gallium, Royal Society of Chemistry, History section of the gallium entry.