The scientific method is a tool for studying all that exists, no matter what exists. If the laws of physics had been different, the scientific method would still work. If we lived in a universe of dragons and crystal balls and elves, the scientific method would still work.
I know Yudkowsky is a dick and it’s cringe to like HPMOR, but I still really enjoy that Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality explored this fact. Other works of fiction using this theme include Spellbinder, Stargate, and Dr Stone. The idea of transplanting a modern day scientist in a world of wonder and magic and having them use the scientific method to master the Isekai’s strange rules is just endlessly appealing to Me.
That’s why I did it.
The scientific method can be used to study all that exists, and if magic exists (it does), then magic must be transparent to science. This shouldn’t be news to any serious scientist or philosopher. It should be obvious.
Nonetheless, there is a pop culture tendency to contrast magic with science. I’m reminded of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, where Thor was bad with technology and Iron Man hated magic. They would have frequent arguments on the subject, with Stark illogically opposed to using magic, and Thor unreasonably befuddled by computers. This kind of thematic divide is a trope, for some reason, and I don’t like it.
That’s why I loved when EMH subverted it by having an episode where Black Panther tells Stark and Thor to use magic and science together, and it’s the only way for them to beat the bad guy. Later on, Iron Man ends up traveling to Nidavellir and forging a suit of Uru armour with the Dwarves. Fucking awesome! And in the MCU, they sidestepped that whole drama with the line “your ancestors called it magic. You call it science. I come from a place where they’re one and the same thing.” That is excellent writing, and I really wish the MCU had delved deeper into that whole theme, which was clearly on the minds of the writers of Thor, when Jane pointed out the Arthur C Clarke quote:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Clarke is generally understood to have been talking about how well something has been explained, when he defines magic. If it’s foreign enough to your experiences that you don’t know how it works, it’s magic. But skeptics take it one step further: They say if something can be explained, it’s not magic.
And this is a tautological denial of magic. Science can explain all that exists. If science can’t explain something, it doesn’t exist. So we can simplify the statement “Magic can’t be explained by science” to “Magic doesn’t exist” with a simple substitution. To the skeptics, anything that exists can never be magic. It’s definitional. Magic is defined as nonexistent. And then they go to great lengths to prove that the thing they defined as nonexistent doesn’t exist, in an exercise I consider plainly masturbatory. There is no point to these endeavors when you’ve already defined the answer from your premise.
For a time, James Randi offered a 1 million dollar cash prize to anyone who could demonstrate “supernatural abilities” in a test environment. Supernatural means “beyond nature”. To a layperson’s definition of nature, My smartphone is a supernatural object, because it isn’t natural, it’s manmade. But a philosopher defines nature as “the world; all that exists”. So, Randi was offering his prize to anyone who could demonstrate abilities that definitionally do not exist. The criteria were busted from the start, it was all a grift. Randi would only ever accept applicants whose claimed powers didn’t exist. If someone brought a smartphone to one of his tests and said “This machine lets me google information”, they wouldn’t have won the prize.
The magic spell I used to change My body through meditation is scientific. Meditation may have a mystical air, but meditation is scientific and well-studied. My spell works by manipulating my endocrine glands with neural signals. No supernatural here. The hypnosis I’ve used for grownup fun times uses guided meditation and consent to enter an altered state of consciousness. No supernatural. My magic machine that allowed a partner to manipulate its sense of empathy at will used the placebo effect. No supernatural. All 100% scientific. And this shouldn’t be a surprise, because studying what exists is what science is for. To demand that spells be supernatural is to demand that they not exist. Believing in magic is, under this model, a choice. The independent variable in the experiment is your own belief.
So why choose to believe in magic? Because the idea of magic is powerful. It’s a tool for changing our other beliefs, and thereby our perceptions. There is no decent reason to throw away this powerful and valuable tool.
It’s like seeing a smartphone and smashing it with a hammer to prove magic isn’t real. Of course this “supernatural” object doesn’t work when you choose not to permit its existence. A phone is a physical object, so you deny its existence with a physical action. Magic is a social construct, so you deny its existence with a social action; changing a definition. You are the independent variable. There is no science without the actions and observations of the scientist. You get to decide how to collapse this waveform.
