No we don't. And herein lies the crux of your problem. Canon or not, anything that concurs with contemporary science goes. The whole purpose of this thread is to prompt an intellectual debate -- and basing your arguments on some half-baked idea JKR once had rather defeats the purpose.

HOLY S@#$!

So you decide to forgo modern genetics for JKR's word? Your logic is seriously flawed.

Reckon, eh? Like it or not, DH is canon.

On that note, does anything JKR said in an interview count as canon-compliant? Because I'm sure I've never seen the word 'genetics' come up anywhere in the books ...

 

Considering she wrote HP, then it would seem reasonable. Even if you only consider the books as canon, interviews are valid points. Also, the question 'is magic explainable by science' pops up when you mention forgoing modern genetics. If it can be explained, then you're right and genetics should be considered. If not though, and that's what I believe, then genetics matters very little.

 

Rowling said there's a gene, so there is a gene. Try and find insane fanon explanations for it all you like, but the basic, canonical truth is that there is a magic gene. It doesn't fit contemporary sciences, so it is a magical science that Rowling was too ignorant to explore in depth. Create your own magical genetics for it.

Lol. Well, that just totally fucks up my point. The only natural parseltongues we know of have some connection to the Slytherin line, be it blood or Horcrux bonds.

 

What the hell is Alchemy, Sesc? We are in the fictional world of Harry Potter where magic is indeed a gene so that's what you have to work around. Same reason you have a Ginny Kill-off to get the dumb bitch out of the way instead of just making her disappear entirely.

 

i think ur wrong lol

1. Actually, you did ask for my personal opinion (indirectly). It's not like this is some science here, everyone has an opinion about where magic in HP comes from, so it's naturally personally biased. There is no objectiveness to this. You can try to use some textual evidece from the books, but none of the characters are geneticists, so we only have intuition and Rowling.

2. If Harry can speak parseltongue, then he must be related to Voldemort .. right. It's passed on through a magical accident, so obviously this trait is more than a gene.

3. Harry does not have incredibly powerful parents, yet they give birth to a child which can defy a much greater power. Of course you could argue Harry's great-great-great grand uncle was Merlin, or something, so it justifies that, but Harry's kids could all be squibs or average magic practioners... as far as we know, the accumulation of magical ability is haphazard.

 

Note that Harry never really had the ability to speak parseltongue at all: the ability lay within the soul piece of Voldemort inside of him.

This seems to me to be confusing two points: the ability to use magic and how good one is with magic.

That one has the ability to use magic in the "on" position, as it were, is what the gene would do. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the magic gene is some kind of magic factory which somehow "produces" magic. It's just a switch which makes a person magical, rather than not.

So how good you are at using magic seems to be a completely different question.

And for the record, I'd say that both James and Lily were more powerful than Harry. Most of Harry's talents lay outside of magic (i.e. sheer balls).

 

I only have basic understanding of gens and what not, but from what I do know is that a gene doesn't really say tall or short, on or off, just how tall [not precise due to environment, but whatever]. Is that true at all?

 

I believe so. But everyone has a body size, not everyone has magic. I guess a better comparison would be dimples. Some people have them, some don't.

 

Not in the way I'm looking at it. To me it seems that a guy without dimples is simply dimples-size=0, while people with dimples vary in size, depth, what ever...

What I'm trying to say is, that if there's a M gene, it couldn't by my understanding only decide between magical, muggle and squib.

 

I don't think this is how it works. There are some things which are simple on/off switches. Like the ability to curl your tongue.

 

To which degree you can curl your tongue is also a variable.

 

Also, if magic is part of the DNA, it means there is something to be built, in other words a magical core. That's plain annoying.

 

Possessing the magic gene = you're magical.
Not possessing the magic gene = you're not magical.

Clearly, people without the gene, i.e. with the metaphorical switch off, are not magical.

So no, not everyone is magical.

Just as not everyone can roll their tongue.

Retard.

As for gene therapy, theoretically, yes. Which is why children born to magical people are magical. Because the inherit the gene.

In practice, when you combine the above with my proposal that the magic gene does not follow the rules of modern genetics, no. Any attempt to give a Muggle the magic gene would probably be done by a Muggle, and thus based off Muggle genetics, and thus fail.

 

There is only Muggle genetics and those too dumb to comprehend it. :awesome

Consider this:

Your theory fails so hard you've to create an entire branch of genetics just to make it sound remotely plausible.

Magic is an unknown factor, a variable in an equation, if you will, and we've had enough trouble getting around it as it is. Now you come in with your theory on 'alternate' genetics and introduce a new unknown to said equation. Guess what? We've got two unknowns to deal with it now -- magic and alternate bloody genetics. Why take things further when you already have it narrowed down to 'magic'?

Me thinks you're using these alternative non-Muggle compliant laws to mask your tenuous grip on Muggle genetics. Anything you can't explain, you put it off as another one of your 'alternate' rules. This is not acceptable in a logic-based discussion.

Like it or not, Taure, canon doesn't always reign supreme. It's about time you accept JKR's borderline idiotic comments regarding magic and genetics, from a purely scientific aspect, don't have an ounce of truth in them.

 

I was over DH until you brought up the Parseltongue bullshit. Thanks.

I think it's pretty damn obvious Rowling didn't think the 'magic is a gene' thing through.

Disregarding all the arguments, I think understanding what a squib is could help.

If, in fact, they are like muggles with absolutely no magical core, then we have two groups of people: magical and unmagical. However, if a squib does have magic just not the access to that magic, then it changes things. Having squibs more like option two, would mean magic has some form of dominance that allows it to be passed to each and every offspring -whether they are able to use it or not.

 

Lol, you keep trying to limit the discussion to only answers you like.

The fact is that in any discussion about Harry Potter, canon does reign supreme. Logic, scientific fact... all these things are secondary to canon in a discussion about how things are in the Harry Potter world.

Ye gods man. "Muggles have the theoretical potential to be magical and thus are magical". Do I really have to explain how much of a fail argument that is?

They don't have the ability to use magic. Thus they are not magical. Potential is not actuality.

"If I did X and Y I would be Z, thus I am Z." is not a valid argument. You'd have to actually do X and Y first.

And even you must see your "I can use my fingers to put my tongue in a rolled up position" is a bad argument. If you use your fingers to roll up you're tongue, you still don't possess the ability to roll it.

The same argument form: "A magical person blows up X with magic. A Muggle blows up X with a bomb. Both have blown X up. Thus the Muggle is magical." The same as "X rolls his tongue. Y uses his fingers to imitate X's effect. Thus Y can roll their tongue." It completely ignores the means.

And you're taking the switch metaphor too far. It's like a switch, it isn't actually a switch, in that it is the presence or not of the gene which is like the switch, not some kind of situation where everyone has the gene but in some it's inactive.

My theory isn't really a theory. It's a process of elimination.

1. We know that magic is passed on genetically from JKR, in a single gene, which is "dominant and resilient".
2. We know that Muggle genetics does not explain this.
3. Both 1 and 2 are true (from an in-universe perspective), and thus must be consistent in some way.
4. The only way they can be consistent if there is a branch of genetics which is not Muggle genetics.

Pretty simple. And if you reject 1 in some sort of canon hissy fit (see above: "But that's DH"), then you might as well lock the thread now, because there is no source of authority on the matter (no standard of truth), which means there is no right answer, which means all answers are as good (and bad) as each other, in that they are all arbitrary.

So shut the fuck up and stop your whining.

(People are free to say "JKR's an idiot and knows nothing about genetics", which is true. However, the moment you say this, then you've resorted to an out-universe explanation for the problem, and have solved the problem completely, which... again, means that the discussion is over and the thread might as well be locked.)

 

Rips out hair. Wow, this thread is quite the aggravation.

We can argue all fucking year, but the fact remains that magic doesn't follow our modern genetics. Basically, it comes down to this: either magic isn't a gene (fuck Rowling) or it follows it's own set of genetic guidelines. We can't have it both ways.