Sunday, April 6, 2014

Science vs. Magic

I simultaneously love and cringe at the description of the difference between science and magic. Every SF/F author seems to place a slightly different slant on the distinction and I appreciate J.C.'s blunt delineation, while still leaving the door open for speculation. As a science teacher in a catholic school I am more familiar with the argument between the supernatural and science than I would like. I find the conversations tend to either describe incompatibility in a very antagonistic way or make a comparison that is overly simplistic. I appreciate I J.C.'s lamp-shading of the trope and attempt to expand upon it rather than just pulling an the Arthur C. Clarke quote and leaving there.
"'Magic, as in any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from…, or as in, like, ‘magic’ magic?' she asked. Bliss looked back and smirked. 'Yes.' Mad_Ana stopped walking. 'That’s not an answer.' 'Well,' Swords called, 'what do you believe it was? How do you explain it? ... The universe is a tapestry of weird, wily stuff that we—people— are still getting our heads around. That’s the point of science, to understand the grand tapestry...So, magic is a thread in all that. It’s part of the tapestry.' 'That doesn't make sense.' 'It doesn't have to,' Swords replied. 'It just is.' Creel and Mad_Ana looked at each other, mystified. 'Cuckoo,' Creel said. 'Belief is big medicine,' Swords said. 'Belief is the glue that keeps the universe together.' 'You mean gravity,' Mad_Ana said. 'I meant precisely what I said,' Swords replied."
So magic and science may be the same thing, but they may also be completely different entities/laws/universes/principles that perform similar functions. Clearly the main characters have no idea and Swords is giving the impression that the answer is somewhere in-between. I'd love to see this played out further, much later in the series. Hopefully from the perspective of a character who will change their previously help belief structure (or scientific understanding). For example, a random character questioning whether clones have souls is just another trope, but if the character in question was a priest who just found out he was a clone, that dynamic now becomes an internal struggle.

After seeing this idea being questioned again in episode three, I have high hopes that this will be explored in further installments.  As a reader I can suspend disbelief that magic works in a piece of fiction if there is a reason for magic to work to further the plot.  If the characters figure out how magic works, then that is simply science fiction.  Until that day comes I'll just ask the same question: How does that work?

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