Sunday, November 29, 2009

Science and Magic

It's easy to believe in magic when you're young.  Anything you couldn't explain was magic then.  It didn't matter if it was science or a fairy tale.  Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious and equally possible - elves probably more so.  ~Charles de Lint

I love this quote.  It reminds me of another one that I've always found equally intriguing, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," by Arthur C. Clarke.
 
One of the primary human characteristics is the desire to explain, explore, deconstruct.  We are curious little critters, and if you give us a mystery, we will work our fingers raw trying to pry it open and figure it out.  We need to know, in fact.  Our species has a very decided fear of that which we cannot process out and categorize.

This, ironically, is coupled with the desire to believe in something.  All men worship gods, every culture, every time period, every language and land.  We seek after something infinite, something larger than ourselves, something to fill that innate need inside.  All the way back to the very beginnings of time, belief is as ingrained as invention and exploration.


Are these two separate facets?  Do science and magic really have irreconcilable differences?  I know lots of people think so, but I never have.  I have always seen them as brothers.  We are seeking to know, we were gifted with that drive to learn and classify to help us see reflections of that which can never be fully understood at all.  The world we see and know is the prism splitting the pure white light of the divine into a rainbow of the visible and comprehensible.


I think we forget sometimes that science is not an end unto itself.  Too frequently, I think our particular culture has replaced the respect for the divine with our love of curiosity, the tool has become the focus instead of the purpose for which it was forged.  Perhaps we do know now more than we ever have before, but when we look around us at the magnitude of what is left to discover, I think the sheer wonder of the magic needs to creep back in.  I think we'd be better off for it.

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