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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mordhau" data-source="post: 8509930" data-attributes="member: 7032137">I think whether magic is a science is a bit of a red herring.The whole purpose of psionics is to be a more scientific form of magic, and that only makes sense with reference to our science - real science.  Of course, that doesn't mean that it is generally scientific or plausible it's about where it draws it's aesthetics from.  D&D magic (Like Terry Pratchett's magic in discworld) is often metaphorically science, but that is a different thing.When I use psionics to agitate the molecules in my arm to change it to grow claws, I'm am referring to a real world understanding of physics to explain what is happening.When I draw on the 'scientific' principles of magic to enchant a ship that flies in the air on the understanding that a ship can be made to fly more easily than a castle because the ship already floats and therefore the principles of sympathetic magic make it easier to turn it into something which can fly based on the concept of 'as above so below' I am definitely not referencing our real world understanding of physics.Basically if the underlying assumption is that material objects are built out of atoms and molecules and that space and time are intrinsically the same and gravity is related to the mass of objects then there's a distinct difference than if the world is a disc on the back of four elephants standing atop a giant turtle swimming through a void.Now if you have D&D magic and psionics in the same setting you do indeed have some kind of clash, but how you explain it?...Well D&D has never really tried to explain it, and the current edition is probably less interested in attempting to provide a model of a coherent world than ever, so you'll probably be on your own there.</blockquote>

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