Kid Charlemagne said:
I think I'm kind of assuming internal consistency as a given, and just wondering what route one takes to get there.
Myself, I'm fine with the idea that physics work as normal, and Magic breaks the rules - or perhaps just appears to break them, recalling Arthur C. Clarke's famous dictum about sufficiently advanced sciences.
Usually, cultures that believe in a category called "magic" believe that it is, in some way, systematic. People come up with theories about what causes magical effects and these theories are, typically, in some way related to their theories of how everything else works.
It is actually quite rare to have a system of physics that is not only unrelated to the magic in the world but, in fact, contra-indicates it. So, I really have to disagree with the idea that worlds in which the physics specifically contra-indicates the functioning of magic are internally consistent.
I think people just use this Arthur C Clarke quote as an uninterrogated hand-wave for things it really wasn't designed to justify. If I saw someone cast Fireball of Bloor Street this week and I knew there was a scientific explanation for it, I would naturally reason that some aspect of modern physics was incorrect. If someone cast Lesser Planar Ally in my Spanish course, this piece of information would tell me that modern quantum physics needed immediate amendment.
That is a reasonable interpretation of Clarke. But seeing someone cast Fireball and saying "Wow! That must be very advanced science," and have that piece of information in no way inform the science in which I believe is not in the spirit of Clarke at all. So, having D&D magic and modern physics comfortably cohabiting with neither commenting on the other is not something this quotation can justify.
I find it difficult to answer some questions that get asked here in regards to "how things work" in a game world because one has to know (roughly) the baseline of "reality" in the world in question.
I think that if a GM doesn't know that, he hasn't spent enough time building his world.
I personally like the idea of using Aristotlean physics to explain things, and considered doing this way back in the late 80's (around the time I studied this in school) but I found there to be two issues: My own understanding of the subject, and that of my players. The less I need to explain to them about how things differ from the "known", the better.
I run games with Aristotelian physics; they don't require much explanation at all. Aristotle was enough of an empiricist that most of his physics are more self-evident that the modern explanations for the same phenomena. I'd give it a whirl! You would be surprised how easily players adapt to it.
