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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6226081" data-attributes="member: 4937">I entirely agree.   However, it's worth noting that lots of people in this world - even some very smart ones - operate cars without knowing how they work at all or in more than in a very vague way.  In the same manner, it's assumed that the vast majority of wizards in my world only know how to operate magic (say these words, with this tone of voice, while holding this thought in your mind, performing these dance steps, and holding you finger like this), but don't in fact know how it works at all or only in the most vague way.   Indeed, many might even hold erroneous views about how magic works, while still being able to perform it!Also, it's abundantly evident that since magic breaks the laws of this universe, that the universe in which magic is real and works must have very different laws!Very basic physical experiments in my world could be presumed to have very different results:Kinetic energy might increase linearly with velocity rather than with the square of it, which might explain why high level characters can survive falls relatively well.The Rumford experiment, if repeated, might observe that heat generated from motion is not inexhaustible.  The Lavoisier experiment might show that if a thing is burned, it's total mass decreases rather than increases.And so forth.  It is a mistake to assume that our understanding of physics greatly informs how the fantasy world of magic works.  After all, prior understandings of how the world worked - the same views that tend to inform the magical system, such as the existence of 4 classical elements - survived a great deal of casual inspection.  It is therefore reasonable to assume that such a world could conceivably superficially resemble or own, while still having a radically different set of governing laws (which we might be able to scarcely conceive, but which would be presumably understood by masters of arcane lore).</blockquote>

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