It depends upon what you think the text is.
If you think it is a natural language, a solution would be to render the entire text into a natural, intelligible text in a natural language. Perhaps not the entire text. There might still be riddles. But the great bulk of the text.
That would be conclusive.
If you think it is a cipher text, then a solution would be to decipher it – all or most of it - into a coherent, intelligible plaintext.
If that could be done, it would be a knock-out blow.
If you think it is a generated text, then a solution would be to demonstrate a system of volvelles or some other device that can reproduce the Voynich text, with all its pecularities, to a good 98%+ accuracy, free of any tweaking. The right combination of the right glyphs on the right letter wheels produces the whole text.
That would constitute a conclusive demonstration.
As for historical evidence, if somebody turned up an authenticated letter by Giovanni Fontana in which he sets out plans for an experimental code and includes sketches of the Voynich gallows glyphs in the letter… that would be game over.
Such smoking gun historical evidence seems unlikely at this stage. But you never know.
More likely, we are stuck with the enigma and a never-ending succession of proposed solutions, none of which can reach the threshold of beyond reasonable doubt.
The task of every researcher is to advance their proposal in some way as to make it irrefutable.
Otherwise, it is only ever arguable.
The task is to end the argument.
The search is for the illusive item of evidence that will silence all objections and make everything – or almost everything – crystal clear.
The nature of the study, though, is fragmented and there is little to no consensus on any level – and a paucity of good-will in some quarters - and so the prospects of arguing a proposal to consensus are slim.
There are proposals that the work comes from the New World, or is a modern forgery.
You might think such hypotheses would wither away in the face of a firm carbon dating to the early 1400s.
Instead, positions are hopelessly entrenched.
Voynich researchers are like the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail: you can hack his arm off and he’ll say, “Tis but a fleshwound!”
True, a wide and sober consensus has gathered around the carbon dating, with proposals focusing on the relevant period, but a loud background of noise prevails.
Notably, there are no camps. There are, to date, no proposals that have gathered a dedicated following. The field hasn’t narrowed into two or three hot contenders.
Instead, fragmentation. Lone researchers, or at best small teams, advancing their proposals but failing to persuade others to give up on their own proposals and get with the strength.
This is a normal phase of research, but you might expect a few proposals to pull ahead of the pack and for research efforts to become more focused and collaborative.
Voynich Studies remains stuck in the wide-open it-could-be-anything phase.
To be honest, we are still clueless. Is it a language or an encryption or what? A hundred years later and we still have no agreed answer to that question.
Confirmation bias abounds: linguists see language, cryptologists see encryption, Estonians see Estonian.
What we find are researchers like Professor Chesire who continue with their work in splendid isolation regardless of universal scepticism, or natives of various national languages engaging in ‘translations’ with patriotic fervour, or else amateurs who pepper away at their pet theory intermittantly.
On the quantitative side we find statistical studies but an inability to give an account of what the data means.
(Frankly, there are lots of guys playing with their Pythons, who aren’t really interested in the Voynich except as interesting fodder for their software.)
The data grows, but our understanding does not.
And the data points in many directions.
There is no agreed way to order the data into a meaningful and useful heirarchy. Often researchers will be beguiled by one item of evidence and will privilege it above all others: they are convinced one of the glyphs is Cyrillic and so they pursue a Cyrillic solution.
They interpret a small detail in the illustrations as an allusion to Jan Huss and so everything in the manuscript must be Hussite.
And there is no agreed measure of trust in the text. For some it is what it is, while for others it is entirely deceptive.
* * *
Given all of this, how might I present my (current) proposal – a cosmological text based on the cycles of the year – to be so compelling that the entire Voynich community, all and sundry, throw in their towels and admit it must be so?
What order of evidence would be required? What level of persusion?
Again, as with any non-linguistic solution, I would need to demonstrate a system that consistently, and without gratuitous tweaking, can generate the Voynich text more or less in its fullness.
By my account, moreover, the text is not meaningless, but contains information.
I would need to be able to render all of this information accessible.
And I would need to be able to give a convincing and coherent, comprehensive explanation for all the pecularities of the text such as the phenomenon of Currier A and B, the labels, the paragraph and line structures, and so on.
Any account that can only provide a partial explanation of the text is not enough to pull the sword from the stone.
* * *
To veer wildly into a parallel metaphor, Voynichese is like the Gordian Knot.
There are two tales about how Alendander broke the Gordian Knot.
In one, he took out his sword and just cut in two.
In the other, he pulled on the central thread and the knot unravelled.
You can undo the Gordian Knot by brute force or by cunning, strength or smarts.
But either way, the knot must unravel. It must be fully disentangled.
R.B.
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