A Thought

[jgbrowning]

Yes there are. Whenever I cast X spell, Y effect happens. The relationship between my actions and the outcome are the pattern. The fact that different things connect my actions to the outcome each time does not nullify the pattern's existence. That fact is simply an additional piece of information about the pattern that eliminates certain kinds of explanations thereof.

I woudln't call a single action/reaction a pattern. I've always viewed a pattern as several different actions/reactions that share similiar traits. What I'm saying with my magic concept is that you can't use X than Y knowledge to extrapolate anything else except X than Y.

The model remains a viable system of physics as long as it predicts and explains outcomes in the real world.

I'm saying there can't be a model because there is no relation between disparate actions. The only model that can exist is X than Y. That's not physics. That just a statement. There is no more than one action/reaction and one action/reaction is not a system nor a model nor predictive of anything but one relationship. In otherworlds, the knowledge is useless.

But you are missing my essential point here: changing or different agencies do not nullify cause and effect. The fact that doing X causes Y is cause and effect regardless of the agency connecting these two events.

But again, just because X causes Y doesn't mean that knowledge is worth beans in relation to anything else in the system I described. The existance of one repeatable action/reaction doesn't mean there must be a pattern. In our real world, it does, but our real world is based on patterns as the causal force. A magical world could exist without using patterns as causal forces because I can simply say "This world uses magic without any patterns existing" and *poof* it's true, because its magic and it doesn't have to follow "real rules."

In Aristotelian physics, an object has a telos -- it has a place that it is meant to go, a set of things that are meant to happen to it based on its intrinsic nature. How this telos is effected is not always the same; but the object is nevertheless causally linked to outcome. The same is true in Taoist Chinese physics; change inheres in matter itself. The matter needs/wants to change and this change is predictable even though the agency of the change is unknown.

What you are doing here is this: you are saying that present-day, modern physics=physics; whereas other systems of physics=magic. This is why I really recommend you read Yates. The stigma attached to the term "magic" during the enlightenment is creating a false dichotemy in your thinking making you unable to conceptualize teleological models of physics with variable causative agencies (what you are describing) as a kind of physics.

If your argument is that physics is any belief system that describes matter and/or energy regardless of testable accuracy in the current day I can't refute it. However, physics as in "the science" is what I've been talking about. I understand there are other ways to describe action/reaction and some have utility, but none have ever been as accurate or as predictive as physics the science. I have to call the others beliefs. This isn't a denigration, but If i wan't an automobile to move, I had best use current physics and not Aristotialian or Taoist physics.

No. I am arguing there is a pattern because the correlation coeficient between casting fireball and having a fireball go off is 1.0.

To me a pattern isn't made through one connection. Its made through multiple connections that share similiar traits. I'm postulating a situation where all connections (all spells) share no traits with any others, but still function for their single purpose. I don't think a "physics of magic" (as described above physics as science, not belief system) could occur in such a situation because there's no way to link anything to anything else—no way to make any predictive statements except when "casting fireball" than "fireball".

Maybe this will go better when we discuss this in person. Truce?

Things always go better when discussed in person. Truce.

joe b.

 

[barsoomcore]

Is there some way to flag threads that fusangite rolls on? Cause I'm a sucker for his bling.



Fascinating conversation, folks. Thanks!