(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

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

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?

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

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.