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Natural Magick (1584)

faculty.umb.edu

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Re: Natural Magick (1584)

#51

Post by NewBiGthing »

krapp wrote: post #45
dr_dshiv wrote: post #2

What is a good definition of magic? Does magic necessarily NOT exist by definition, or do many/most/all forms of it not exist due to empirical results? Does magic that works become science?

Magic is simply religion by another name. The belief that the natural world is governed by a supernatural world and that the latter can affect the former through divine intercession (theurgy) or human will and ritual (thaumaturgy) is, essentially, basic religious belief. What tends to happen with the semantics is "our" practice is considered "proper religion", and "theirs" is "pagan sorcery."

You are stupid, Have unnecessarily complicated the answer to make yourself sound more sophisticated which you are not. Magic simply is an art of illusion and a bit of science. Where Human sensory perception is exploited to target messaging. That in-order to achieve desired experience and results.

Re: Natural Magick (1584)

#52

Post by Merrill »

>"The Unicorn is allured by scent."

>Tretres writes, that the Unicorn so hunts after young Virgins, that he will grow tame with them. And sometimes he will fall asleep by them, and be taken and bound. The hunters cloth some young lusty fellow in maids cloths, and strewing sweet odors on him, they set him right against the place where the Unicorn is, that the wind may carry away the smell to the wild beast. The hunters lie hid in the meantime. The beast, enticed with the sweet smell, comes to the young man. He wraps the beast's head in long and large sleeves. The hunters come running, and cut off his horn.

http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281b/Ph...

Re: Natural Magick (1584)

#53

Post by dmix »

Merrill wrote: post #52

>"The Unicorn is allured by scent." >Tretres writes, that the Unicorn so hunts after young Virgins, that he will grow tame with them. And sometimes he will fall asleep by them, and be taken and bound. The hunters cloth some young lusty fellow in maids cloths, and strewing sweet odors on him, they set him right against the place where the Unicorn is, that the wind may carry away the smell to the wild beast. The hunter…

Wow, I'm genuinely curious what the inspiration for such writing was. Are there hidden metaphors or analogies like other mythical beasts?

Some things don't change. The only big separation historically is what was allowed to be written on paper, scolls, and tablets when doing so was rare and expensive. But we still get some perspective on the human mind in the popular mystical characters and stories people invented.

Re: Natural Magick (1584)

#54

Post by maliker »

api wrote: post #3

A modern version of this should be written in this exact style: "On the generation of diverse animals and plants through descent with modification..." "Of the refinement of the silicate ores and the arrangement of circuits thereon..." "Of the splitting of the atomes to obtaineth warmth, light, and terrible destructive forces whose mere possession shall discourage all enemies from waging war upon thee..."

There's a clever software engineering resume out there in the same style (and also in the style of Leonard da Vinci's resume): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086527

Re: Natural Magick (1584)

#56

Post by Zanni »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #42
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing and another thing just exist. They don't perform abstract operations on one another. They may engage in physical interaction but that behavior is only modeled by mathematics. There is nothing to do a "plus" without man to account for it. It is not an inherent attribute of the universe.

The Pythagoreans believed the underlying substance of the universe was not water, air or fire but math. It is, I'd argue, the modern world view. The key difference between hydrogen and helium, for instance, seems to be a matter of number.

So does Max Tegmark [0], who believes the multi-verse is literally made of math, but I wouldn't say that's the modern world view. Most believe that math is our best tool for understanding reality, but that reality maintains an independent existence.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe

Re: Natural Magick (1584)

#57

Post by yters »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #29
yters wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it sounds like some aspects are not invented.

As a knowledge structure (axioms and theorems), math is absolutely invented. The fact that it often corresponds to our experience of reality is a consequence of thousands of years of refinement with the goal of making it describe reality as closely as possible while remaining internally consistent. But that doesn't make it any less invented... just a very helpful tool for modeling reality.

It seems you are confusing the mathematical language with the concepts themselves.

Re: Natural Magick (1584)

#58

Post by TimTheTinker »

yters wrote: post #57
TimTheTinker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a knowledge structure (axioms and theorems), math is absolutely invented. The fact that it often corresponds to our experience of reality is a consequence of thousands of years of refinement with the goal of making it describe reality as closely as possible while remaining internally consistent. But that doesn't make it any less invented... just a very helpful tool for modeling reality.

It seems you are confusing the mathematical language with the concepts themselves.

You’re stretching my thinking — thanks for that. It can be hard to delineate the difference between the properties of reality itself and a knowledge structure, built by people, that undeniably corresponds very closely to reality and is internally consistent — the two tests for truth.

I think we can both agree that reality (the physical universe) is well-ordered, self-consistent, and eminently logical in its operation. (Side note: my own belief is that it exhibits these qualities because it reflects the character of its Creator.)

And yes, it obeys certain concepts with absolute constancy - which we have worked to discover and which our mathematical language describes.

But I still maintain that the math and physics knowledge we have is at best limited and at worst an incomplete set of poor approximations. Because they cannot (and I maintain they won’t ever) account for everything we observe, or answer every question we have about the universe, and because its axioms have led to all sorts of abstract structures that have no relation at all to anything ever observed, I still think it’s fair to call math “invented”.

That being said, the real concepts we attempt to grasp in what we observe of the universe are clearly vastly superior to our comparatively small efforts to understand and model them.

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