(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

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's easy for folks to talk about primitive things being "medieval" or point to the superstitious stuff, or the errors of fact that can make you laugh--but when they sat down to think things out, medieval scholars (like any bunch of scholars) didn't mess around.

You could say that there was a sliding scale of technology and magic, rather than a hard and fast divide, and both were considered obedient to Natural Law, which in turn was obedient to Divine Law.

If magic works, then it has to be like that, more or less, doesn't it.

[paulwoodlin.livejournal.com]

This is why "The Essential Thomas Aquinas" is thicker and denser than "War and Peace" and reads like a law book while most of the theology books you find in Christian bookstores read like children's books. They took it seriously. And a Church intellectual (often a monk) could also be playing the role in their society of a professor, scientist, doctor, lawyer, or diplomat.