Science Is Magic

[Sirius]

This is different from reliigion. Reliigion makes requests from spiritual powers. Magic gives them orders.

The disagreement sitting with "them", what answers the call? How is it commanding nature?

[Byrd]

I'm being a cranky grump today (not much sleep, which makes me more reactive), but I note with a cynical eye that people point out the Famous Exceptions -- and toss everyone else into the "never heard of them, therefore they're all rigid thinkers and stuck in the box thinking."

The alchemy of yore wasn't what we think of today, and the idea that alchemy was a huge impact on science isn't well thought out and ignores scientists of a much earlier age, including Aristotle and Hero of Alexandria (among many others) who shaped and formed science.

...but mostly I'm tired of hearing this about scientists by people using tools created by scientists on a platform that was created by scientists using electrical energy created by machines designed by scientists and components designed by scientists.

I'mma gonna go pet my cat now.  She's not a scientist, but she appreciates me, as long as I clean the litterbox and feed her.

[UltraBudgie]

Some points I was thinking about:

• This "magical infusion", of the inexpressible transcendental overlay upon the tangible, is not something that is only seen in the works of the "great" (famous) scientists. It's something that permeates the practice of science (and the arts too! as if there's a difference!) at every level.
  
• "Science", as a larger cultural phenomena does not equate with "the work of scientists", perhaps in the same way that "The Military" does not equate with "the work of soldiers". We can look at the larger whole as an emergent phenomena (the beehive).
  
• It's counterproductive to get too focused on who is in MagicianClub™ and who is in ScienceClub™. Dichotomies don't help, and often only fuel sociological projections. Specific examples to help explain can be good though. There's lots!
  

Additionally, two points now: First, science will always have frontiers, and areas beyond itself that it is blind to. Currently, I think one of those is what can be called "magic", including non-local, acausal, and fundamentally unobservable phenomena. I think in 100 science will have a better understanding of those things that we can only imagine vaguely right now. If you want to see where science will be in the future, look at what it insists now doesn't exist, yet persists culturally. Second, "science" in a larger sense has been used historically as a weapon and tool, much as rhetoric has. We can perhaps peek behind the curtain somewhat and see how this is done, now that a post-truth modern context is available for discussing such things. No one's head is going to explode at the idea of an intractable ulterior any more, right?

[DISRAELI]

The disagreement sitting with "them", what answers the call? How is it commanding nature?

I've had to go back to the chapter again, because I was quoting the theory from memory and possibly over-simplifying. For a lot of the chapter, he is arguing that religion recognises conscious agents over nature and magic tends not to, attempting to manipulate nature directly. So "them" is not really distinct from the natural world.

But then I came across the paragraph which I was obviously remembering when I referred to "commanding spiritual powers".He mentions various societies, from ancient Egypt to India, which developed a belief in conscious gods but even so regarded them as coming under the control of magical procedures, He quotes Egyptian magicians threatening gods with destruction if they are disobedient. He quotes a saying "everywhere current in India"; "The whole universe is subject to the gods; the gods are subject to the spells; the spells to the Brahmans; therefore the Brahmans are our gods". It is in that context that he distinguishes between the arrogant attitude of the magician and the humble attitude of the priest. (This is p52 in the abridged edition)

[Sirius]

I'm being a cranky grump today (not much sleep, which makes me more reactive), but I note with a cynical eye that people point out the Famous Exceptions -- and toss everyone else into the "never heard of them, therefore they're all rigid thinkers and stuck in the box thinking."

While looking for interesting figures I did feel it's kind of pointless because any search I do on the internet will just bring back controversial figures. Like Crowley and Parsons.

Can't spend a week doing research and write a thesis for a forum post, so it's just shooting from the hip.

@DISRAELI I was actually referring to the phenomena of nature going haywire when magic is afoot. Animals behaving weirdly, air pressure being effected (wind) stuff like that and then there is the effects on people.  Think crop circles, fairy rings etc also.  There is a visceral effect on nature/reality.

If we are not talking about that and those entities, are we talking about latent psychic powers in humans or what is the mechanism that effects change?

Personally I think looking for science in magic is worthwhile, who knows where all the myths and legends comes from.  Maybe some lost knowledge can be resurfaced.

[Creaky]

I'm being a cranky grump today (not much sleep, which makes me more reactive), but I note with a cynical eye that people point out the Famous Exceptions -- and toss everyone else into the "never heard of them, therefore they're all rigid thinkers and stuck in the box thinking."

The alchemy of yore wasn't what we think of today, and the idea that alchemy was a huge impact on science isn't well thought out and ignores scientists of a much earlier age, including Aristotle and Hero of Alexandria (among many others) who shaped and formed science.

...but mostly I'm tired of hearing this about scientists by people using tools created by scientists on a platform that was created by scientists using electrical energy created by machines designed by scientists and components designed by scientists.

I'mma gonna go pet my cat now.  She's not a scientist, but she appreciates me, as long as I clean the litterbox and feed her.

Keep petting your cat, not going to make you any less grumpy but

Science has its roots in religion

The Influence of Christian TheologyMethodological naturalism is a convention that has been around really only since the late 19th century. Science actually got started in a very explicitly theistic—indeed Christian—milieu. The period of time that historians call the Scientific Revolution is roughly 1300 to 1700. There's debate about when it actually started and how much the Protestants versus Catholics were responsible, but clearly theological ideas—Christian theological ideas—had a huge in the formation and foundation of modern science.

https://www.crossway.org/articles/how-ch...n-science/

just that modern day scientists deny anything that isn’t their sacred “cash” cow, oh look, let’s endorse/sell covid vaccines, proven by “our” science

some say they are not religious though are always proselytising their faith and I do know some scientists ?

[UltraBudgie]

Secondly, the English language was crafted by magicians.
​​​​​i really don't remember fully but many years ago when I spent time reading about all things magical I came across an expose of sorts that named the original makers of the English language as masters of magick, masons who wanted to control the world used magik to create a language wherein all people would nullify their own potential through intricate words they didn't understand.  Good luck finding a link.  This is one of the things that the internet didn't keep.

​​​Lastly science is a rebranding of magick, so it can be used as necessary to corral belief which provides powerful magicians the energy needed to make their works.

This is true, English is full of shadows, polysemes, homophones, occult symbolism. One reason why it's great for poetry. Entire systems of double meaning. There's secret societies that claim to hold the keys, and scrolls to decipher them. Maybe they each have a piece of the whole picture. Perhaps no one has it all. Was all this deliberately created? It seems implausible, at least by human measure. Even Sanskrit has it. More like it is intrinsic to what language itself is. Hermeticism isn't an epiphenomena. Science is.

Maybe the "past life review" in some theologies is more of a "total perspective vortex", where it is finally made clear to you what was really being said. Talk about cringe. If so, best to get it out of the way in this lifetime. Could be the difference between heaven and hell.

[DISRAELI]

@DISRAELI I was actually referring to the phenomena of nature going haywire when magic is afoot. Animals behaving weirdly, air pressure being effected (wind) stuff like that and then there is the effects on people.  Think crop circles, fairy rings etc also.  There is a visceral effect on nature/reality.

If we are not talking about that and those entities, are we talking about latent psychic powers in humans or what is the mechanism that effects change?

Personally I think looking for science in magic is worthwhile, who knows where all the myths and legends comes from.  Maybe some lost knowledge can be resurfaced.

Sir James is talking about the belief systems of primitive peoples. Except when they are trying to injure an enemy, their magical practices are normally about constructive things like getting crops to grow, bringing game animals to a place where you can kill them, and curing people's illnesses.

As for the mechanisms, I've already mentioned how he analyses their practices as involving pseudo-scientific assumptions about the way nature works and trying to make use of the assumed mechanisms which he calls contagion and imitation. That is, you can make things happen at a distance by what you do locally (pouring water onto the ground to emcourage the rain) or by what you do to something which has belonged to a distant person.

This resembles science in that they are exploiting what they understand to be natural mechanisms, and the transition to science started happening when people began to realise that these assumptions were based entirely on the imagination, and this was the real reason why the magic failed so frequently. That prompted them to be more observant and start looking for the real mechanisms.

[Sirius]

Awesome, yeah that makes sense.