|
Post by watergypsy on Feb 4, 2011 1:10:14 GMT
Hello folks, this is from a convo I was having with a friend the other day. My belief is that natural processes are magic. Instances like a little acorn growing into a mighty oak or snowdrops knowing it's spring. His stance was that if it can be measured and explained it's not magic it's science. I was wondering what peoples thoughts were on where the two met?
|
|
marcus
Earth Dreamer
Posts: 14
|
Post by marcus on Feb 4, 2011 10:36:42 GMT
It's rare for me to agree with Dawkins but I think Keats was being stupid when he wrote the above. The more we understand, the more we appreciate the beauty of the multiverse.
But I think, with respect, you're both using funny definitions of magic & science.
Science isn't either the natural or physical world - it's a method of gaining knowledge about the natural and physical world and you're right - nature is magical but that doesn't necessarily make it magic (at least if you want to reserve something real which we can call "magic")
Science sometimes comes into for a hard time among some pagans - personally I think most would do well to read more books on science and less books on magic. If they did they'd discover that the so-called reality we believe in doesn't really exist and the multiverse is a very strange place - in fact one you can't really express in language beyond mathematics.
Again - the multiverse is indeed strange, beautful and magical. Maybe it provides enough for explain magic - I don't know. I dislike second rate magicians using third rate physics to explain their wish fulfilment fantasies.
Can magic be explained by science? Maybe one day but at the moment we're having quite enough problems trying to explain how a single photon exists (or doesn't - maybe at the same time).
Marcus
|
|
|
Post by robur on Feb 8, 2011 8:51:08 GMT
I always watch a regular gardening program on the BBC on Friday nights. A couple of weeks ago, the program was presented by a woman called Carol Klein. She used the word 'magic' numerous times throughout the program. She went into a wood and the wood was 'magical', the ferns were 'magical', and then she went home, and her garden was 'magical', and she sowed some seeds and everything was magical.
A large number of ordinary people, especially women, do feel that nature is magical.
A slightly different view is held by some women, who believe that they themsleves cause the seeds to grow. That is called an 'inflation' - when a person has an unrealistic perception of their own self-importance.
I'm a man, and I can germinate seeds. You simply follow the instructions on the packet. It's nature that is magical; it's not me.
Does science devalue our perception of the magic in nature?
Science and technology are driven by the male will to dominate and to control.
Men have always wanted to control nature. There's the popular school-history legend of King Canute, who tried to command the sea. That's an inflation, an egotistical self-delusion.
Today, if a man wants to control nature, he becomes an engineer, and builds bulldozers, railways, airports, and nuclear weapons. Yesterday's 'magicians' were deluded and completely harmless; they just got their feet wet. Today, their descendents, engineers, are powerful and dangerous. And 'magic' is no longer a joke.
Along with the rise of technology goes a loss of respect for nature. Many planners would think nothing of bulldozing a wood to make a shopping centre, or a path for a motorway.
|
|
|
Post by watergypsy on Feb 11, 2011 13:55:30 GMT
Thankyou both, I will get back to you, you have given me things to think about! But I am not very good with language and I need a bit of time to think about this one.. (The debate with my friend included quite alot of alcohol and thus wasn't very productive anyway!) plus I haven't explained it well at all! Anyone else with thoughts?
|
|
marcus
Earth Dreamer
Posts: 14
|
Post by marcus on Feb 11, 2011 15:11:54 GMT
Men have always wanted to control nature. There's the popular school-history legend of King Canute, who tried to command the sea. That's an inflation, an egotistical self-delusion. It's hard to pass this by. Actually the story of Cnut the Great is an example of the opposite of egotistical self delusion. As you say - Cnut stood before the waves and commanded them to stop. However, he was a converted Christian prior to his Kingship. When the waves failed to stop at his command, he said "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws." & then hung his crown on a cross as a sign of who was the King of Kings. (or so the story goes) At least the Historia Anglorum makes it clear that Cnut's action was staged to demonstrate the limits of his power, not the reverse. Marcus
|
|
|
Post by robur on Feb 13, 2011 8:15:32 GMT
Yes, that's absolutely correct. The conclusion is true at whatever level the story is interpreted.
Canute was king of Denmark, England, Norway, and parts of Sweden. He provided this demonstration as the clearest possible statement that medieval Norse 'magic' was meaningless.
The contrast between 'natural magic', and the willful acts of men who want to dominate nature, is illustrated in J R Tolkien's story 'The Lord of the Rings'.
The elves, and the Lady Galadriel, represent 'natural magic' - as understood today, by many women, and by a few men. On the other hand, Saruman and Sauron represent willful men, intent on domination, building machines, who don't care if they destroy nature.
Gandalf stands between the two. In modern terms, Gandalf is a man who could have been a successful physicist, but instead, has the wisdom to turn his back on the deceptive attractions of technology, and decides to live a life in the country.
The way to begin to understand Paganism is not to 'read more books'. It is to experience nature.
|
|
tim
Earth Dreamer
Posts: 24
|
Post by tim on Feb 13, 2011 21:15:49 GMT
I'm surprised that no one has asked the question "what do I/you/we mean by magic? So, ...? It's difficult to answer the science question without defining it.
As a reference point, what practices, events and outcomes would you consider to be magic? For example, do you consider Reiki to be magic?
I thought I would check a standard definition. The word itself is defined in the OED (taking out the stuff not relevant to this topic) as:
- the power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces
Origin: late Middle English: from Old French magique, from Latin magicus (adjective), late Latin magica (noun), from Greek magikē (tekhnē) '(art of) a magus': magi were regarded as magicians.
|
|
|
Post by robur on Feb 14, 2011 8:33:53 GMT
I would not describe Reiki as 'supernatural'. To my mind Reiki is pyschosomatic medicine.
There are numerous reliable and well documented examples of (Western) psychotherapy being able to cure physical ailments.
Also, one has to be extremely careful in attempting to translate Eastern modes of thought into a Western mentality. What works in the East may not work in the West, simply because Westeners do not have the appropriate cultural background and mindset.
In the previous posts, I gave engineering as being an example of the fullfillment of the medieval magician's aims.
But modern medicine can also be considered to be an effective application of science to the problem of healing. Today, if you want to heal people, you train and become a doctor.
I think most pagans would agree that bulldozers and nuclear weapons are a 'bad things'. But modern medicine, and some of it's implications, is far more controversial. Now man can almost become God, and create life, and take over what was once woman's sole prerogative.
Some people would claim that modern medicine is a curse. But you may well know of people, dear to you, who are only alive because of modern medicine.
One of the first practitioners of the scientific method was Francis Bacon. He compares probing nature with instruments to reveal her secrets with the forced interogation of witches to reveal secrets. Bacon calls this 'the masculine birth of our time'. Bacon wanted to show that the domination of nature by men was the legitimate aim of science.
|
|
|
Post by robur on Feb 16, 2011 9:38:31 GMT
I'd like to clarify a point of possible confusion about 'magicians' and 'magic'.
We need to be aware that myths are stories, and are not historical reality.
For example, in the Christian Bible, there are stories of how Jesus Christ turned water into wine, and how he turned a few loaves and fishes into enough food to feed a multitude. These are metaphors. They are not descriptions of real events which actually happened.
In the Hebrew Bible there is the famous story of how Moses commanded the Red Sea to open up, and many other stories of 'magic'. There is a story of a magic contest between Moses and Aaron and the magicians of the Egyptian court, turning sticks into snakes. All of this is not literal historical fact. They are stories. In this particular case, these stories were composed many years after the Hebrews had left Egypt, purely to make a case that their God was more powerful than the old Egyptian gods. The reality is that no real sticks were ever actually turned into real snakes.
|
|
|
Post by summerstorm on Jul 16, 2011 0:01:39 GMT
I do not see science and scientists as trying to control but as trying to learn, to increase their knowledge of the magical world around them. This knowledge enables them to intervine in natural processes, sometimes for a good, sometimes for bad but mostly i think it is much more grey than that. I think it is divine/magical that we have the capability to think, to question, to rationalise to make discoveries and to utalise these. I think science is magical, because nature is magical and therefore we are magical.
|
|