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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?
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?
I'd define it as the nonphysical controlling the physical. Math is one obvious example of such magic. Hence why Bacon, who originated modern science by rejecting teleology and promoting math, was an occultist.
By contrast, science is bottom-up--a continuing process of experimentation and analysis. Although scientists have varying beliefs, scientific literature normally makes starting assumptions only insofar as they are helpful to the process--like the (unproven but very helpful) assumption that physical processes obey consistent physical laws that don't change between experiments, or mathematical axioms and their resulting knowledge/methods. But all knowledge obtained scientifically should be held lightly and remain subject to falsification by further experimentation.
There's nothing wrong with top-down knowledge structures built on a set of starting assumptions, as long as we don't "catch" worldviews like the cold without subjecting them to truth tests like correspondence to reality and internal consistency.
It's slightly shocking to read this and realize how many outright falsehoods these people were being told. It's almost wonderful that knowledge advanced when people were being taught stuff like this by authorities ancient and modern: > Diodorus says, that near to the city Thebais in Egypt, when Nilus overflowing is past, the Sun heating the wet ground, the chaps of the earth send forth great store of Mice in many pla…
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..."
> At first it was thought that the uncleft was a hard thing that could be split no further; hence the name. Now we know it is made up of lesser motes.
> Some of the higher samesteads are splitly. That is, when a neitherbit strikes the kernel of one, as for a showdeal ymirstuff-235, it bursts into lesser kernels and free neitherbits; the latter can then split more ymirstuff-235. When this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of the whole, but nevertheless it is awesome.
> For although light oftenest behaves as a wave, it can be looked on as a mote, the lightbit.
[1]: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/complexity/people/studen...
It's slightly shocking to read this and realize how many outright falsehoods these people were being told. It's almost wonderful that knowledge advanced when people were being taught stuff like this by authorities ancient and modern: > Diodorus says, that near to the city Thebais in Egypt, when Nilus overflowing is past, the Sun heating the wet ground, the chaps of the earth send forth great store of Mice in many pla…
I ended up reading the lodestone section and realizing that it was a description of magnets.
In 1584, the magnetic compass would have been well known and understood, but the connection between electricity and magnetism was a long way off. Gilbert's De Magnete[4], which explained that compasses worked because the earth itself had a magnetic field, was published in 1600, not long after this book on "Magick."
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnes_the_shepherd
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesia_Prefecture
It's slightly shocking to read this and realize how many outright falsehoods these people were being told. It's almost wonderful that knowledge advanced when people were being taught stuff like this by authorities ancient and modern: > Diodorus says, that near to the city Thebais in Egypt, when Nilus overflowing is past, the Sun heating the wet ground, the chaps of the earth send forth great store of Mice in many pla…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd define it as the nonphysical controlling the physical. Math is one obvious example of such magic. Hence why Bacon, who originated modern science by rejecting teleology and promoting math, was an occultist.
Math is an invented tool. It controls nothing.
It's slightly shocking to read this and realize how many outright falsehoods these people were being told. It's almost wonderful that knowledge advanced when people were being taught stuff like this by authorities ancient and modern: > Diodorus says, that near to the city Thebais in Egypt, when Nilus overflowing is past, the Sun heating the wet ground, the chaps of the earth send forth great store of Mice in many pla…
Can't wait for computers to start actually understand text because reading 10 volumes where both the language and the way to think about things is - let's say - different is bloody hard.