Jack7
First Post
A Quantum of Solitude
I think this set of observations says something very important and intuitive about the similarities, and differences, between magic (at least as expressed in game terms) and science and technology. (As have some of the other previous observations on the questions I asked.)
Now I'm gonna tell ya my opinion of why magic is nothing like science and technology both in how it works and in how it would be perceived.
We (generally speaking) call magic a tech, merely because this is the closest thing we could relate it to, based on the parameters of how our modern world functions. But people who lived in a world in which magic operated sans a corresponding version of our science and technology would not only not think of magic as a "technology" they would have no means of controlling it like one.
In other words we only imagine magic would work like a technology because that's the only way we are conditioned to think of it. Those who actually lived in such a society would not think of magic as science. Because they would have no science to compare and contrast it by. But furthermore and far more fundamentally speaking, if magic did break the laws of physics (which the people in such a world would also not really be aware of in a scientific and technological fashion, but would be only vaguely aware of such "laws" and their breakage) then it would seem very likely that magic would break scientific and physical laws in most every respect, including, how it operated, was controlled or not controlled, what effects it produced, and how it was evoked, invoked, and stimulated. In any case it seems extremely unlikely it would operate by a formulaic process like this, Take A, Do B, Then C will occur, always in the same way and at the same instance and with the same effect, which ends up producing X, and that was the desired outcome all along.
We describe magic like this from our point of view, from a modern scientific point of view, not because it would really be likely to operate in this mechanistic fashion, but simply because we often lack the effort of imagination to try and imagine how it might really work (in any other way than our most common way of thinking, and in terms of our most obvious analogies to our paradigm of how we imagine the world to "really work.")
We imagine magic as science in another form and on a different world not because that world would really be different (if magic really worked on a different world like science does, as a technology, then that world would not really be different from ours at all, it would just be in a more primitive state of technological development, and the sconce merely proto-science, rather than magic), and not because magic would really be different, but simply because if magic were real then it would be so fundamentally different that few of us have ever exercised the real effort of imagination to describe just how exactly fundamentally different it would be. So we fall back upon easy analogies and simple paradigms and methods of conceiving of the world that are already familiar to us. (And usually uncritically unquestioned.)
Since we are discussing simple analogies and their effectiveness at disclosing or concealing the truth, then let me now use an analogy of my own. Suppose a Cro-Magnon individual were to encounter a modern jet fighter, like the Raptor, saw it flying over his head, performing maneuvers, perhaps strafing the ground, firing rockets. Think he would describe such a thing in technological terms? How exactly would he describe it? Devise new terms to accurately reflect the nature of his observations, or far more likely describe it in terms relative to his own and previous experience? (And why would he do the latter, because it would be more accurate, or because it would be easier?)
We do the same thing in reverse to magic.
Now could the Cro-Magnon man describe the Raptor (assuming he has a developed language) more or less accurately if he sat down and really tried to imagine how the thing might operate, what it really was and exactly what he had really seen. He certainly wouldn't be as accurate as the draftsmen who helped design it, or even one of us casually observing it in flight, but he could probably come much closer to the truth, be much more precise, than if he just said, "giant-fire-thunder-bird."
But we are really just in the same basic rowboat without an oar of truth as the primitive man when we try and describe magic in mechanistic, scientific, technological terms. Because if myth, and religion, and psychology, and stories from the past are any indication, any guide at all, then magic is anything but mechanistic, mechanical (in the modern sense), scientific, and proto-technological. Magic would rather be much more like a force arising from the souls of men, than from their minds, and only laziness of habit makes us try to imagine magic as a mental construct, as a paradigm of the mind (because we are a mind obsessed culture) rather than as a psychic (as the Greeks meant the term, to describe the soul) contract and a paradigm of the spirit.
We aren't able to even imagine the real possibilities of magic, as out ancestors could, because we are self-absorbed in our own view of the world. (I am not debating what view of the world is superior by the way, I don't consider the scientific paradigm either superior to, or inferior to, a psychaec paradigm.) And for that reason we also cannot imagine magic as intimately related to personal heroism. Because through lack of imagination we can only imagine it as technological in nature, and therefore cold, impersonal, and open to easy manipulation and exploitation from anyone and from any source.
(And this, by the way, explains where all of the Heroes went. Because when the magic of Heroes moves from being an internal force of character, of personal nature, and of the soul, to being a "technological force" then magic stops being magic at all, it becomes a mere mechanical contrivance. And Heroes are not creatures of technology, that is to say they can employ any technology available, but it is not the technology that makes them Heroes and it is not the technology that evokes magic from within. Magic cannot create Heroes, Heroes create magic. Because in at least one sense, they are magic. The Heroes, like magic itself, now slumber in an artificial womb of wires, gear-plates, cogwheels, and a precisely suspended chemical soup of how magic is weakly imagined. And you can cook up a lot of things with modern chemistry, but one thing you can't cook up with such a febrile recipe is a real Hero. The best you can do is just to create different versions of the same Clone. Heroes are cooked in the hot-kiln of personal struggle, not in the tepid tea-pot of impersonal technology.)
That isn't how our ancestors saw magic (that is, a modern construct or viewpoint of magic, that magic is separate from the user of magic, and indifferent to his fate). Even as late as the Arthurian legends magic was intimately connected to the user. It arose from his soul. No one else could effectively use Excalibur or the magic inherent in it because that magic was in some way directly tied to the nature, character, and soul of Arthur. Merlin's magic likewise came from within him. (For that matter so did Aragorn's, Gandalf's and Sam Gamgee's - the real hero of the LOTR.)
With science, all of the laws and principles come from outside ourselves. They operate external to our wishes. Gravity works on you regardless of your opinion of it. It is by learning to internalize the ideal of the objective that a man learns to harness and control forces and powers external to himself. Technology is the embodiment of learning to master external force and redirect it as one wills for useful purposes.
Magic is the exact reverse, if myth and so forth are any guide. Magic is the process of observing and then mastering the forces within an individual to render a unique and characteristic expression of internal force. But magic is not tame-able, as technology so often renders the external world. There always remains a "wild aspect" of the soul that makes magic very, very different from mechanistic, Newtonian physics. Magic can do the impossible, operates in an impossible way, renders impossible effects, and also remains untamed and uncontrolled. Magic is the embodiment of learning to master internal force and redirect it as one wills for greater purposes. We through lack of imagination describe it as a science, as controllable, as predictable, as technological, when in every way, from how it is invoked to how it operates it would be much more like "shock and awe." Not as a simple display of "shock and awe," not as visual cue nor a military metaphor of the precise application of force, but from beginning to end. From genesis to revelation, odd things would be occurring, things that could not be explained, predicted, or prepared for, in a scientific sense. (There is however perhaps one form of science which would have some parallel properties to magic, and that would be Quantum sciences. In some respects anyways.)
Magic arises from within the individual and so is heroically tied to the destiny of that individual. Only the outward expressions of magic become visible and manifest in a way that in some respects seems similar the operations of scientific principles, like electromagnetism, or the strong and weak forces. But that is an illusion, an appearance, a simulacrum, a phantasm of the mind that tricks modern men into thinking that just because a thing looks like something else it must be similar in nature, it must operate in the same way. That because a fireball looks like a big ball of plasma they operate the same way and are triggered by the same source. Hell, that's even bad science, it is certainly very bad magic.
Because magic is a Quantum of Solitude, not a quantity of science. It is intrinsic, not geometric. It arises from the souls of individuals, not from staves of dead wood and funny shaped crystals.
So games and game designers should go back to the true and original sources of magic, and discard the foolish notion that a Ring of Wishes and Radio Waves are the same kinds of things, just packaged differently. They are certainly not. Try this right now. Turn on your Wish Remote and wish yourself into being Conan the Barbarian. See how this world, and the principles that govern it, work differently than magic?
Now, does anyone honestly imagine that describing magic in terms of electromagnetic spectra, neutrino wave transmission, and technological artifaction is the very best way to describe how magic would operate if it did operate?
If you do then I gotta Portable Hole made out of an atomic singularity I'd like to sell ya.
I think this set of observations says something very important and intuitive about the similarities, and differences, between magic (at least as expressed in game terms) and science and technology. (As have some of the other previous observations on the questions I asked.)
Now I'm gonna tell ya my opinion of why magic is nothing like science and technology both in how it works and in how it would be perceived.
We (generally speaking) call magic a tech, merely because this is the closest thing we could relate it to, based on the parameters of how our modern world functions. But people who lived in a world in which magic operated sans a corresponding version of our science and technology would not only not think of magic as a "technology" they would have no means of controlling it like one.
In other words we only imagine magic would work like a technology because that's the only way we are conditioned to think of it. Those who actually lived in such a society would not think of magic as science. Because they would have no science to compare and contrast it by. But furthermore and far more fundamentally speaking, if magic did break the laws of physics (which the people in such a world would also not really be aware of in a scientific and technological fashion, but would be only vaguely aware of such "laws" and their breakage) then it would seem very likely that magic would break scientific and physical laws in most every respect, including, how it operated, was controlled or not controlled, what effects it produced, and how it was evoked, invoked, and stimulated. In any case it seems extremely unlikely it would operate by a formulaic process like this, Take A, Do B, Then C will occur, always in the same way and at the same instance and with the same effect, which ends up producing X, and that was the desired outcome all along.
We describe magic like this from our point of view, from a modern scientific point of view, not because it would really be likely to operate in this mechanistic fashion, but simply because we often lack the effort of imagination to try and imagine how it might really work (in any other way than our most common way of thinking, and in terms of our most obvious analogies to our paradigm of how we imagine the world to "really work.")
We imagine magic as science in another form and on a different world not because that world would really be different (if magic really worked on a different world like science does, as a technology, then that world would not really be different from ours at all, it would just be in a more primitive state of technological development, and the sconce merely proto-science, rather than magic), and not because magic would really be different, but simply because if magic were real then it would be so fundamentally different that few of us have ever exercised the real effort of imagination to describe just how exactly fundamentally different it would be. So we fall back upon easy analogies and simple paradigms and methods of conceiving of the world that are already familiar to us. (And usually uncritically unquestioned.)
Since we are discussing simple analogies and their effectiveness at disclosing or concealing the truth, then let me now use an analogy of my own. Suppose a Cro-Magnon individual were to encounter a modern jet fighter, like the Raptor, saw it flying over his head, performing maneuvers, perhaps strafing the ground, firing rockets. Think he would describe such a thing in technological terms? How exactly would he describe it? Devise new terms to accurately reflect the nature of his observations, or far more likely describe it in terms relative to his own and previous experience? (And why would he do the latter, because it would be more accurate, or because it would be easier?)
We do the same thing in reverse to magic.
Now could the Cro-Magnon man describe the Raptor (assuming he has a developed language) more or less accurately if he sat down and really tried to imagine how the thing might operate, what it really was and exactly what he had really seen. He certainly wouldn't be as accurate as the draftsmen who helped design it, or even one of us casually observing it in flight, but he could probably come much closer to the truth, be much more precise, than if he just said, "giant-fire-thunder-bird."
But we are really just in the same basic rowboat without an oar of truth as the primitive man when we try and describe magic in mechanistic, scientific, technological terms. Because if myth, and religion, and psychology, and stories from the past are any indication, any guide at all, then magic is anything but mechanistic, mechanical (in the modern sense), scientific, and proto-technological. Magic would rather be much more like a force arising from the souls of men, than from their minds, and only laziness of habit makes us try to imagine magic as a mental construct, as a paradigm of the mind (because we are a mind obsessed culture) rather than as a psychic (as the Greeks meant the term, to describe the soul) contract and a paradigm of the spirit.
We aren't able to even imagine the real possibilities of magic, as out ancestors could, because we are self-absorbed in our own view of the world. (I am not debating what view of the world is superior by the way, I don't consider the scientific paradigm either superior to, or inferior to, a psychaec paradigm.) And for that reason we also cannot imagine magic as intimately related to personal heroism. Because through lack of imagination we can only imagine it as technological in nature, and therefore cold, impersonal, and open to easy manipulation and exploitation from anyone and from any source.
(And this, by the way, explains where all of the Heroes went. Because when the magic of Heroes moves from being an internal force of character, of personal nature, and of the soul, to being a "technological force" then magic stops being magic at all, it becomes a mere mechanical contrivance. And Heroes are not creatures of technology, that is to say they can employ any technology available, but it is not the technology that makes them Heroes and it is not the technology that evokes magic from within. Magic cannot create Heroes, Heroes create magic. Because in at least one sense, they are magic. The Heroes, like magic itself, now slumber in an artificial womb of wires, gear-plates, cogwheels, and a precisely suspended chemical soup of how magic is weakly imagined. And you can cook up a lot of things with modern chemistry, but one thing you can't cook up with such a febrile recipe is a real Hero. The best you can do is just to create different versions of the same Clone. Heroes are cooked in the hot-kiln of personal struggle, not in the tepid tea-pot of impersonal technology.)
That isn't how our ancestors saw magic (that is, a modern construct or viewpoint of magic, that magic is separate from the user of magic, and indifferent to his fate). Even as late as the Arthurian legends magic was intimately connected to the user. It arose from his soul. No one else could effectively use Excalibur or the magic inherent in it because that magic was in some way directly tied to the nature, character, and soul of Arthur. Merlin's magic likewise came from within him. (For that matter so did Aragorn's, Gandalf's and Sam Gamgee's - the real hero of the LOTR.)
With science, all of the laws and principles come from outside ourselves. They operate external to our wishes. Gravity works on you regardless of your opinion of it. It is by learning to internalize the ideal of the objective that a man learns to harness and control forces and powers external to himself. Technology is the embodiment of learning to master external force and redirect it as one wills for useful purposes.
Magic is the exact reverse, if myth and so forth are any guide. Magic is the process of observing and then mastering the forces within an individual to render a unique and characteristic expression of internal force. But magic is not tame-able, as technology so often renders the external world. There always remains a "wild aspect" of the soul that makes magic very, very different from mechanistic, Newtonian physics. Magic can do the impossible, operates in an impossible way, renders impossible effects, and also remains untamed and uncontrolled. Magic is the embodiment of learning to master internal force and redirect it as one wills for greater purposes. We through lack of imagination describe it as a science, as controllable, as predictable, as technological, when in every way, from how it is invoked to how it operates it would be much more like "shock and awe." Not as a simple display of "shock and awe," not as visual cue nor a military metaphor of the precise application of force, but from beginning to end. From genesis to revelation, odd things would be occurring, things that could not be explained, predicted, or prepared for, in a scientific sense. (There is however perhaps one form of science which would have some parallel properties to magic, and that would be Quantum sciences. In some respects anyways.)
Magic arises from within the individual and so is heroically tied to the destiny of that individual. Only the outward expressions of magic become visible and manifest in a way that in some respects seems similar the operations of scientific principles, like electromagnetism, or the strong and weak forces. But that is an illusion, an appearance, a simulacrum, a phantasm of the mind that tricks modern men into thinking that just because a thing looks like something else it must be similar in nature, it must operate in the same way. That because a fireball looks like a big ball of plasma they operate the same way and are triggered by the same source. Hell, that's even bad science, it is certainly very bad magic.
Because magic is a Quantum of Solitude, not a quantity of science. It is intrinsic, not geometric. It arises from the souls of individuals, not from staves of dead wood and funny shaped crystals.
So games and game designers should go back to the true and original sources of magic, and discard the foolish notion that a Ring of Wishes and Radio Waves are the same kinds of things, just packaged differently. They are certainly not. Try this right now. Turn on your Wish Remote and wish yourself into being Conan the Barbarian. See how this world, and the principles that govern it, work differently than magic?
Now, does anyone honestly imagine that describing magic in terms of electromagnetic spectra, neutrino wave transmission, and technological artifaction is the very best way to describe how magic would operate if it did operate?
If you do then I gotta Portable Hole made out of an atomic singularity I'd like to sell ya.
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