Quote:
Originally Posted by PTTG
I think the defining feature is that Magic involves an element of magical thinking. Sure, sure, mana and ozmic particles provide a sufficient handwave, but Magic is shaped through contagion and as above, so below. Of course, if that works when analyzed rigorously, they become natural laws and can be scienced... but if they vanish when examined, yet function in the field, you'd be hard pressed to unite it with scientific thought.
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Horace Mitchell Miner's 1956 "
Body Ritual among the Nacirema" caused the anthropological community to stop dismissing magic and seriously look on how people
thought it worked. Once they did that it was discovered that magic had a lot more in common with science then had been realized.
In a way, that paper was the grandfather of Isaac Bonewits'
Authentic Thaumaturgy with James Burke's
Day the Universe Changed as a kind of son.
Also this mindset ignore that science is divided into two main fields: hard (physical) and soft (social) and the mindset itself actually comes from a Newtonian way of looking at the universe...which was on life support at the end of the 19th century and got its plug pulled by Einstein in 1905.
I would like to point out the things you talk about appear as parts of the 26 Laws of Magic that Bonewits pulled out of the various cultures around the world. I see Law of Contagion and Law of Unity in your post and if those and some 24 other Laws can be hammered out by those who believe Magic works in
our universe where magic supposedly "vanishes when examined" then they would certainly be well known and used in a world where magic could be produced on demand with regular results.
Heck, Psychology and Psychiatry are sciences that study that most irregular of things: the human mind. And those two sciences have so many problems replicating their results that some regard them as psudosciences with no more validity then astrology. Binford and Dunnel spent over a decade debating if archeological and anthropologically if form and function have any constant relationship and with the high variance in human culture it is one of those things that there is no real answer to. History, even when you have well written records, is somewhat a grab bag.
This is the one thing people don't get about Science because they don't understand what it really is - it is a way to
model how it is
thought the universe works and when it comes to the social sciences having any kind of certainty is more a fluke then anything else.