Ah. Carry on, then.

 

Interestingly enough, yes, I'm struggling to define a particular moment when the Second Law is just broken entirely - my first thought was "oh, Vanishing Charms", but DH pretty much has McGonagall state that it's just some kind of particle redistribution.

But uh, then I thought about things like...

the Unlocking Charm - nice, first year, effective on different manners of locked doors.

Are you going to tell me that there's some kind of quantum function specifically designed in the cosmos to explain whether or not locks are locked?

how about that charm that Hermione uses to harden tapestries in DH?

A spell that generates nuclear fission is far, far more likely to exist - if magic can be quantified in terms of fundamental particles.

okay, so if we talk about this in terms of manipulating quantum probabilities, basically what you're saying is that there is some kind of manipulation of the quantum state which probably consists of more discrete functions than atoms on earth AND you can consistently get it to work on variant examples?

but, by this definition, the Killing Curse ain't even a function of any sort - it kills living things, but sets fire to inanimate objects?

can magic be written in Java? :\

/maturity

hehehhe.

 

@lungs: being a programmer, I share your pain. JKR probably couldn't have made it harder to formalize magic as a consistent system if she'd tried. But... I'm sure it's possible. The Killing Curse is probably one of the more difficult things, considering we don't even have a very firm definition of "dead". With cryogenics, today's dead may be not-so-dead in a few centuries (decades?). I'm very firmly a materialist/determinist, though, and Rowling's universe is arguably not.

 

The way I see it, quantum states don't disprove (in some cases, it might support) determinism - but the ability to manipulate quantum states in the case of determinism would be recursive in really, really strange ways, so it probably doesn't.

And certainly, spells worked before people understood "stuff" - i.e. before any sort of formal science, which means that it's not a conscious manipulation but rather a sharing of a "collective" spellbook so to speak: so there's no way around encoding magic into the universe.

@T3t: my science jollies are from neuroscience, which extends to an interest in organic chemistry, programming/mathematical logic and probably relates to the soft-sciences in some ways.

 

Pretty sure that manipulating quantum states wouldn't require an "outside view" of the universe, but I'm not a physics expert. As for your second point I agree, which is what my first post in this thread was based on.

 

A human wizard's magic seems rather closely related to a kind of linguistic, conceptual power. The need to incant spells, in my opinion, suggests something extremely interesting about JKR's conception of magic in relation to language. She seems to be tying the development of human magic (wizardry) to the development of human language. Otherwise, the apparent need for incantations would make no sense. If spells were something humans had developed prior to language, why would they need a (Latin, Sanskrit, or Aramaic, etc.) linguistic component, mental or otherwise, to perform them? This is not to say there was no human magic at all before language (accidental acts, Occlumency, perhaps Apparition, etc.), but spells seems to be something akin to or rooted in the powers of speech and language. Or perhaps the powers of speech and language are rooted in spells.

This would answer some long-standing questions like why spells require incantations, can why they can be cast on abstract objects, entities, or even principles and titles, and why it so blatantly subverts the laws of physics.

It is known that humans even learn to think in the language(s) they are taught to speak, and we know magic is a function of the brain. But what if magic was a function of the brain's linguistic (read: comprehensive) capacity. Everything humans understand, even mathematical symbols and principles, exists in the medium of language. To relate, understand, discuss, describe, or learn math, for instance, language is needed. It is almost everything. It is what allows us to process and communicate what we see; it allows us to create and manipulate verbal constructs, and understand the relationships between objects and ourselves, ourselves and others, and so forth. It is essentially the means by which we gain and exercise power over the world around us.

To master and understand a word, its usage, and the concept or object it relates to is to gain a measure of power over that concept or object. Perhaps in the HP universe, spells are a kind of early relative of the word, and language itself was something developed by wizards who had found that certain ways of thinking (protowords and their vocalizations) had a more direct and easily applied effect on their immediate vicinity. They might have found that by encapsulating or capturing some kind of phenomena or essential reality in linguistic form, and then manipulating or utilizing it in relation to or in the process of thought or speech, they could alter the world around them. They would have naturally tried different combinations of letters and sounds, discovering that while some had a tangible and demonstrable sorcery to them, a legitimate force of direct manipulation, others (mundane words) were merely imperfect, lesser tools for description, analysis, understanding, and so forth.

Naturally, the magically powerful words, at a time when wizards still coexisted with Muggles, would have been kept secret (read: Mystery Schools of the ancient world), either before or after confirming that Muggle populations had no use for them. Mundane language, however, would have still been an incredible useful, influential, and physically/mystically powerful tool, first developed, used, and taught by those initial few, leaders and wise men (read: wizards), who learned how and why to speak. I've heard it said that language and speech, in their developmental stages, would have been used by the elite (those who could learn) to guide and teach.

As previously stated, we know linguistic and verbal constructs to be a great deal more flexible than physical laws. Hence, a wizard could potentially do any magic he could conceptually, logically, or philosophically wrap his mind around (read: conjuration).

How does all this relate to physics? Well, the universe is in motion. All the universe's particles experience a minimum of vibration (believed to be the basis of the om chant, for instance, which is said, IIRC, to be the sound of universal or cosmic vibration). All matter is also composed of electrically charged particles, even thought (and other electrical systems used to transmit information), all vibrating (and therefore making sound) at some level. In this sense, magic might be the ability, when used vocally, to tweak, by way of atomic vibration, that part of the universe to which you have applied your intent, just so. By making the right noise, or series of noises, a wizard can align his intent, expressed in the medium of sound, with the physical mechanics, motion, or workings of the cosmos, or force his intent upon them with the projection of a sound pattern that would be like the key to a lock in terms of getting the universe to impose your will.

Silent magic, because it is harder, might be said to be a more refined ability to do this without the aid, in terms of focus and amplification or projection, of the human voice. As to why spells are Latinate, or some ancient equivalent, I would posit that those spells exist as such because Latin and other ancient languages were developed earlier, and are at the root of modern languages. If modern languages are derivatives of older languages like Latin and Sanskrit, etc., which would have been the first (or close to it), developed by those populations, then it makes sense that most spells would reflect the root form of a given language. Hence, those spells developed in East Asia or Africa, for instance, would not use Latinate incantations, but spells that were a reflection of the root languages of wizards native to those regions.

Sorry if none of this made sense.

 

Abstract concepts don't map to reality. For magic to work that way would require that magic understood those concepts the same way the magic user did.

Map != territory, door != human conception of a door, etc.

 

Voldemort cursed a teaching position. Lily's love made an unblockable curse backfire.

You can't get more abstract than that, I think, which is why I will always see magic as completely unscientific.

 

That's kind of what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying magic itself responds to language, just that language, or the linguistic capacity, might be a large part of how humans manipulate and interact with magic, as a function of objective understanding. A map is the representation of our knowledge of space, or the imposition of our consciousness onto space. We analyze space, and create a representation of our knowledge that allows us to more easily explain, conceive of, navigate and convey it. The more more accurate the representation, the better the map. The map is an abstract understanding of a real place that gives us a greater measure of intellectual dexterity with a normally inconceivable reality.

You're right, our perception of the door is not the door. The word 'door' is just a verbal construct we use to describe a flat piece of wood with a metal knob near the center, and the words "flat piece of wood" are a verbal construct we use to describe an atomic structure. We use words to unify our understanding of aggregated multiplicities. We conflate a variety of qualities into a single term which then becomes our way of referring to collective entities. Language is a way for us not to create knowledge, but to more easily manipulate it. A way for us to crystallize our understanding of one phenomenon, or a group of related phenomena.

I'm not saying that magic responds to language, I'm saying that language in HP may have originally been a response to magic. The spell is a kind of word, or 'map,' that allows a wizard to represent, and because it's magic, manifest complex intentions the same way a word or map allows humans to represent and convey complex ideas.

If magic is a function of consciousness, and language is how humans process consciousness, then it makes sense that human magic, or human spells, would have a linguistic component. Language gives us a way to not only share information, but build upon it. We can break the world down, or sum it all up, into abstract units (words) which we can then arrange or rearrange to accurately represent or alter the reality they describe. As a function of understanding, human magic could conceivably develop in a linguistic way, because words are one of our primary units of understanding.

A secret is an abstract idea, something that remains true whether it is told to anyone else or not, and yet human magic allows wizards to utilize a verbal notion to influence physical reality. The conceptual or verbal "secret" is made a physical reality, and those who do not know the entirely abstract, conceptually (and therefore linguistically) based secret cease to be able to interact with that location on the physical plane.

The secret hiding Sirius's house was "The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix are at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place." Dumbledore, using the Fidelius, was able to cast a spell on "the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix," an entirely conceptual thing, and make a physical location (Number Twelve) disappear. He doesn't use coordinates to describe the physical location either. His spell functions to protect the realities behind the verbal constructs Dumbledore uses to describe them, but the terms he uses to trigger the concealment and revelation of the secret are based entirely in human abstractions like "headquarters" for a "membership" that in and of itself is a conceptual, abstract construct based on intellectual, human understandings and verbal agreements. It would be a similar case of strangeness with Riddle's curse on the Defense position.

Spells act in and on physical reality, but the ways in which they do so, and the abstract objects and phenomena to which they can be extended, seem to imply that magic, as a function of human understanding, behaves like language in that it can be applied to abstract, philosophical, or intellectual realities in addition to physical ones.

Long story short, I'm not saying that magic in HP understands language or concepts the way humans do, but that a human's use of magic is analogous to language because much of human understanding itself is linguistic. This is why I posited that spells came first, because if language developed as a result of wizards discovering and experimenting with incantations, it means that language would have been tailored to magic (as it is tailored to objective knowledge), and not the other way around.

No one says that objective knowledge is tailored to language, and I'm not saying magic is either. Rather, language is the best tool we have for processing objective information, and therefore, in JKR's universe, might be the best tool wizards and witches have for utilizing magic. An incantation, in this sense, could be thought of as the word for or indication of the magical reality the wizard wants to manifest, or the magic he wants to carry out, just as a verb is the word for or indication of the action one wishes to carry out. Magic in this case would then be a superior form of language that was an accurate description of reality to the point of translating conceptual, abstract understanding or intent into physical reality.

In the same way that a word represents the crystallization of our understanding of an idea, such that it gives us mastery over its conceptual use, an incantation represents the crystallization of a wizard's magical understanding and intent, such that it gives him mastery over physical reality in whatever respect the spell relates to.

tl;dr: A spell is like a superword. It is such a fundamentally/existentially/metaphysically accurate description of reality or intent that it allows wizards to substitute the 'map' for the actual physical space in which they exist.

Hence Dumbledore's "words are our most inexhaustible source of magic."

 

And despite all of this, nobody has written about Wizards in space.\

Edit: Besides Nonjon, and that was a crossover.

 

Pack.

'Nuff said.

 

Why explore space when you can use spells to bring it to you?

It's unlikely that wizards have explored space in its entirety, but they can still produce an accurate model of the universe. If they haven't seen the whole universe, then the only way to model it would be to manifest such a purely linguistic notion as 'the entire universe' with a spell.

 

There might be a problem with that theory. You assume that language was created as the most efficient way to do magic but then all of them should be more similar. And while there are common trends in them, it is mostly in how words are connected or in which words can have a grammatical function. While that could make sense with the idea that incantations are necessary because language is how we understand the universe, it does not explain why a particular language would be better than another at it (assuming all language were developed with that purpose) and the fact that the spells are generally really short so they don't take full advantage of the connections in it.

I had assumed that most spells seen in HP are in latin not because it was a language particulary related to magic but because wand were created by people who spoke Latin. Since wands have some resemblance of conscience, it could be that wizards use Latin for spells since that is the one they understand and that it is possible for the wands to learn new words either by context or by being near wands that know the meaning of the words, thus allowing for those that derive from other language. It might also be that it would be extremely hard to teach a wand new words (and thus allowing the caster to use their native tongue) because they already know words with the same meaning and they don't see the point. Also, they don't have wands that understand English instead of Latin because they would have to not only create the spells from scratch but also the wand creation process.

 

We know that British wizards use Latinate spells, but there's no way of knowing that applies to the whole world. I would say it's because Latin is the root of the romantic languages, and to a great extent, English as well. Nor is the British lexicon of spells entirely Latinate.

Other populations would have incantations associated with different root languages, like Greek, Sanskrit, Aramaic, and so forth, excluding, of course, those they had picked up from other regions.

It's not about one language being greater than another. In theory, any language (read: Point Me Spell) should be compatible with magic, since any wizard (and they all speak) is compatible with magic, and/or magic should be compatible with any language. Spell creation would depend on the skill of the wizard, not the relative 'quality' of his native language.


EDIT: Academic integrity (the reason for Hogwarts) is preserved by the relationship between words and concepts. To use the spell (read: word) correctly and effectively, you have to understand the concepts it relates to, which can be quite complex. Just because you can say the word "boson" or "fermion" doesn't mean you understand them.

 

Basically Pers is smarter than me.

D:

<3

 

Or, instead of reaching for some kind of macro-physics version of string theory to explain it, you could go with the idea that the wands are translating Latinate or whatever into spell form.

Wandmakers would craft the base language to be used in the wand, preferably in a widespread but rarely-spoken ancient tongue, so that the wands wouldn't confuse a spell request with normal conversation. As the wands are somewhat alive, they can be taught new spells by their owner, and interpolate them based upon what the incantation suggests should happen.

After all, outside of fanon, wandless magic is shown to be unverbalized intent. This also fits with magical talents that don't use specific spells, like the Animagus transformation and Apparating.

 

Unverbalised intent doesn't seem quite right. None of Harry's examples of wandless magic (aka accidental magic) featured him intending to perform the magic, or even desiring a specific thing (flying to the roof, shrinking jumper). Rather they featured strong emotion and the desire to avoid something. He desired an end result (e.g. get away from bullies) not a particular process.

So it was something rather more instinctual, I think, than intent. Lily Potter and Tom Riddle learned to harness that instinct somehow, but we don't know how.

 

Yeah, I really didn't want to use 'intent' because that way lies fanon conceits and such. My point was that wandless magic was more primal than linguistic in its invocation. But, much like a sentence can communicate so much more than a bunch of grunts, you need a wand to make the really elaborate magic.

 

I was only trying to explain what was going on with incanted spells.

EDIT: As far as reaching into string-theory . . . I thought I was doing the opposite with the whole, rooting magic in language thing.

 

I get that- I brought up wandless because I don't think the human words have meaning to magic- they have meaning to certain wands, who know how to translate it into the magical 'assembly language'.

A wizard saying 'Portus' with gusto won't do much; magic doesn't hear it, though it does hear a magical person yearning for some sort of transport-y type of thing to happen.