Unfortunately, I am too idiotic to understand how Ollivander's conjuring (or summoning) of wine in book 4 fits your theory. Would you be willing to denign to tell me how this works?

 

You think Dumbledore is the only wizard keeping a bottle of alcohol tucked in his robes?

(also, the word is deign)

EDIT: also, Ollivander wasn't really serving wine from Harry's wand, so conjuring it just for display wouldn't be a big deal.

 

I never said it wasn't a Charm. Someone asked about that spell specifically.

 

Right- I was replying to most of the last page of discussion, but chose your post for the reply because it was the last cohesive reference to Aguamenti.

So to sum up my perspective on this:
Gamp's law of Elemental Transfiguration = A perfect transfiguration results in an object with the properties and qualities of the intended end-result, with no vestiges of the object's prior state left behind. Such transfigurations can be readily identified because they last beyond the life of the wizard who transfigured them. There are five exceptions- qualities where magic cannot transfigure or conjure them properly.

Food- life feeds on life; conjured food has no nutritive value and non-consumables transfigured into food are similarly incomplete

Life - one cannot conjure sentience, nor can a non-animal be made into an animal with the capacity to procreate. Hearkening back to the first exception, such an animal will deteriorate as the living material that originally had no life fails to replicate new cells

Rare elements - transfigured materials made of elements higher on the periodic table tend to deteriorate (magically), meaning transfigured gold and silver lose their chemical properties over time, as does titanium, uranium, plutonium... the highest stable material appears to be Bromine [just declaring a line in the sand on this one]

Enchantment - transfiguration in and of itself cannot bestow or remove magical properties; turn a horse into a unicorn and it may be attractive but its blood and horn will have no greater value than that of any mundane creature

Magic - magical creatures resist permanent transfiguration while still alive- the effect will wear off, unless the creature is actually happier in its new state (see Quintped, Animagi 'going native')

People in the habit of 'conjuring' beverages and sauces with their wands are actually using a charm to draw the fluid from a known nearby source- water condensed from the air, mead from a flask, Hollandaise from the pot on the stove or even breathable air from above the surface of a lake (cf. Bubblehead charm)

 

I mean, I don't agree about the Transfiguration of food (only the conjuration), but that at least makes sense.

I don't think the reason conjured food can't or shouldn't be eaten is because of anything to do with nutritive values. It's simply that JKR has stated that conjured items disappear. But until they do, I see no reason why they shouldn't exist just as validly as objects that are properly Transfigured.

 

The entire 'nutrition' thing you guys support is laughable.

If magic creates something, it creates it. No shortcomings.

If you transfigure a desk into a pig, it is going to be a real pig, with everything, until either the transfiguration fails or the pig is untransfigured.

The very idea that magic 'doesn't add nutrients' is silly. It's magic, of course it adds them.

Sure, I can (somewhat) get behind the idea that it would be foolish to eat such a pig, given that it reverts. But to say that it has no nutrients is just complicating things.

 

And if Harry's Refilling Charm in HBP is anything to go by, it should be possible to conjure drinks (though this too is a charm). I doubt it simply draws more of the exact same liquid from somewhere else, because that's just a weird hassle for someone else with that drink. It's not like Harry had another bottle stashed somewhere in his robes. It wouldn't simply dilute the drink either, or it'd be a really shitty Charm. Might as well just use Aguamenti if it does that.

Hence, we have clear evidence that something can indeed be made from nothing, or at least multiplied without simply distributing its nutritional content.

Even if it's only the multiplication of some substance, you're still managing create matter out of nothing by increasing it without diluting it.

So unless Dumbledore summoned the bottle itself, he might have just conjured his own impression or memory of 'Rosmerta's finest' and called it that.

 

:facepalm New theory: Magic makes less sense than Schrodinger's cat and Firefly's cancellation combined. You can't conjure food but you can make more of it. Travelling back in time a few hours is safe enough to give time machines to teenagers, but going back 500 years years and coming back a few hours later causes some people to suddenly cease to exist and you to age 500 years in an instant (the last one is WoG). Anyone trying to make magic apply to common sense fails miserably.
Now, can we shift the conversation from magcal theory to actual plot holes? Please?

 

I love Schrödinger's cat . . . always made sense to me. I was even going to make it something of a character in my original works.

 

This is why I'm moving towards HP magic operating on a completely different set of principles to actual reality. Attempting to explain it in terms of real physics or chemistry is a complete waste of time. Instead I think we need to look to ancient greeks.

Aristotelian physics to be precise. Magic allows you to directly alter the four causes.

When changing a desk into a pig the following process happens:

1) The witch or wizard describes universal form, an instance which they wish to create. They do this either through visualisation or incantations/actions.
2) The primary act of casting the spell alters the formal cause of the object. Basically the object stops having the essential properties of a table and gains the essential properties of a pig. This is a relatively simple act in transfiguration. The caster does not have to actually create the complete vision of the form to cast the spell, merely tap into the metaphysical universal that all items of that type relate to.
3) In casting the spell they change the material into blood, flesh and bone (These are the materials out of which a body is made in Aristotelian theory). This is why creating an animal via transfiguration is difficult. Most inanimates are made of of either a single material (table - wood) or a simple combination of a few. The body is a complex melding of blood, flesh and bone. While a witch/wizard does not need to know the minutia of how they are combined in the body (this largely being handled by their use of the universal form in their spell) it still takes more effort or precision to form such a complex connection.
4) The efficient cause of the object now becomes 'magic'. This allows for distinctions to be drawn between transfigured objects and untransfigured objects. If the efficient cause is broken (via a finite, or generic untransfiguration say) then any other altered causes return to their prior state.
5) A transfigured object may be given a final cause, the purpose which that object is meant to fulfil. If creating 'attack pigs' in a fight then the final cause would be to attck the opponent, the pigs would then do this without further guidance.

Really, all spells can be thought of in these terms.

Charms override the final cause of an object, windgardium leviosa makes the final cause of the object to rise, thus it does. Animation charms make the final cause of the object 'dance' or such.

Conjuration is simple. You create an object with the four causes as defined by the spell. There is no requirement for conservation of mass within Aristotelian physics.

Curses can be thought of as conjuration of a visible missile with very precise causes. The efficient cause is magic, as always. The material cause is 'glowy green'. The formal cause is missile (maybe?) and the final cause is to make the person die.

Does this get us anywhere? Not really, but I've been mulling it over for a while now and wanted to get it off my chest.

 

Wizards are not logical beings. Expecting their alleged laws of magic to be consistent within their own framework is probably asking too much of them.

I'd be willing to bet money Gamp's Laws are less about something that was tested extensively, and more an explanation for why eating a sandwich that used to be a piece of wood kills people who try it.

 

Mmm, I certainly imagine the authors of magical theory using reasoning similar to the builders of grand metaphysical systems like Spinoza, Kant and Hegel , rather than scientific reasoning based on empirical evidence and experiments. (Yes, those writers are extremely different, but they're all "armchair thinkers").

But then I imagine magical theory to be more similar to engineering than science: you're not discovering the nature of the world, but rather building a kind of conceptual magical technology: a complex idea which, once you know it and understand it, puts your mind into the right state to be able to cast a spell.

That idea may have some relation to the nature of the world, but it'd be more like a way of thinking about the world than a rigorous description of how the world works.

 

It's also possible that it's a limit of Transfiguration and Transfiguration only. It is a law taught in Transfiguration class. Maybe Charms are different, and can create potable water and food.

 

To return to the original topic - Gamp's law - it seems to me that there is a reasonable solution to the apparent contradictions. What follows is an edited form of a post I made a few months back.

Here is what we know:

1. You can use magic to create things that traditionally could be used to satisfy hunger.

Justification: McGonagall's pig, Cedric's dog, Molly's sauce.

2. Transfiguration spells do not create illusions: they create real physical objects.

Justification: From JKR's old website: spell definitions.

3. Transfiguration spells, when performed correctly, either last forever or so long as to make no difference to individual humans.

Justification: We've never seen a transfigured object revert to its old form without a wizard helping it along. We have examples of wizarding belief in centuries-old transfigurations that still endure. Finally, there's no reason for a transfigured object, which is physically identical to a non-transfigured object, to suddenly change into a different object.


And yet:

4. You cannot use magic to satisfy hunger in any meaningful sense.

Justification: Hermione in DH on Gamp's Law.

Conclusion: Magic can create food which is physically identical to natural food, which does not disappear in the digestive tract, but nonetheless cannot satisfy hunger.

Conclusion 2: The satisfaction of hunger is not solely a physical process.

Seems to me that these two conclusions are inescapable, given 1-4. Then we add one more fact:

5. While magic cannot be used to satisfy hunger if you have no food to start with, if you do have some food you can multiply and transform that food and use it to satisfy hunger.

Justification: Hermione in DH, WOMBAT test.

Conclusion: Every object in the universe possesses a non-physical binary property (i.e. yes or no) that determines if it is capable of satisfying hunger. This property is preserved through transfigurations.

All you have to do to make Gamp's Law work is to allow that Muggles have incomplete knowledge of the nature of nutrition, and that it has magical properties as well as physical/chemical ones. (That is not to say that Muggles are using magic when they digest food, but rather that the physical process of digestion has emergent magical properties).

In the case of Aguamenti, there are two ways out of the problem:

1. Water is not food. (This is my preferred solution, as it has simplicity).

2. The Aguamenti charm, being a charm, works in a different way. (This has problems, as JKR's stated definition of a charm is that they do not alter things in a fundamental, physical way but rather overlay a magical effect.)

 

This has prompted a thought- perhaps the 'soul-nutritive' value of food is missing or in short supply for many processed foodstuffs, which is why so many muggles are gorging themselves on this faux-food, gaining pounds but not satisfaction.

This is where I was going with the 'nutritionally bereft' nature of conjured food; I fell into my own trap of mixing the biochemical with the metaphysical.

I'd say that fits- water isn't food, but it's so prevalent on our planet that conjuring it seems a waste of effort. The aguamenti charm uses magic to collect and dispense the water, not unlike a diffuse application of Accio.

 

I suppose it also brings ONLY water, as most of the stuff on Earth is pretty salty.

This would mean that Aguamenti water is the most pure and healthy water there is and/or can be.

 

Conjured water would be purest (also lacking in any flavor). The aquamenti charm gathers what would be atmospheric or rainwater. You might need to pass the water stream through a Bubblehead charm to remove any particulates suspended in the air.

 

Pure water isn't healthy. Drinking distilled water hasn't been shown to have health benefits, and may be actively harmful (although the evidence for that is weak).

 

I've been recently reminded by a friend of mine how silly it was of Dumbledore to go by broom in "Philosopher's Stone" to the Ministry in London, on the day Quirrell was making a move for the Stone, when Apparition and Floo travel existed.

Now granted, I've read the "PS" book a long, long time ago, but I don't think neither of the two optional methods of travel were mentioned in the first book... right?

 

Indeed: it appears JKR hadn't yet invented floo or apparition at the time she wrote PS. There are a lot of little things like that: eye contact needed for curses, which are a kind of spell that involves continuous incantation; Hagrid saying he flew to the hut on the rock, apparition and floo not existing.