Any Sufficiently Advanced Magic is Indistinguishable
from Technology (so there!)

I'd like to talk today about technology, science, and
magic.

Science is that art of discovering out how things in
the world work through a rational process usually
known as the scientific method. It's make a guess,
then test it; glass beakers over Bunsen burners;
barometers tied to balloons; counting paramecium in a
drop of stream water; digging up Babylonian batteries;
control groups and double blinds.

I love science. I yearn to know the how and why of
everything. As far as I'm concerned the goal of human
existence should be to further the cause of science.

Yet by itself pure science is not terribly useful.

Figuring out π to another decimal place will not
help anyone do their taxes. Knowing how many protons a
copper atom has will not help you fix your car.
Science only becomes useful when someone does
something useful with it, i.e. when someone turns it
into technology. Technology is applied science.
Engineers take the theories and scribblings of
scientists and try to turn them into bigger buildings
and better mousetraps. Technology is levers and
pulleys; generators and motors; pipes and circuits;
missiles and plows.

Technology can be considerd a type of science.

Technology takes the raw discoveries of science and
refines them into that which better our lives
(hopefully). Science fuels technology; without the
discovery of new things technology would grind to a
halt (though we probably have a decent stockpile built
to last us for quite some time). Without quantum
mechanics we'd not have computers.

Technology enhances science as well. More advanced
science requires more advanced tools, which require
more advanced technology to build. We could not have
discovered eurokerotic bacteria or the moons of
Jupiter without microscopes and telescopes. So a
feedback loop is created, where new science makes new
technology possible, which in turn makes new science
possible. Together science and technology can spiral
ever outward into bigger and better things.

So where does magic fit into all of this? When we
don't know how something is done, we call it magic.
Magic is ancient words and arcane writings; grimoires
and shadow books; Loa and Manitou; chicken blood and
mandrake root; rabbits out of hats; soup out of
stones. A lot of people feel drawn to magic. It's
mystical and mysterious in all the ways science is
not. Why is this, and why should you care?

I'm going to tell you a secret now. It's something
most good scientists know, but most laymen don't think
about:

All scientific theories are wrong.

Or at least none of them are right, not 100%. Or
perhaps some of them are right, but science has no way
knowing which, so we must operate as if all were
negotiable. This is not a flaw of science, but rather
its strength. Science advances when its theories
advance, which could not happen if its theories were
viewed as already perfect. Because we are aware our
scientific model of reality is flawed, we can hope to
improve upon it.

Many scientists can tell you why the sky is blue
(Rayleigh scattering). A good number of these can
explain Rayleigh scattering in terms of electrons and
photons, and a few of those can generalize this
explanation to the behavior of fermions and bosons.
Yet no scientists can explain why fermions and bosons
behave in this fashion. It's magic! Science will
likely someday understand this behavior better, but
there will always be some fundamental principle to
which we'll have to say "it just is". Magic lives on
the frontiers of science; science might manage to push
back these frontiers indefinitely, but magic will
always wait just beyond.

Nor is this magic only found on the frontiers of
science. When you step into an elevator and press the
button marked "3" do you know how it takes you to the
third floor? It's magic! An elevator repair man might
know what sort of gross mechanical parts are doing the
work, but he very likely doesn't know how the engine
is constructed or why the pulleys pull. An engineer
might know these things, but quite likely does not
know the fundamental physical principles behind the
operation of these things, or exactly how these things
are put together to make the elevator move. A
physicist might be able to tell you about the
fundamentals, but little else of the process. In
short, no one person knows everything there is too
know about the operation of an elevator, yet we are
still able to construct working elevators. This too is
a sort of magic.

There is another type of unknown thing (aside from
undiscovered things and things know collectively but
not individually): things which we can't wrap our
logical minds around. There are conclusions we can
draw and concepts we can devise which we simply cannot
grasp on a completely rational level, eg. infinity;
paradox; love. Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem
proved that for any sufficiently complex system, there
will be valid statements within that system that
cannot be derived from that system. If our minds were
simply logical systems then there would always be some
things which they cannot comprehend, yet are still
valid.

Yet our minds are not completely logical systems. This
is often viewed as a bad thing (and often it is a bad
thing, for much pain and suffering is a result of
illogical thinking), but it has its benefits as well.
We are not simple Turing machines and thus are not
subject to the same halting problems] We can change
our viewpoint and "step outside the box". We have ways
of understanding beyond traditional logic. Humanity
has a grand tradition of dealing with that which is
beyond our comprehension and beyond our ken; we have
magic.

Science paints a good picture of reality. It is very
carefully conceived and thus its answers can be
trusted. Yet the picture is not complete, there are a
lot of important questions that science cannot answer.
Science can not tell you the meaning of life (though
it might help you actualize that meaning). It can't
tell you what love is (though it might tell you what
physical signs to look for). It can't tell you if God
exists (though it might tell you how God operates if
he did exist). It can't help you experience someone
else's feelings (though it might tell you what what's
happening in their brain while there were having said
feeling).

Magic provides a different picture of reality.
Sorcerers, witches, shamans, and priests have been
dealing with these sorts of questions for millennia.
They've been delving into the unknown and answering
the unanswerable (not to mention questioning the
unquestionable) long before Sir Francis Bacon. To get
a whole picture of reality (or more whole, anyway) we
need more then science and technology, we need this
viewpoint as well. We need touch that which is beyond
our current knowledge. We need to able to tap into our
collective unconsciouses. We need to be able to deal
with things we cannot understand. We need inspiration
to guide our scientific progress and give our
technological quest structure.

We need a little magic.

Magic is an attemtpt to master the unknown. The
scientific method is one way to do this. It's one of
the better ways, but is by no means the only way (or
even the best way in many situations).

Really, science is a type of magic.