Er...sorry. I mistyped. It was supposed to say intercontinental. According to the lexicon, intercontinental apparation is beyond the abilities of the average wizard.

I used a straight line to simplify the math (no centripetal acceleration) and to be generous on the distance. That section is meant to show how, under the magic-is-energy model, a witch who will soon learn to apparate being praised for reducing a desk to dust with a reductor curse is absurd. It was not intended as serious speculation on how apparation is carried out.

On the 12,000 kilometers of rock: If I had to speculate out of my ass, I'd say the spell displaces the wizard out of the way of any obstacles in an axis of motion other than the three we are familiar with. Or, mabye it works like the Knight Bus, but much faster.

I think magic is best considered as a form of the proverb, "Knowledge is Power," taken to its logical extreme. It must be predictable and quantifiable in some way, else seven years of Hogwarts study and the entire discipline of arithmancy would be useless. But at the fundamental level, magic is the ability to do almost anything imaginable, as long as you know, at least in theory, how it would be carried out. For example, you could mix carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, and make LSD, knowing only the proper trasfiguration spell and the chemical structure of LSD. So far, the only canon magic we've seen that requires any preparation or capital equipment is potion brewing, unless you want to call a wand 'capital equipment'.

 

But people do try to understand why they do, and believe they can, I expect.

Well, not sure about that, as I said.

The idea of the scientific method is that you observe, infer and then attempt to falsify, or something, right? Well what if you can't infer? Saying 'every time you do this wand movement and this incantation this is what happens' is not a model, it's just observation. The true power in science is predicting the existence of Neptune by observing the orbits of other planets. The idea is that with any amount of information from a wizard a muggle could not make the critical inference. I am wondering whether I should think a wizard could.

Magic is by definition supernatural. That is not me, it is the dictionary speaking. If it were to obey laws, they would not be those of nature. But I agree that if it were to obey laws, the question as to whether they are those of nature or not is pointless. How do you define the difference? Hence, I see the definition as saying magic does not obey laws.

That is exactly what I am debating against. The whole concept is that no amount of study allows to understand it. The examples you draw are pointless as you draw them in science.

I am wondering about a 'second brain theory'. My view on magical theory right now is that parallel to muggle intelligence, wizards have a 'magical intelligence'. In the same way logic is needed in muggle science, any 'science' relating to magic would need this magical sense. Suggesting a muggle could study magic with science and the help of a wizard would then be like suggesting a tree could reason scientifically if he were able to communicate with a muggle.

Heh, Orson Scott Card reference there.

 

This is certainly an odd bit of reasoning.

Basically, you're saying that when science meets something that science cannot explain, then science changes and adapts its method to be able to explain said thing.

A paradigm shift, as it were. From the scientific paradigm to something else. If science has had to change its paradigm to take something into account, then it's not science anymore, it's Science 2.0.

There are some things science cannot explain. If science changes into something else to be able to explain it, this does not mean that science was able to explain it all along. It means that some new method of explanation has come about to explain it, and people have just happened to call it science.

Let us apply this to magic (assuming HP magic as true).

Science as it currently is is unable to explain magic.

Science changes to account for magic.

"Science" can now explain magic.

But it isn't really science any more - not as we knew it. It's something completely different under the same name.

So to say "science can explain magic, once it has changed into something else, thus magic is scientific" is a bit of a meaningless comment.

And this is all assuming that magic is able to be explained. I'm of the opinion that it can't be.

There's a difference between being defeatist and knowing your limits. Science cannot give an answer to everything. I would have thought you, as a philosopher, would have known this. Science cannot prove the assumptions that it is based upon, nor can it speak on anything outside the realm of consistent physical empirical phenomena - something that magic isn't.

It sometimes has consistency to it (most spells will work the same way every time) but at it's base level it isn't.

It effects the physical, but it isn't physical itself.

Its effects can be perceived empirically, but the magic in itself cannot.

Science can no more investigate magic than it can investigate God. It could theoretically investigate the shadow of its effects - just as you could theoretically investigate the statistical effects of prayer - but it can never say anything about the thing itself, because magic, just like God, is by definition beyond the natural.

All of your arguments are starting with the assumption that magic isn't actually magic, and that magic is just a word given to the unknown (e.g. the still unknown Quantum physics). But in a world where magic clearly exists - the HP world - and is not something merely unknown, but something by nature separate from the natural, this breaks down.

Admittedly, all my arguments start from the point of "magic is magic", but I hardly feel this is in as much a need of justification as yours.

Actually, no. Most of the time, yes. But sometimes, the unexpected happens. I'll give four examples:

1. The Weasley car coming to life for no reason.

2. JKR's saying:

That means that you could have all the same components of the situation, but something different happen. The very definition of random.

3. Wands are semi-sentient. Magic has, in many senses, a mind of its own. It follows rules most of the time, but the random does occur.

4. As said earlier, how magic behaves depends on the person using it and thus its rules will vary as much as the people using it.

No it isn't. Again, this is your underlying assumption, which is nonsense. What you just said was "The supernatural is part of the natural".

...

The same problem still exists. If you're on the border between one continent and another, it can be a very short distance. I think it's far better just to say that apparation gets less accurate over longer distances.

 

Agreed; magic, by definition, cannot be explained by science. So wouldn't it be more accurate to say:

 

I suppose it's really two ways of saying the same thing. Either science has to become magical to explain magic (my "it isn't really science anymore"), or magic has to become scientific to allow science to explain it (your "it isn't really magic anymore").

Of course, it's the very idea of "magical science" or "scientific magic" that I'm objecting to, as I would say they're both oxymorons.

 

For a more disturbing question, does the serpensortia spell create life? Harry actually talked with the snake in CoS. He gave it orders, and it obeyed. The "frog card" chocolate frogs each have one jump in them, but that doesn't necessarily indicate life - in fact I just dismissed it as the magical equivalent of an electrical charge causing a frog leg to twitch.

But Draco Malfoy's snake seems to pass the Turing Life test. If we can't tell the difference between conjured life and conceived life, then magic has taken a major leap into truly scary territory.

 

The ability of magic to "create life" is well established. And really doesn't belong in this thread. In fact, I know for a fact that there's a lot of discussion on it in the transfiguration thread.

 

Sorry, Taure.

 

Actually, the only question is: can muggle scientists do 'magic' without having it cast by a wizard. It really comes down to that (and this is where the debate originated). The question of whether science changes or magic changes or whatever pedantics is pretty irrelevant. Science is best defined pragmatically: the theories don't give us absolute truth, but as long as they work and have not been superseded then it is science. I do think that there is the concept of reason and understanding mechanisms engrained in science, but perhaps that is more a characteristic of scientists than science itself.

Wanting to make magic unpredictable and irrational is nice, but it's hard to grasp and not necessarily easy to reconcile with canon.

Science trying to make models about magic is fine, but crucially, I believe they will be useless, because you need to be a wizard to do anything relating to magic, including studying it in a useful manner. If this were not the case, then magic would be a word for whatever we can do without understanding, which is what Modrac believes, I expect.

Edit (I just realised I didn't actually answer Taure's post explicitly): No, it is not two ways to say the same thing.

 

Iz stealz ur genes and takez ur magicz!!!!! (Sorry, had to say it.)

BTW, I don't even know if wizards have a clue about what magic really is.

In fanfiction we are always making up our own magical theories because there doesn't seem to be one in Harry Potter. In Harry Potter, you wave a wand, say a few words (or you wave a hand and say them in your head) and something happens.

They never seem drained from the magic, but, instead, they are drained merely from the physical exercise of running and battling. Spells are never to hard for someone because of some amount of 'magical power' that it would take to cast a spell- which would therefore give it the ability to be studied with numbers- but rather because they just haven't practiced the spell enough.

Wizards like Dumbledore are not magically powerful, but simply experienced, intelligent, and powerful in a sense of willpower and character.

I think I might have begun rambling, but the point was that not even wizards seem to look into magic deeper than just 'point a wand and cast a spell'. There doesn't seem to be something to study beside 'This spell has this effect if cast right'. (It can also, because it is magic and therefore not uniform, do tons of other things if you cast it wrong such as burning the item or making it shoot off in a random direction or turning it into a buffalo).

 

Department of Mysteries, remember. I think it is the case that wizards don't know what magic is, but I don't think it's true that they don't try to study it.

 

No, Taure, they study 'types' of magic, like love magic and time magic, but they can't study magic itself. What I mean is exactly what you and oephyx are saying: You can study the effects (and the many artifacts in the DoM would be 'effects' of magic), but you can't study the magic itself.

 

The magic gene is a ghost gene. Invizibl

Doesn't mean there isn't a clue to be had.

Modrac would argue that they don't have the tools to study it at the small article level, or something stupid about how muggles have no clue what strings really are.

Or, they study the magic but just get the effect and not the origin. Taure is probably correct, they try to study it.