Magic versus Science versus Magic

wow. Yesterday's blog was pretty scattered. I think I tried to express too many ideas too quickly. So I'll try to limit my topics to a single idea. Yesterday I said the theme would be magic versus science.

Okay. Magic and science. Both create an effect. "Hocus Pocus" or "throw the switch". What's the difference?

Science attempts to get to the verifiable source of reactions. If it can be explained and recreated in the lab, that's science.

So then magic is the opposite, right? I don't necessarily think so. If a magician sprinkles a mixture of sodium nitrate, sulphur and charcoal on an open flame, he'll get sparks. Does he understand the chemical reaction and the atomic weight of the compounds he used? Maybe not. That's gunpowder by the way. But our magician has identified compounds which will get verifiable results. He can do it again and again because he has a knowledge of powders and mixtures which get him his result. This kind of magician is more like an artisian, because his process depends on flash and patter. The guys who make their living doing this preferred to be called illusionists. Maybe because they don't hold any illusions of performing real magic.

So what about this real magic? The force? Summoning of spirits, elementals or demons? Most any rational person you meet on the street will laugh at the notion of real magic. We all know that the impossible things we see at the movies are CGI, and in books, flights of fancy. Okay, clearly there needs to be a delineation between illusion and real magic.

We could define real magic as some effect which, through the will of the magician creates an effect contrary to the seeming laws of nature. Yeah. That'll do.

But, less than two hundred years ago, the average person on the street couldn't tell you what lightning was. Maybe they would laughingly tell you that it was Zeus trying to kill a fly. Two thousand years ago, and that person explaining lightning wouldn't be laughing. They'd be serious about Zeus and the gods of Olympus.

So, it comes down to what a person, or culture understands about the world around them and how it changes from one state to another. The freezing of the river five thousand years ago was the magic will of the gods. Today we know it's due to the changing of the earth's average local temperature due to the seasons.

What if our person five thousand years ago saw something we couldn't explain today? We would both of us, ignorant man of yesterday and enlightened man of the future, would both consider calling it magic, only because we don't understand the process by which the effect occurred.

So science and magic come down to ignorance and knowledge. Maybe. Maybe not.

Can you explain to me how your microwave cooks your pasta? How your Blu-ray plays your Hi-def movies? We enjoy a lot of commonly owned things which we, mostly, understand only on the most basic terms. Kind of like magic.

And what if our science gets to a level where we can manipulate the world around us on an atomic level? Science may get to this kind of potence before you join your ancestors in the bone yard.

So when you create that living rabbit, seemingly out of thin air, from the molecules you've generated and arraigned by your nanotechnologic matter reconstruction matrix, just before you throw the switch, maybe you should say, "Hocus Pocus".

cheers,

KJH

Life from nanotechnology?

Look carefully at chapter three.