Science Is Magic

[UltraBudgie]

Nautilus has an interesting essay today by Dale Markowitz:

How the Occult Gave Birth to Science

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased a trove of Isaac Newton’s unpublished notes. These included more than 100,000 words on the great physicist’s secret alchemical experiments. Keynes, shocked and awed, dubbed them “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.” This unexpected discovery, paired with things like Newton’s obsession with searching for encrypted messages in the Bible’s Book of David, showed that Newton “was not the first of the age of reason,” Keynes concluded. “He was the last of the magicians.”

When it came to fascination with the occult, Newton was hardly alone. Many contemporary scientists may cast aspersions on spells, mythical tales, and powers of divination. Not so for many of the early modern thinkers who laid the foundations of modern science. To them, the world teemed with the uncanny: witches, unicorns, mermaids, stars that foretold the future, base metals that could be coaxed into gold or distilled into elixirs of eternal life.

These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers.

[...]

This touches on a subject that I enjoy thinking about: Science is an emanation of magic. Or something greater. It does not exist in a vacuum, build by empirical observation alone. It is rather inspired, an apparently standalone system of reason, that is breathed through the human imagination and finds its own life in the mechanistic and secular world.

This can be seen in the papers of the great scientists. The original ones, where they break new ground. Not the summaries or restatements that are written later and put in textbooks, but the words where they first put pen to paper and create something new. There's almost always a hermetic undertone to it. A parallel complexity. They write about the large, which cannot be said, in terms of the material, of which we can speak. Schrodinger on colour theory. Newton on celestial motion. They were magicians, science was merely the new element with which they worked.

Although science today has become largely flat, commercialize, devoid of consideration of anything other than itself, this vitality remains. It can still be seen, and in fact can never be eliminated. The universe doesn't work that way. And it's heartening to see this being acknowledged, even if only at the academic fringes.

[Sirius]

Ja,  I see this going both ways.  

Science get's confined to religion and hidden when there is a hostile takeover of culture. We also purposefully destroy it and leave false trails.

Maybe Newton found the goldmine of fairytales or...where was his inspiration coming from?  Any mentions of channeling?

[Sirius]

Speaking about aura's the other day.

[DISRAELI]

Or, putting it another way, we can follow the argument of Sir James Frazier (third chapter of the Golden Bough) that magic is a kind of primitive science, trying to discover the workings of cause-and-effect in order to manipulate the world. Among their discoveries were the principles of imitation and contagion. "Imitation" being the principle that you can make things happen by doing something similar, e.g. pouring water onto the ground to encourage the rain to fall. "Contagion" being the principle that what you do to an item will affect something which it has touched; what you do to a hair might injure the person it came from, what you do to a knife might heal the person it injured. That is how, like the scientist, they were aiming to control the world around them.

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

[Maxmars]

"Magic" is a singular topic...

It's both the use of unintelligible means to effect a change in the 'way things are,' or a name for the actual power making the effect or thing.  It is sort of the epitome of an "explanation" that actually "explains" nothing.  As an almost surrender of reason, it stops most inquiry into what it was, or is, that is actually happening.

"Science" has become the flip-side of that same coin.  Everything has an explanation - this is a sacrosanct maxim of scientific reason.  It is essential to remember that a lack of a scientific explanation does not mean something doesn't, or can't, happen.  It only means that we don't know.

The natural manifestation of this is usually, if we can't explain a thing, or effect, we simply say "... It was like magic."  (The other side of the coin.)

While magic, to some is a "thing," to many others it is a "lack of a thing," namely, a scientific explanation.

Saying something is scientifically impossible, usually is taken to mean "Such a thing is impossible" rather than "We can't explain it."

As science is refined... more and more explanations surface, even if only expressed as 'models' and 'statistics.'  As the sum of our knowledge is expanded further (even if only theoretically) the potential for "magic" is diminished to an infinitesimal probability (but ironically, never verifiably zero.)

But we are discussing two labels, both of which represent how we embrace what we observe.
Each of these words have immeasurable baggage... steeped in materialistic pride, spiritual power, and even religious or academic prestige. 
Those factors taint many an analysis... bias creeping in through all the cracks in the foundation of reason not yet fully engineered.

Contextually speaking, human understanding is a crop still requiring cultivation...

[UltraBudgie]

Or, putting it another way, we can follow the argument of Sir James Frazier (third chapter of the Golden Bough) that magic is a kind of primitive science, trying to discover the workings of cause-and-effect in order to manipulate the world. Among their discoveries were the principles of imitation and contagion. "Imitation" being the principle that you can make things happen by doing something similar, e.g. pouring water onto the ground to encourage the rain to fall. "Contagion" being the principle that what you do to an item will affect something which it has touched; what you do to a hair might injure the person it came from, what you do to a knife might heal the person it injured. That is how, like the scientist, they were aiming to control the world around them.

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

I've heard the distinction made between "magic", "sorcery" and "witchcraft", too. I suppose it's a matter of labels, and intent, to a degree.

But you've got me thinking about imitation and contagion. The practice with tangible objects, okay. Tangible objects have persistence and objective observability. But can the same "magic" concepts be applied to non-tangible structures, such as words and ideas? Oh no, "meme magic"! Haha. It makes me wonder about advertising, which some have described as spellcraft. Manipulating contagion of mental association. Imitation of effect -- why did Joe Camel look the way he did? Contagion via the emotional voodoo doll of propaganda. And perhaps with science we're dealing with a more strict set of idea-structures, ones that require a certain consistency, a certain empirical uniformity. Does this "chase away" such magic? That is the devout hope of some. But perhaps, if that is something that can never quite be done, it merely "squeezes" the spellcraft to a higher level, wider and less determinable in effect. But not less powerful.

Something to think about, thank you.

[Maxmars]

I've heard the distinction made between "magic", "sorcery" and "witchcraft", too. I suppose it's a matter of labels, and intent, to a degree.

But you've got me thinking about imitation and contagion. The practice with tangible objects, okay. Tangible objects have persistence and objective observability. But can the same "magic" concepts be applied to non-tangible structures, such as words and ideas? Oh no, "meme magic"! Haha. It makes me wonder about advertising, which some have described as spellcraft. Manipulating contagion of mental association. Imitation of effect -- why did Joe Camel look the way he did? Contagion via the emotional voodoo doll of propaganda. And perhaps with science we're dealing with a more strict set of idea-structures, ones that require a certain consistency, a certain empirical uniformity. Does this "chase away" such magic? That is the devout hope of some. But perhaps, if that is something that can never quite be done, it merely "squeezes" the spellcraft to a higher level, wider and less determinable in effect. But not less powerful.

Something to think about, thank you.

... and you got me thinking...

Isn't memery very akin to sympathetic magic?  Like voodoo and other such things, don't memes carry forth a form and response which elicits a reaction by design?  Doesn't it carry "mind viruses" that linger and spread? Joe Camel has become a meme of sorts... 

Magic as a practice is a difficult thing.  It requires a diligence and focus of purpose that is never part of the new literature.  Classic magic requires a precision and degree of certainty that betrays most purposes.  From what I have gathered informally, a magician must be a particularly focused and somewhat isolated person.  I often wonder if that's true though, as some casual dabblers in the practice seem not to fit that image.

Science can be stringently demanding as well.

I wonder if there are any who are both scientist and magician?  Or are they the same... operating on different sides of the coin?

[85303]

This reminds me of a few things...

Firstly, music is magick (magik?)
It affects the human mind and the physical environment and can create, destroy, change just about anything if the mind allows.

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 just loose memories.  It would be amazing if someone else remembered these topics.  They all went through ATS at some point for sure

[AlienSun]

Excuse me, for barging in here, but I've seen no mention of the words of one of the greatest science-fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke, that nails the discussion here with what has been called Clarke's Law:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

[85303]

Excuse me, for barging in here, but I've seen no mention of the words of one of the greatest science-fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke, that nails the discussion here with what has been called Clarke's Law:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

I'd love to discuss if you have more than a few predictable predictions.  Seems sort of like if anyone here would comment on what quantum entanglement means for space travel or the basic human need revolution that is definately coming.  Sometimes we can with clarity predict what will without a doubt unfold but that in no way makes it an unlikely prediction or even worse as people believe this guy some kind of technological prophet.