(no subject)

[ann_leckie]

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

Comments

[paulwoodlin.livejournal.com]

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.