Magic vs science
Jan. 28th, 2012 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI read a thing about how there's no children's TV being made that somehow turned into an ad for RTD's newest venture half way through. There's no new TV, except his! :eyeroll: ... one is a good point if it's true, combining them is advertising in an outrage wrapper.
ANYway
RTD says "Magic and science fiction are never combined." And the article reckons "At the core is an ideological clash as the two boys argue over the separate worlds of magic and science, such as the existence of spells versus, say, laser technology."
Aaaaand I start getting annoyed at RTD again already. ... I admit, it may be reflex by now.
Science fiction posits a universe of repeatable phenomena with rules that can be investigated and mastered through rational enquiry. And that is why it is not usually combined with magic. If magic does the same, repeatable and rules based, it is merely sufficiently advanced science. Or, possibly, making shit up about nonscience, depending how you look at it. If magic acts in a scientifically verifiable way then it is science with a funny hat on.
RPG magic is very frequently science in a funny hat. It's the rule system. You can figure out how magic works and exactly why it acts that way. Often it throws in a new sort of energy being manipulated as its explanation. Simples.
But magic does not have to act that way. It doesn't have to be repeatable, rational, or possible to investigate. It can be miracles, whims of god or the universe, unique artistic expressions of the soul, emotional and metaphorical and resonant. It doesn't fit in RPGs that way unless you make the system spectacularly bendy. The competing paradigms of Mage: the Ascension look great in the book but I've no idea how they work in play. Possibly quite a lot like repeatable rules?
You can't argue the existence of spells any more than you can argue the existence of laser technology, not once you can show they actually work. Neither is magic vs science ideology. But that's just the article trying to summarise. Maybe it won't be that tiresome in practice.
Magic as sufficiently advanced science isn't new. Science fiction with magic in it isn't new - see Jedi! And don't tell me they're not doing magic, it fits all the definitions. Doctor Who has had magic, demon summoning, all the trappings, it just has the Doctor standing there saying it's all science in the end. Plus urban fantasy is very frequently science fiction, with a near future biopunk sort of thing going on, alternate earths and the impact of biotechnology vying with magic for the major shaping force.
So basically RTD's statement is flat wrong. And irritating.
But if you try and combine science with the kind of magic that you can't repeat or prove... well that'd be kind of like having one person use antibiotics and one person wave their hands about and both claiming the win if someone gets better. That would be much much more annoying. But that's getting more into philosophy, I'm sure there's people who think it's important to give equal time to the possibility of unrepeatable hand waving interventions.
Other magic systems can involve appeals or invocations or control of noncorporeal beings. There's some urban fantasy that does interesting stuff with the idea of demons as an alien race, who happen to interface with humans through the rules of magic. They've got a psychology of their own and they're not about the human moral framework. That's like SF with a funny hat on. Interesting. Or there's plenty of SF with the usual god like aliens set, and plenty of fantasy that just calls them gods, granting powers either way.
I honestly can't think of a single paradigm of magic that hasn't been combined with science fiction. There's tons of things that combine them.
Plus of course for some centuries most people have been thinking in a science-dominant mindset. Like, we're not just reading the universe for signs that god likes us, or assuming the world is this way just because the big beard in the sky says so. We ask questions and expect the answers to explain the world. It's not a magic frame of seeing.
I have no objection to mixing the trimmings of magic and SF. Looking for answers in old books vs looking for answers in a lab? No vs! Do both. Works plenty. You get all sorts of shiny possibilities out of it. And you can combine someone being very good at maths and someone being very good at poetry, for a science plus incantations kind of thing. Play to different strengths.
I would very greatly object to drawing the line somewhere between looking for answers and just being born with them. I mean, there should be studying and asking questions and talking to people and finding out the rules. If the magic can just ignore all that and point at the world and, I don't know, fireball the world into submission, that would be a problem.
But I'm not criticising a TV show that's not made yet. I'm just saying, magic and science fiction mix. A lot. Famously, even.
It's annoying to ignore that.
ANYway
RTD says "Magic and science fiction are never combined." And the article reckons "At the core is an ideological clash as the two boys argue over the separate worlds of magic and science, such as the existence of spells versus, say, laser technology."
Aaaaand I start getting annoyed at RTD again already. ... I admit, it may be reflex by now.
Science fiction posits a universe of repeatable phenomena with rules that can be investigated and mastered through rational enquiry. And that is why it is not usually combined with magic. If magic does the same, repeatable and rules based, it is merely sufficiently advanced science. Or, possibly, making shit up about nonscience, depending how you look at it. If magic acts in a scientifically verifiable way then it is science with a funny hat on.
RPG magic is very frequently science in a funny hat. It's the rule system. You can figure out how magic works and exactly why it acts that way. Often it throws in a new sort of energy being manipulated as its explanation. Simples.
But magic does not have to act that way. It doesn't have to be repeatable, rational, or possible to investigate. It can be miracles, whims of god or the universe, unique artistic expressions of the soul, emotional and metaphorical and resonant. It doesn't fit in RPGs that way unless you make the system spectacularly bendy. The competing paradigms of Mage: the Ascension look great in the book but I've no idea how they work in play. Possibly quite a lot like repeatable rules?
You can't argue the existence of spells any more than you can argue the existence of laser technology, not once you can show they actually work. Neither is magic vs science ideology. But that's just the article trying to summarise. Maybe it won't be that tiresome in practice.
Magic as sufficiently advanced science isn't new. Science fiction with magic in it isn't new - see Jedi! And don't tell me they're not doing magic, it fits all the definitions. Doctor Who has had magic, demon summoning, all the trappings, it just has the Doctor standing there saying it's all science in the end. Plus urban fantasy is very frequently science fiction, with a near future biopunk sort of thing going on, alternate earths and the impact of biotechnology vying with magic for the major shaping force.
So basically RTD's statement is flat wrong. And irritating.
But if you try and combine science with the kind of magic that you can't repeat or prove... well that'd be kind of like having one person use antibiotics and one person wave their hands about and both claiming the win if someone gets better. That would be much much more annoying. But that's getting more into philosophy, I'm sure there's people who think it's important to give equal time to the possibility of unrepeatable hand waving interventions.
Other magic systems can involve appeals or invocations or control of noncorporeal beings. There's some urban fantasy that does interesting stuff with the idea of demons as an alien race, who happen to interface with humans through the rules of magic. They've got a psychology of their own and they're not about the human moral framework. That's like SF with a funny hat on. Interesting. Or there's plenty of SF with the usual god like aliens set, and plenty of fantasy that just calls them gods, granting powers either way.
I honestly can't think of a single paradigm of magic that hasn't been combined with science fiction. There's tons of things that combine them.
Plus of course for some centuries most people have been thinking in a science-dominant mindset. Like, we're not just reading the universe for signs that god likes us, or assuming the world is this way just because the big beard in the sky says so. We ask questions and expect the answers to explain the world. It's not a magic frame of seeing.
I have no objection to mixing the trimmings of magic and SF. Looking for answers in old books vs looking for answers in a lab? No vs! Do both. Works plenty. You get all sorts of shiny possibilities out of it. And you can combine someone being very good at maths and someone being very good at poetry, for a science plus incantations kind of thing. Play to different strengths.
I would very greatly object to drawing the line somewhere between looking for answers and just being born with them. I mean, there should be studying and asking questions and talking to people and finding out the rules. If the magic can just ignore all that and point at the world and, I don't know, fireball the world into submission, that would be a problem.
But I'm not criticising a TV show that's not made yet. I'm just saying, magic and science fiction mix. A lot. Famously, even.
It's annoying to ignore that.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 09:59 am (UTC)Take Q, in Star Trek. He is, for all practical purposes, a magical being; a trickster archetype with powers incomprehensible to the crew of the Enterprise.
Actually, RTD's description of the two protagonists made them sound awfully like Scully and Mulder, if Scully and Mulder were 16 year old boys. And since the interesting thing about the X-files dynamic was the woman=scientific/rational and man=intuitive,open to a wider range of non-knowable ideas it's rather reductive to make them both male, imno.
Still, as you said, it hasn't been written yet.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 08:42 am (UTC)reclassifying seems most likely, but yeah, it does make it sound like they read a tiny corner.
Q is totally a trickster spirit. his stories are always be careful what you wish for things.
Yes to all that Mulder and Scully stuff. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 12:09 am (UTC)RTD sure is full of himself. Also, two boys arguing? Seriously, only boys get to play with F&SF? Again? [wanders off grumbling about closed-minded sexist nitwits, and I'm being polite here]
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 02:41 pm (UTC)though if there was a guy and a girl then you'd end up with a different sort of gender fail as it would make it a gendered argument about magic vs science. If the girl was magic that's a cliche and if the girl was science she'd be all wrong about there being no magic so she'd be wrong all the time.
still, better to exist, I feel.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 03:58 pm (UTC)I've become very sensitive to that sort of thing; comes of spending so much time reading atheist/feminist/skeptic blogs, I'm afraid.
ETA: Oh, I see, the failure is in the actual design of the show. Even worse. I guess F&SF really is only for boys. Somebody tell that to my daughters, and for that matter, me, and my mother. Grumble.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 04:02 pm (UTC)It sounds like show design at this point, yeah. But since it's an invisible show that doesn't exist yet, *shrugs*