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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 8454695" data-attributes="member: 6704184">I think that if the bolded is true, and this was done using the scientific method, that person is a scientist, regardless of whatever else they also do.  Science wasn’t a term, so sure. I won’t get into the experiential observation elements (unverified personal gnosis in modern pagan parlance) of the mystic praxis, but it wasn’t quite as “woo” as it may seem from a modern perspective. They applied logical methodology to their mysticism. Quite sophisticated methodology, or “ritual technology”, in fact. Sure you are. You’re just also doing other stuff. They aren’t mutually exclusive. Even less so in a world where the mysticism not only works, but works predictably, and in ways that are deeply tied to how the universe works. Understanding how fire magic interacts with thermodynamics and with the mystical underpinnings of mortal and immortal consciousness and with the Plane of Fire, is all the same activity in D&D.  But even if the mysticism is separated from the rest, doing a mysticism doesn’t preclude also doing a science. I don’t think we were ever off topic, tbh.   How we are each using the term scientist is pretty central to understanding any part of the discussion.   Side note, about things like the “pun” nature of material components and the like. My way of looking at it with my gnome rogue/Wizard alchemist is that if bat guano and saltpeter can create an explosion of fire, he reasons, and is experimenting to test the idea, that some admixture of those materials must be associated on some natural or cosmological level with explosions of fire. We can hypothesize that this should be true because we have shown through experiment and through logical analysis that material components have a resonance with some part of the universe, either consciousness, cosmology, or material nature.   By understanding how the elements of spells interact and commingle to create the predictable spell effect, we can expand our understanding of nature, and this comes around to also then increase our understanding of the component parts of magic.</blockquote>

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