Magical progress isn't linear, it isn't incrementally getting better, it doesn't simply take a more subtle form of technological progress. It's altogether something different. Yes, we see brooms getting better but not invisibility cloaks, nor wands really (think how old the Elder Wand is).

Take the Resurrection stone: there's nothing close to it even thousands of years later in the wizarding world. There are even no hints of rudimentary communication with the dead (not ghosts, I mean the truly dead - only in crazy magic like the brother wands thing). Many are skeptical even of its existence with Hermione showcasing her muggle origins by proclaiming that this is obviously nothing more than a tale. And remember that Hermione is supposed to be really bright and knowledgeable.

What I'm getting to is that in terms of grand magic you are entirely within canon if discovering a great wizard's old notes leads to amazing insights resulting to awesome magic. There's probably lots of secrets waiting for discovery.

I argue that magical progress generally could have reached some kind of plateau a thousand years ago (though obviously after the creation of wands). And you can get incredible powerful magic that is very old, like we have Plato & Aristotle who lived thousands years ago and yet many of their ideas are not less powerful for it.

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Somewhat relevant thoughts on how to not think of magical progress like the technological (muggle) progress we experience.

The Industrial Revolution brought huge societal changes (changes that could be argued were slowly happening as early as the 14th century) which have altered fundamentally the way communities work and the way humans rely on each other. And a part of these changes it that technological progress is not dictated by what people actually need, but mostly by what can be achieved. Of course, many things do improve our lives in truth (some not really) and that creates the illusion that the question preceded the answer, whereas the ability to make it happen existed first, advertising second (to create (to some extent) artificial demand) by showcasing the answer (= all the ways the product will help you) thus creating the question (= I need this).

In reality we haven't had time to pose those questions, neither individually nor as societies. It's not an easy concept to understand and I'm hardly explaining it well - I need to read and think a lot more on it.

I just think that exploring the magical society and its progress with all this in mind could result in a very interesting extension of the HP world.​

 

I always thought that the chief reason nothing from a long time ago had ever been replicated was because no one was willing to put in the work and study and adapt the ancient manuscripts to modern magical theory. The wizarding world offers a borderline utopian lifestyle to anyone who desires it and that's what the vast majority of people pick. As long as the old stuff is still working, and as long as they can basically maintain it forever, they don't really want to figure out how it works.

 

It really depends on how you formulate the nature of magic itself.

If magic is a fundamentally logical and self-consistent set of rules inherent to the world then you tie yourself into an ever advancing magical understanding (on average, anyway, unless you insert some kind of disaster which destroys a substantial amount of gained knowledge). A lot of fics try to combine a logical, self-consistent set of rules with 'olde magicks' which are far more powerful than anything in the modern day. That really just doesn't work for me without some kind of explanation as to why such knowledge was lost, hidden, or never rediscovered. Oh, Slytherin was just a super-genius isn't good enough to my mind.

Knowledge can be and is lost regularly, but typically it is because we found some other, better (or easier) way of doing the thing and the old way fell out of favour.

But magic doesn't have to be completely logical. We already know and accept that magic seems to be fundamentally anthropocentric, or, at the very least, often operates on the level of fundamentally 'sapient' conceptualisations. I'm thinking about things like the difference between the truth, lies, and being unknowingly incorrect, or 'good food', or the way in which transfiguration is taught through items with conceptual similarities, rather than physical ones (needle to matchstick, or pincushion to hedgehog).

Now that seeming 'sapiocentrism' may be a property of the way in which humans interact with magic, with non-human creatures experiencing different 'rules' based on their own peculiar psychology, but it still opens up an interesting avenue for old magic to be different to modern magic. Either we can say that differences in human psychology a thousand years ago meant they were better predisposed to some kinds of magic, or we can say that exceptional individuals have such different outlooks on the world that they simply can't help but create new, powerful, or strange magics.

Something I've sometimes considered toying with, was the idea of logic and magic as often being in direct competition. Is it a coincidence that two of the most powerful wizards we see (Dumbledore and Voldemort) are also two of the most fantastical people? Somewhat akin to Pratchett's idea of narrativium, what if the continued and extensive use of magic predisposes you to being a less normal person? And what if being a bit of a crackpot also makes you more likely to come to some deeper understanding of a fundamentally illogical magic?

It creates an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand, the structured teaching and learning of magic is the only real way to ensure that basic knowledge can be reliably passed on, but on the other hand, the very act of making magic seem mundane by teaching it in a school of all things 'weakens' it, and distances the students from 'deep' magic. In my thoughts on the idea, I use that as a possible explanation for Hogwarts' strangeness. If it becomes too mundane, the magic wanes further.

Such a system would allow for fantastically powerful wizards from ages past, before the days of schooling, or even a structured magical society. They'd likely be highly focused on a single thing which they in their deranged genius pursued beyond all others, but they might have been able to perform feats of transfiguration which could only be dreamed of by most 'mundanised' wizards.

 

Assorted thoughts on phone:

1. There exist unique magical artifacts which cannot be replicated in their powers.

2. Some unique magical artifacts are old (e.g. Elder Wand). Others are recent (e.g. Marauder's map).

3. As well as unique magical artifacts, we see lots of non-unique magical items like brooms.

4. Non-unique magical artifacts tend to get better with time.

5. Outside the realm of artifacts, new spells are created over time.

6. New magical knowledge is discovered over time and published in journals and textbooks.

7. The development of spells that can do new things likely depends on the theoretical knowledge underpinning those spells first being formulated.

8. So over time, the state of knowledge about magic sets deeper and broader and the magic that can be invented based on that theory gets correspondingly more advanced. We see this also in, for example, the invention of the Unlocking Charm in the 1600s, before which wizards had to blow doors off their hinges to open them with magic.

9. In general, magic fulfils the same role in magical society as technology does in Muggle society.

10. Modern wizards top the charts when it comes to wizards estimating the strength of other wizards. Dumbledore and Voldemort are spoken of as the best of all time, not just the best of their era.

11. We see new powerful magic being deployed like Voldemort's flight.

12. Based on the above, I think those rare, unique magical artifacts are clearly an exception to a general trend, not a good basis on which to identify a trend. The trend of magical artifacts outside of one of a kind items, and the trend in spellcasting, show the opposite to one of a kind items.

13. That is, in general, wizards' understanding of magic improves over time and accordingly their magical capabilities today are greater than in the past.

14. What the Elder wand etc. show is that there is some process of creating magical objects which makes them impossible or difficult to replicate.

15. This process is time independent. It is not that ancient wizards had knowledge that modern wizards lack. It applies as much to the Deluminator and Marauder's Map as to the Elder Wand and Philosopher's Stone.

16. These rare items are better compared to historical masterworks like the Mona Lisa. They are expressions of a particular wizard's passion towards a particular project in crafting an item. Pointing to the Elder Wand to disprove Wizarding progress is like pointing to the Mona Lisa to disprove Muggle progress.

17. While in the Muggle world, artistic expression and understanding of nature are distinct domains, magic has a much less clear separation of the two. An act of magic is simultaneously an artistic expression as well as an exercise of understanding of the rules which govern it.

18. My own approach in fanfic is to say that the obessession of the maker is part of the magic of the creation of objects like the Elder Wand and Marauder's Map. By creating the item, the maker excises their obsession, imbuing it into the object, and thereafter can never make the object again. They are truly one of a kind, even to their makers. It is the magic of artistic obsession that gives those objects special capabilities which conventional magic cannot perform.

 

I have compared magic to music before, so lets go once more. Music doesn't really "advance", but rather there are always new musicians, who re-invent music each time. Sure, there's basic education where you copy the work of previous musicians and experiment with different genres and instruments, but ultimately if you want to really work with music beyond a dabble you need to come up with your own spin instead of just following instructions.

Similarly my view of magic is that beyond simple spells that are of limited use (really, how many times you need to transform a needle into a matchstick?) the "real" magic is something you just need to build a deep understanding of, and then you can pretty much just wing it and improvise. For example, Molly Weasley in my understanding doesn't have an encyclopedic knowledge on vast number of different household spells, but instead she has enough experience and instinctual knowledge that she can pretty much just wave her wand at it and magic happens.

This mostly only applies to everyday use of magic. Special uses, like combat, still revolve mostly around distinct spells, but that's mostly because there isn't enough combat for most people to ever develop such instinctual understanding of it. And when you have a person who does, well, that person is going to be a fucking nightmare to deal with on the battlefield.

Basically magic is art, not science.

 

Something I thought of is that "modern magic" is much more regulated, due to the founding of the Ministry of Magic at the beginning of the 18th century. The Ministry forbids certain practices (like experimental breeding) and limits others (owning dragons, becoming an animagus, probably all kinds of dark magic), and those limitations may prevent certain advancements. Particularly when certain topics are forbidden from being taught at Hogwarts (like Horcruxes).

 

I always thought that the "Ye olde magick" is a magical version of mysteries of the real world, which we can analyse to absurd degree, yet still not replicate at the same level. Random examples I've talked about with friends recently include Damascus Steel, the Stradivarius violins wood curing process, or a friend mentioned that we still don't understand how some cathedrals were built.

Basically things we are able to make at the comparable level today, but the version lost to history either has some irreplicable quality, or it's just the mystery of the process.

 

@arkkitehti I really liked your ideas. I'd made an analogy to philosophy but perhaps something in between philosophy & art is where it's at. Obviously there are a lot of differences today vs a couple of hundred years ago on how art is produced and consumed; however that doesn't really affect the quality of Art.

I don't think this is supported by canon. These items have not been replicated, that doesn't mean they can't be. Also, of all the artifacts, the Elder Wand is certainly not unique; there are thousands and thousands of wands, just not as good. The same for the invisibility cloak.

Do we really see lots of non-unique magical items that get a 2.0 edition? We see different inventions certainly and sometimes through their testing phase, but I honestly can't think of anything else that gets the "broom" treatment; meaning technological progress akin to the one cars or electronic devices have.

I don't want to disprove wizarding progress, but to point out that wizarding progress doesn't (nor does it have to) follow the muggle progress we are familiar with. Even though (I agree) JKR somewhat tried to make magic take technology's role in the magical society, it is quite an ill-fitted role. You can try to exclude things like the Elder Wand as exceptions to the "general trend", or you could fully embrace that it exists in a space altogether different from technology, having also artistic and philosophical aspects and make up a different kind of progress for it.

But I suppose this has to do more with one's take on things. At the end of the day you can certainly say that it is a wizard's obsession that's imbued in the artifact, but also equally well argue that it was a result of particular skill and understanding; after all da Vinci didn't solely paint the Mona Lisa, nor was he an ignorant man (quite the opposite).

 

To me it feels simply like the effects of a liberal use of plotonium. JKR just adds to the plot whatever she needs to carry the story to wherever she needs to: she cares about drama, not about universe consistency. That's why Deathly Hallows feels like a separate book from the series: where the heck do Hallows come from? Rocks fall, Voldemort dies, because of mythical uberwand with daddy issues never hinted of in the previous six volumes. Ok.

For me a good part of the HPverse charm is how it mirrors technology with zany magical gimmicks. For instance, wizards don't develop intrinsically magical devices for remote communications, they use owls instead of postmen and charmed paper planes instead of clunky pneumatic tubes. Hogwarts teaches a regular high school curriculum, based on the replication of repeatable knowledge and skills. There are scientific publications, societies, etc.

If a wizard or muggle invents something useful, you can bet your ass someone is already working on replicating it, and they'll eventually succeed or even improve on the original. Imitation is how brains work, and the basis of things like Hogwarts or the magical wacky subs for muggle technology.

I don't think the art analogy works. Art's purpose is aesthetic pleasure, and that can be be achieved in many different ways. You could say only the Mona Lisa can give you some specific kind of pleasure that you can't find in any other painting, but that's not comparable to the specific utility you can draw from a unique magical artifact like the Resurrection Stone or the Goblet of Fire.

If you like the Mona Lisa, and you prefer an oil painting to a mechanical reproduction, there are dozens of skilled painters that could produce a copy that only a few experts with specialized equipment would be able tell from the original. There's nothing functionally unique about the object, other than the historic value of Leonardo painting it.

TLDR: hammering logic consistency into JKR's work is a fine pastime and the genesis of worthwhile AU fanfictions, but canon has too many holes to be successfully rationalized.

 

Wholeheartedly agree with this point; reconstructing anything out of what JK Rowling has written is always going to be a messy affair because there seems to have been little meaning/intention put into the construction of something coherent in the first place.

To sort of expand on what you initially said, I think people also run into issues when comparing technology versus magic because our conception of technological advancement is fundamentally rooted in a particular political-economic order that probably isn't identical with that of the magical world. The magical world doesn't appear to possess the same sort of intrinsic directional dynamic that capitalism bestows upon our society and that drives technological development. Perhaps in feudal society technology and magic occupied a similar position in society, but I don't enough about feudalism to make this claim.

I also wonder if magic was analogous to science (not technology) whether we would see it progress in a similar fashion. I.e. we would be able to witness magical revolutions that upended previous modes of magical thinking and instituted a new world view. But from the limited evidence we have in canon I doubt one could make a defensible claim one way or the other and you'd be left just sort of making it up.

 

My headcanon is a lot of 'ancient' magic is powered by sacrifice and/or death.

We already know that sacrificial magic is real and powerful because of Lily's sacrifice, but it's also very finicky, unpredicable and rare.

It would make sense that has society improved, and became less violent, the need for sacrifice and death decreased. This would lead to less extraordinary magical objects being created.

It's also why wizards such as Voldemort and Dumbledore are revered. Voldemort has no problems causing death and destruction to push the boundaries of magic, while Dumbledore understands the power of love and sacrifice. They both are revolutionaries in understanding and developing new magical spells and objects.

 

This is more a matter for the Politics subforum, but plenty of technological advances have happened under very different kinds of political systems, although capitalism does seem to be the most fruitful. On the other hand, communist China is the undisputed world champion of replicating technology invented by others.

I wonder how this concept would translate to HP fanfics. The idea of cheap, low-quality wands was exploited in... Delenda est, was it? What if you could buy your own plastic Golbet (sic) of Flames for seven knuts at Bacheng's Baffling Bazaar, 117 Diagon Alley? If you can't decide on what to have for dinner today just light it up, throw in a few recipes and it will spit out the one it thinks best. It'll probably melt after a few uses but, eh, you get what you pay for.

 

Most magic requires not only specific knowledge but also specific and precise conditions. We know that if you mispronounce the words that means the feather won't be flying, we know that if you cut a potion ingredient in cubes instead of thin strips then the potion is ruined. We also know that Astronomy is an important enough subject that you start learning it by year one and that they sell a model of the entire galaxy in diagon alley.

My idea is that it's entirely possible that the reason wolfsbane didn't work before was that some star was too close to our solar system and it affected how the magic worked in some plant but now it has gone far enough that it's possible to brew wolfsbane. This is also the reason some items are unique. You just cannot replicate the exact conditions that allowed them to be made in the first place.

 

When talking about the Elder Wand specifically, I think that when compared to modern day standards, it's probably a fairly average wand that's well suited to combat and has fickle loyalties. Its reputation has been built up over the centuries as increasingly famous witches and wizards fought and killed for the possession of it, but it doesn't really give its users any particular advantage over a well suited wand. Modern wands seem be designed to 'key' for lack of a better word to their owners, and perhaps the creator of the Elder Wand didn't know how to do that, or specifically chose materials for the wand that would respond better to more powerful or combatative wizards.

I do like the comparison of magic to music or to art, but I think that magical disciplines might be more comparable to crafts. Magic isn't getting better over time necessarily, but, as in our own world, education for children has become mandatory, and quality standards have probably been rolled out by the ministry. The average wizard or witch in 1450 might have been toting around a branch with a few crup hairs stuffed into its centre, and would probably only know whatever spells their parents taught them. Magical schools would have been reserved for the children of the elite or in some cases particularly bright students. Apprenticeships to wizards specialising in one particular discipline might also have been more common, so you might get a situation where one wizard can perform advanced human transfiguration with ease, but has difficulty casting a levitation charm. The printing press would have also helped when it came to recording new spells, although I'd imagine that there was, and maybe continues to be a fairly high level of secrecy around spells, ala the whole 'dark magic' joke in The Seventh Horcrux.

 

Canon disagrees with you here as Harry Potter fixed his broken wand (with a reparo if I remember correctly?) while a) not being a wizard extrodinaire & b) Ollivander had stated that there was no magic known to him that could repair that broken wand. And Ollivander is pretty much the expert when it comes to wands. So either Harry Potter has some seriously good repairing skills and he's coming into his own, or the Elder Wand apart from being perfectly suited to the one who won it, is also extra special.

 

I forgot about that. Running with my theory tho, I'm just going to say that it was a placebo effect.

 

One could take the view that magical progress is hindered by the research not being shared and widely available as it is in the information age. Got a new spell that gives you, your family or your business an advantadge? Better keep it to yourself. Groundbreaking magical discoveries of the kind that only a group of well-trained and collaborative wizards and witches can achieve with a funding basically only a country can provide? Let's keep those a mystery.

On the other hand, new spells and advancements in generic item crafting do exist, so there is some progress. The average 20th century wizard probably knows more, easier and faster spells and potions recipes than his 14th century counterpart.

Magical Artefacts for the Ages (tm) however are the unique results of singular geniuses (or sufficiently focussed and funded people) created under the right circumstances. For example, Albus Dumbledore would be a sufficiently smart and powerful wizard with the requisite knowledge of Alchemy that he could create a Philosophers Stone - if he spent 50 years of his life focussed on that. But immortality is not his kind of jam, so he's a deluminating educator.

 

I mean, clearly knowledge is being shared. The moment Dumbledore stood out as a genius at Hogwarts, papers writen by him were academically published and he found himself in corespondence with the most notable academics of the time.
Elphias Doge mentioned it in the article about Dumbledore.

 

I didn't mean it quite as absolute as I made it sound - I thought more along the lines of Seventh Horcrux, which was mentioned here before.

This, but expanded to things that the inventor would have other reasons to keep quiet about. A potion that no one else knows the recipe for is the easiest monopoly ever. So information is being shared, but not as widely and completely as it could be.