Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
Two words: Brandon Sanderson. He popularized the terms "Hard" and "Soft" magic system with Mistborn and the rest of the Cosmere. When people think of "Magic as science", they mean settings like the Cosmere where magic is basically a part of the laws of physics, and everything magical that happens in the setting can be explained by a particular application of magic.What does "magic like a science" mean?
This thread should probably be named "Should D&D's magic system be Hard Magic or Soft Magic". There is a spectrum, with some hard magic systems having soft elements (like the Knights Radiant from the Stormlight Archive) and some soft magic systems having hard elements (Bending from Avatar: the Last Airbender, for example), and there are even settings with both Hard and Soft Magic systems, but magic systems do generally fall into being "soft" and being "hard".