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rachel_swirsky has placed me under an obligation to post this.

Long ago, on a message board far away, someone posted something that nearly sent me to the emergency room with the burning of the epic stupid. It went like this: the poster was working on a novel set in a world where magic worked, instead of science.

Okay. So. When queried, the poster further explained that you know, magic worked! And not, like, machines and stuff.

In vain did one explain that machines work because the universe is fundamentally the way it is, and a universe where machines did not work would be so alien as to be, perhaps, not inhabitable by humans. Machines do not function because of some mystical "scientific" or "machine" property they possess.

And, furthermore--the thing Rachel says I ought to post--Clarke's law works in both directions.

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Yes?

Sufficiently comprehensible magic is indistinguishable from technology. If you know magic works, and can wield it reliably, then it's susceptible to scientific investigation, and susceptible to use as technology.

Which makes a problem for fantasy, actually--if the universe is made so that magic works, then it's not magic, is it?

I would elaborate, as it is an issue I have pondered more than once, but I'm brain-ached at the moment, and must return to my perusal of The Unholy Grail: A Social Reading of Chrétien de Troyes's Conte du Graal

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To me, one of the aspects of science is the repeatability of results (and if they're not repeatable, you've failed to record a factor). Anyone, including the dog, can operate a lightswitch. It doesn't discriminate. A 'make it light' spell might have a personal component, or need to be modified according to the phases of the moon, or work/not work/produce side-effects/work in different intensities according to the age/training/inborn skill/location of the caster. That alone, for me, is an important distinction.

Also, you can troubleshoot science - if it's supposed to work and doesn't for you, you need to examine each component to find out why you're not getting the expected result (electricity is off or the lightbulb has burnt out) whereas in many magic systems you might just have to accept that today it's not working or do something that's completely unrelated to the task you wanted to do, such as make a sacrifice to the god who grants you your powers.

This is problematic, though--once you can't repeat it reliably, then the question arises--did it really actually work? If it only works about as often as, say random chance then there's something else going on. If it's working at better than random chance, then there will be conditions under which it works and conditions under which it doesn't, which may well be observable or at least deducible with testing.

In other words, in any universe where magic works, magic is going to be observable and testable--and no more mysterious than, say, physics. At which point, it's not magic anymore.

once you can't repeat it reliably, then the question arises--did it really actually work

In the social sciences we deal with a lot of things that can be observed, measured, predicted, and used as the basis for conclusions - but which are not, as such, repeatable and which may be open to different interpretations. This means that asking 'did it really happen' is a valid question; but it's not proof that it didn't.

To me it sounds very hard as if you're trying to take the magical out of magic with the demand that everything ought to be observable - I am perfectly happy to accept that it won't be, that it will work in a closer analogue to miracles than to physics. And if it involved deities, or inborn and unmeasurable powers, how would it be anything other than magic?

Observing and drawing conclusions, testing hypothesis, is science.

Using that data to build tools that work is tech. IMO.

So, in the social sciences, you're not building tech, you're doing the basic science. Trying to argue that doing basic science isn't tech doesn't really affect my argument, I think.

o me it sounds very hard as if you're trying to take the magical out of magic with the demand that everything ought to be observable - I am perfectly happy to accept that it won't be, that it will work in a closer analogue to miracles than to physics. And if it involved deities, or inborn and unmeasurable powers, how would it be anything other than magic?

I'm not trying to, it just seems an inescapable conclusion of my pondering the subject.

Miracle is in the eye of the beholder. Antibiotics are a miracle to someone who doesn't know how they work, or that they exist. Still, they work according to the laws of physics. Which brings me to Clarke's law, which implies, as I argued, that any magic that works is not, in fact magic, and any magic that's clearly understood and effective is, in fact, technology.

I have yet to see the miracle that broke or suspended the laws of physics.

Inborn powers are no more magical or mysterious than, say, my ability to roll my tongue or taste soap when I eat cilantro. We haven't found those genes...yet. But we know they're there. If magic is inborn, the evidence will be in DNA. Just because we don't or currently can't observe something doesn't mean it's not testable. The same for "unmeasurable" powers. We may not have a "magicometer" that can detect the, uh, magic waves a wizard or magical object gives off, but we can sure as heck test that wizard's abilities and observe the results. If the wizard can produce anything better than random results, further tests can be devised. In other words, if it effects the real world, it's not actually unmeasurable--at the very least, you can measure its effects. Which would be doing science, of course. And manipulating those things--whatever those things are that the wizard can do--leads to tech.

Hm.

I agree with your main point but I'm not sure I agree with this. You seem to be taking for granted that reliable and methodical observation is the only way to know whether something works. Which is unsurprising; that's how it is in the world we live in.

If I were writing in a universe like this, knowing that something "really actually worked" would behave differently as well. That is, the people who were able to function effectively in the world would not rely primarily on systematic observation, testing, and deduction; they would rely on something else. "Intuition" -- not in the sense of hunches that reflect unconscious observation, testing, and deduction, but rather in the sense of just knowing stuff by magic.

But your main point holds... assume that "machines" are incompatible with "magic" and the basic ground rules of existence have to be radically different.

We live in an orderly universe in which the significant forces behave consistently and are subject to systematic investigation; our intuitions (normal meaning) are shaped by that. So when you think about a universe where "magic works," that's the kind of image that comes to mind... a reliable, observable, testable, non-mysterious force. You think about "laws of magic" and so forth.

And you're absolutely right; that sort of universe -- the one we actually live in, and anything recognizably like it -- doesn't allow a "magic is fundamentally incompatible with technology" reading.

John Brunner's Traveller in Black stories play with this in the other direction... they are set in a world where magic does work, and where magic by its nature causes the laws of physics to be unreliable, and he tries not to shy away from the implications of that. He isn't entirely successful, but he takes a plausible stab at it -- and of course the resulting world is barely recognizable.

Edited 2010-03-24 14:20 (UTC)

That is, the people who were able to function effectively in the world would not rely primarily on systematic observation, testing, and deduction; they would rely on something else. "Intuition" -- not in the sense of hunches that reflect unconscious observation, testing, and deduction, but rather in the sense of just knowing stuff by magic.

But, in that universe, how would that be "magic"? It would be some sense (with an appropriate sense-organ) that gathered actual data from their surroundings--hence, observation. It's only being called "magic" because we don't have that sense-organ and don't detect the, I'll call them "magic waves." Honestly, how could it be otherwise? "But it's just magic" doesn't really work--the "magic" is a real thing that affects real brains, and if it does so reliably then its effects are observable and testable.

John Brunner's Traveller in Black stories play with this in the other direction... they are set in a world where magic does work, and where magic by its nature causes the laws of physics to be unreliable, and he tries not to shy away from the implications of that. He isn't entirely successful, but he takes a plausible stab at it -- and of course the resulting world is barely recognizable

It would have to be.

Mm... well, to my mind, there are two possible approaches one can take to constructing a fictional universe. (I don't mean to suggest there are only two, I'm just illustrating these two because they're relevant to the conversation we're having.)

Approach one: in the universe, all effects worth considering occur because of some cause -- "magic waves" or whatever -- that exists in the world, is subject to being observed, behaves in some reliable way, and all knowledge is obtained by deduction from observation. In fictional universes of that sort, you're entirely right... no matter what the paint, anyone obtaining new knowledge about the world is in fact engaged in science -- observation, hypothesis, testing -- and anyone effectively operating in the world is in fact engaged in technology. So the idea that there might be an effective way to operate in the world that is somehow incompatible with technology is incoherent.

Approach two: in the universe, some effects occur without a cause that exists in the world and behaves reliably; some knowledge is obtained without deduction or observation. In fictional universes of that sort, someone might obtain new knowledge about the world without engaging in observation, hypothesis, or testing; someone might operate effectively in the world without making use of reliable forces that are observable and testable. These ways of knowing and operating would not be science and would not be technology, and in a fantasy setting most writers would call them "magic." (In other genres, other names would apply.) It doesn't necessarily follow that they would be incompatible with science and technology, but it's not incoherent to assert that they at least sometimes are.

To the extent that you're saying that we don't live in the second kind of universe, and any story set in such a universe where the "magic" was an important part of the story is therefore difficult to write well because of how different the ground rules are, I agree completely. As I say, I've seen authors do it plausibly, but it's rare, and requires a fair bit of misdirection.

To the extent that you're saying that the second kind of universe simply can't be written about, I disagree.

I have never said, and never will say, that any sort of universe can't be written about. :)

Your second universe is still problematic, especially with regards to making stories--such a universe would seem to have jettisoned causality. Or, you know, not jettisoned cause it wouldn't have had causality to start with. And to me, actually, it looks strongly like a model of our universe as it would have looked to cultures that lacked a lot of information we have. And unsurprisingly, much fantasy is preoccupied with exactly those historical periods in our own world where this was the dominant model of the universe. As a result, those fantasies have a susceptibility to the incoherence you mention. A true attempt to write in your second universe would be, as you say, difficult and exacting.

Yup, agreed absolutely, on all counts.

Or, well, any attempt to write in it in any relevant and satisfying way would be.

I mean, I could easily write a story in which the protagonist comes to know things about and achieve effects in the world in no way that is explained or readily explainable, and I could assert that it's because I'm writing in a type-2 universe where these things just happen.

But, jeez, it would be a terrible story.

More usefully, I can imagine writing an interesting story in which a character makes a series of ever-more-heroic efforts to understand the underlying order of the universe and ultimately concludes that there is no such order. But of course the reader ought not accept that conclusion... there's no way to prove a negative like that. Still, one could use various sorts of authorial sleight-of-hand to invite the reader into accepting that there simply is no such order in the universe of the story.

One could also write a story on two levels -- say, one story about a protagonist as above, and another story interwoven with it where the reader discovers the protagonist is a software agent in simulated world that really does have no consistent organizing principles... the programmer from time to time just codes up some data structures and checks them into the simulation as things the protagonist knows or as fulfilments of the protagonist's wishes or as shit that just happens.

I can even imagine a much better writer than me managing to pull that off in a compelling way, and I would probably consider the simulated world to be an example of a type-2 universe... but I acknowledge that that's at best a hair-splitting example, since I'm conceding that it's really embedded in a type-1 framework, and one can argue with justice that this is merely an example of the protagonist being ignorant of the real rules of his/her universe, which are rules about computers and so forth, and all of my talk about "the protagonist's universe" being different from "the programmer's universe" is just semantic tap-dancing.

Sophie's World is a variation of this that works, actually... the protagonist eventually discovers that she is a character in a book having a conversation with the author, and her universe just doesn't behave in any kind of systematic way because it's entirely a product of the author's imagination... but the only reason it works is because it's telling a very different kind of story, and it still suffers from the basic problem of making anything matter once you've established that ground rule (though it takes an interesting approach to solving that problem, I must admit).

Oh, I think I read Sophie's World. If it's the book I'm thinking of, it got its coherence from being essentially an allegory meant to teach the history of philosophy.

Probably the only way to make such a story work is to give it a poetic or allegorical underpinning that will lend it some sort of non-causal structure.

That's one approach, yeah, and a good one.

I can also see where a straight character story could work as well (though the question arises of why you'd even be bringing up the universe's fundamental ontology in a straight character story, admittedly).

But yeah, a plot-driven story would be exceptionally hard to tell in that sort of a universe without a whole lot of sleight-of-hand.

And, yeah, agreed about Sophie's World being an extended didactic allegory.

"I can also see where a straight character story could work as well (though the question arises of why you'd even be bringing up the universe's fundamental ontology in a straight character story, admittedly)."

Well, it may just be implied rather than stated. I think a lot of surrealism plays with the concept of a fundamentally non-predictable universe.

"But yeah, a plot-driven story would be exceptionally hard to tell in that sort of a universe without a whole lot of sleight-of-hand."

I'm wondering about something like Alice in Wonderland. Of course, we can also read that as allegory or character-driven.

I think a lot of surrealism plays with the concept of a fundamentally non-predictable universe.

Yeah, I suppose. At some point I guess it becomes a question of authorial voice more than anything else... if you write a story that hinges on the unpredictability of life, it arguably doesn't matter whether you're positing it as a fundamental objective ontological fact or whether you're just sympathizing with the subjective experience of not being able to predict what comes next.

I'm wondering about something like Alice in Wonderland. Of course, we can also read that as allegory or character-driven.

Sure, or as a dream story. (Which is kind of like an allegory, I guess, but lacks quite so clear a sense of what it's an allegory for.)

Then again, AinW never really gets into the underlying ontology of Wonderland... it simply doesn't matter to Alice, so it doesn't come up. Stuff just happens, and it doesn't make a lot of sense, and that's OK.

I'm reminded of Larry Niven's Inferno, in which an SF writer winds up traveling through Hell as portrayed by Dante. The protagonist spends most of the book trying to work out the underlying physics of what he assumes is some kind of Inferno-themed Disneyworld, and the underlying motives of what he assumes are the aliens who put him there, and finally just gives up in disgust and accepts the universe he's in at face value.

In other words, in any universe where magic works, magic is going to be observable and testable

-->That's a hell of an assumption right there.

This is why it's called "fantasy." Because you can make up the rules. And the rules might include "There are reasons things don't work at seemingly random times, but the denizens of this world haven't figured those reasons out." If it's something at an atomic level and they don't have particle accellerators, it's going to be a little hard for them to study.

I mean, science is not just about new discoveries; it's also about refinements of old discoveries. People were able to design and use mass-throwers (catapults, trebuchets, etc) long before Newton sussed out his equations. And at nonrelatavistic speeds, folks nowadays are perfectly happy to use Newton's good-enough equations rather than breaking out the more accurate, but square-root-laden, Einsteinian equations.

So why should it seem so strange that people would say, "Hey, this magic works most of the time, but sometimes it doesn't"? If it works often enough, well enough, then that'll do. If magic is rare, and the economy doesn't have a lot of extra resources, then who's going to bother establishing research facilities for it? I mean, it might be more sensible to accept that magic is a little wobbly, but right now we need to work on the more dependable issue of growing enough food to support the peasantry.

And if they do establish research facilities, are they necessarily interested in sharing that knowledge? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep that for themselves, and continue to promulgate the "magic is mysterious and hard" line amongst everyone else?

So why should it seem so strange that people would say, "Hey, this magic works most of the time, but sometimes it doesn't"? If it works often enough, well enough, then that'll do. If magic is rare, and the economy doesn't have a lot of extra resources, then who's going to bother establishing research facilities for it? I mean, it might be more sensible to accept that magic is a little wobbly, but right now we need to work on the more dependable issue of growing enough food to support the peasantry.

It doesn't seem strange at all. And, in fact, that was, I think, more or less the position of lots of people and cultures for a very long time--not coincidentally those people and cultures include the very societies fantasy authors like to draw on for stories.

And if they do establish research facilities, are they necessarily interested in sharing that knowledge? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep that for themselves, and continue to promulgate the "magic is mysterious and hard" line amongst everyone else?

Sure, why not? I never said otherwise. My point is not that fantasy is bad, or magic in fantasy is bad. Nor was my point that everyone in any given fantasy world ought to understand the mechanisms of whatever it is they're calling magic.

My point was, basing an entire world on the opposition of magic and technology is a fundamentally flawed idea, for really basic reasons. Clarke's Law is just a tidy, easily quoted explanation of why that is.

Okay, I think I see what you mean.

So then the question becomes, does tech really not work, or have the locals simply not developed it? Or does the tech work differently?

Someone upstream noted the Zelazny thing: gunpowder doesn't burn in Amber, but Earth's jeweler's rouge burns quick and works as an adequate substitute. One could say it handwaves away because Amber and all its Shadows are created on the basis of chaos--there literally are no rules, no physical constants, just local conditions.

I think I might understand your point more if you could provide me a concrete example. Have you read something lately where the writer declared, "Magic works here and tech doesn't"? Was this just the writer talking, or was it the narrator or a character?

Why would someone in a fantasy world know about our tech? Sixty years ago, the idea that someday ordinary people would be carrying around cheap devices that have more computing power than existed in the entire 1950s world was wild fantasy.

I haven't actually read much published work with the premise that "magic works instead of science." Partly because, I suspect, it's not tenable. The conversation I mention in the post happened on a message board, where the members were all working on novels, and people were describing the premise of their stories. One poster announced they were working on a story set in a world where "magic works instead of science," and when they were questioned answered that they'd meant that science=technology. So that, say, airplanes wouldn't fly, but vehicles powered by mana, or demons, or whatever, would. (I don't think the poster specified the nature of the magic, only that cars and planes and such would work by magic "instead of" science.)

I strongly suspect this author has never been published--subsequent conversation showed that they were...not in the habit of thinking out the implications of their ideas.

I don't mind handwaving, like in Amber. The existence of the handwaving tells me the issue was at least considered.

And I'm not criticizing fantasy, or some body of published work. Lots of fantasy has holes in its worldbuilding--including philosophical/scientific holes related to this issue--and I have no problem with it, so long as I enjoy reading it. Mithras knows, I've got a worldbuilding kink and I would be utterly unsurprised to have someone point out holes in my own worldbuilding. That's the breaks.

No, the post is really just a random indignant rant triggered by that memory, triggered by Rachel telling me I should post my reversed Clarke's Law (which was, I gather, triggered by her own thinking about the issue as she's working on a "magic is real in this world" fantasy). I tossed it off and went to bed and then...woah! :)

Why would someone in a fantasy world know about our tech? Sixty years ago, the idea that someday ordinary people would be carrying around cheap devices that have more computing power than existed in the entire 1950s world was wild fantasy.

This is, of course, an additional problem. In a society where "magical" means are preferred to mechanical ones (because it's really not possible that mechanical means won't work at all, not as a general principle) there's no real reason why magical tech would take forms that looked particularly similar to "real world" mechanical tech. Working that out could be really interesting, IMO--in a world where magic works, technological development will have taken a very different course than ours, and tech will look very different. That could be some really cool worldbuilding.

Specifically, space travel in such a world would be a wicked cool thing to ponder!

Actually, I'm writing book three of a trilogy with magic used to go to outerspace right now. It's probably another unpublishable flight of fantasy of mine, and in some ways a serious pain in the ass, because if magic is that reliable (you damn well don't want life-support spells failing while in a freezing cold near vacuum filled with solar radiation) and advanced, what is life like? Once I have the rough draft of book three finished, I'll start pitching the trilogy to agents and see if anyone bites. As I've been writing books 2 and 3, I have to keep going back to book 1 and making minor changes for the sake of continuity and foreshadowing.

Yeah, that's a real worldbuilding poser, isn't it. :)

Oh, I see what you're getting at, now. Yes, I quite agree--those sort of worlds are untenable unless the author specifically postulates that Randomness Happens Here. That tends to lead to surrealistic things, such as Alice in Wonderland or other "dream sequence" sort of stories.

It can also work if the author avoids the question altogether while remaining internally consistent, e.g. all those comic strips or cartoons with a talking animal character, but there are no other talking animals. It's one small change, and the fact that none of the characters notices it's weird is not asking too much of the reader/viewer's ability to suspend disbelief. I suspect that sort of thing works much better in a visual medium than in prose.

This may be semi-related to a conversation that happened a while back--I can't remember on whose blog--discussing magic being plentiful or rare in a fantasy world. I think if it's rare, an author can get away with a lot more handwaving and a lot fewer ripples in the worldbuilding. If it's common, the writer has a lot of work to make things internally consistent and follow their postulations to their logical conclusions.

That might well be why theology (which in the Middle Ages included science, philosophy, law...) reached its peak in the High Middle Ages. It was such a prosperous time that monks had to convince people to quit their jobs and be poor so they could fulfill their vows of charity. That was when Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon, three of the top brains in Catholic theology, did their work. To find a theologian more important than them, you have to go all the way back to Augustine, who had the benefit of a (literally) classical education. It was such a safe time that Albertus walked all over Europe interviewing herbalists (a less theologically confident future would call them witches) to collect data on local cures.

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