Why is it Magic and Science/Technology can't ever seem to coexist?

[DudeistBelieve]

This is sorta a harry potter rant, but it goes pretty much well with all fantasy settings.

Aside from the fact I hate magic, I hate fantasy settings because they're always set in the bloody darkages. No one understands how modern medicine works, chemical reactions, hell even fucking geology. And my question is, why?

Why is there never a scientist in any of these settings?

The gun argument is always a good one, in Harry Potter "they" say that muggle technology doesn't work. Well what is a gun really? Theres a mechanical component, and theres a chemical reaction with the gun powder. So are we to believe a rope and pully wouldn't work at hogwarts? The gun powder, fine, I could by that however FIRE is a chemical reaction too, and if that doesn't work then how the FUCK do the candles in the mess hall burn a blaze? Or are these some bullshit magic candles?

And fine, gun powder doesn't work, well there are all these magical chemical reactions (Poitions), can one really not somehow mix something together that can create the small explosion to shoot the bullet? I think the advantage of this is obvious, you wouldn't have to yell "OBLITERATE!" or whatever before you attack giving your opponent time to counter attack. Furthermore they'd be all "OBLI-Ack!" because you just shot them in the throat.

And I'm sick of how no one ever cares how the magic can even be done. A lot of people ***** about George Lucas creating the Midichlorians, but at least the fucking Jedi took the time to understand how they could tap into this spiritual energy.

 

[Asita]

Practicality, in many respects. Allow me to turn to ME2's Legion for the shorthand.


The simplest form of the Magic/Technology division is actually quite sensible for the most part: Magic and Science are effectively two paths to the same end, with magic often being more effective and/or allowing easier access to the same result. If you can incinerate someone by casting fireball (or lightning, if you prefer) with a flick of your hand, why would you even think to build a gun? Fireball already gives you a simple, fast, and effective means of killing someone at range and to a far more lethal degree than a bow and arrow. The gun's niche is, in effect, already filled. Similarly, why would one learn about advanced medical techniques if healing magic could do in seconds what medicine would take months to accomplish? When looked at in this light, it's not so much natural incompatibility between magic and science as it is that they are unlikely bedfellows.

 

[Anachronism]

This isn't so much an in-universe explanation, but in the case of the vast majority of stories there's simply no need for them to co-exist. Fantasy and science fiction are, when you get right down to it, the same genre: the plot is facilitated by magic in the one, and by advanced technology in the other. If you have one in your story, you don't really need to have the other.

Still, while it is unusual, there are instances when they coexist, or have become one and the same thing. The Dying Earth immediately springs to mind.

As does a little movie called Star Wars.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

And I'm sick of how no one ever cares how the magic can even be done. A lot of people ***** about George Lucas creating the Midichlorians, but at least the fucking Jedi took the time to understand how they could tap into this spiritual energy.

Magic is scientifically explored all over the place: The practitioners are called Wizards in Dungeons and Dragons, and they are people who scientifically study magic, develop spells, and otherwise treat magic as just another force in the universe to be studied and explored, and the results are practically applied*. It crops up elsewhere too, like in the Dresden Files, or anywhere else that magic follows predicable patterns.

I think what you're talking about with the bullets is mixing magic and technology, but that too has been done frequently: it's called Magitek, and you can see it applied in places like the Eberron Campaign setting, where you have magically powered rail lines criss-crossing the continent (and I've known more than one D&D group to start a side business magically preserving food or otherwise using infinite cosmic power to make this month's rent). They design and use magic technology because it's better than our versions: what's the point of a rope and pulley when you can just levitate something with the wand you always have on your person? Why try and make a gun (an EXTREMELY difficult thing to do, even if you are an accomplished chemist/potionmaker) when you can kill in an almost-foolproof manner with your wand while simultaneously protecting yourself from attack?

Going off that, magic is applied scientifically and technologically in Harry Potter. Off the top of my head:
1) Floo Network, which links every magical fireplace in Britain for fast transport.
2) The Wolfsbane Potion (I think that's what it's called) that prevents werewolves from going feral was recently invented, and it's suggested that the only things currently stopping mass production are the stigma against werewolves and the limited number of skilled potioneers willing to make it.
3) Magic medicine. Sure, the doctors don't know much about muggle medicine, but Madam Pomfrey can regrow bones, heal wounds, and otherwise deal with a variety of ailments using scientifically applied magic (someone has invented Skele-gro, tested it, refined it until it's safe to use on children, and is now producing and selling it on an industrial level).
4)Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is an in-universe textbook that is the basic zoology textbook at Hogwarts. They may not learn how a cow digests, but they know that Chizpurfles will try and eat any magic items that are left lying around. Heck, it seems like every course from Astronomy to Herbology to Potions to Transfiguration teaches the basics of scientifically studying magic to each and every student, while there are advanced courses like Rune Studies that presumably go more in-depth on certain magic phenomena.
5) Rita Skeeter's quill that writes automatically for her. It's actually better than a regular notepad because it either writes the story on paper as she writes it in her mind, or writes in her style for later editing.
6) Voldemort designs one hell of a resurrection/immortality spell. Sure, it used the bones of his father and the blood of his enemies, but it's the same sort of thinking that goes into building a skyscraper.

While magic settings are often lagging behind non-magic societies in certain areas, it's because they (hypothetically) can solve the problem without having to study anything other than magic, so non-magic study is very much a fringe activity. It can also be compared to quantum mechanics, certain intricacies of biology, and other difficult sciences in our world: We may not understand why things happen, but that doesn't mean we won't use them.

*Compare that with Warlocks, who make deals with supernatural creatures for the power to accomplish their own ends, and Sorcerers, who have an innate understanding of a certain branch of magic.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Practicality, in many respects. Allow me to turn to ME2's Legion for the shorthand.


The simplest form of the Magic/Technology division is actually quite sensible for the most part: Magic and Science are effectively two paths to the same end, with magic often being more effective and/or allowing easier access to the same result. If you can incinerate someone by casting fireball (or lightning, if you prefer) with a flick of your hand, why would you even think to build a gun? Fireball already gives you a simple, fast, and effective means of killing someone at range and to a far more lethal degree than a bow and arrow. The gun's niche is, in effect, already filled. Similarly, why would one learn about advanced medical techniques if healing magic could do in seconds what medicine would take months to accomplish? When looked at in this light, it's not so much natural incompatibility between magic and science as it is that they are unlikely bedfellows.

Agreed, I myself have seen anime and game setting that have magitek and magic/science coexisting. I do find it a bit odd that many settings don't seem to combine them

On a tangent, I think we had a thread that turned into magic and how it's supposed to be interpreted. One argued that magic is based solely on higher level interpretation with no ability to codify it while I argued that it was merely the ability to understand and manipulate the world parallel to the rules of science. I suppose that resolving that may allow for more of these settings to be made but It will take some time.

 

[Nimzabaat]

Actually nobody said that technology "didn't work" in the Harry Potter series. I believe Mr Weasley had all manner of Muggle artifacts. I also recall them calling a gun a single-purpose wand which is why wizards generally didn't bother with them (your phone only calls people? mine takes pictures, plays games...) Also, if you had read the books, advanced wizards didn't yell out their spells. That was something Harry was trying to learn.

You should check out Shadowrun. They have science and magic co-existing and it's quite cool.

 

[rutger5000]

City of the dead Sorcerer combines magic with science (And one heck of a case could be made for FMA but alchemy isn't considered or treated as magic there). City of the dead Sorcerer takes place in the middle of the 21st century, a decade or 2 before the start of series a new element is discovered which can be used to generate a special kind of energy which allows the violation of the laws of physics a.k.a do magic. But to use it a lot of high tech equipment is evolved to generate the energy and manipulate it to make it do what you want it to do.

 

[Harleykin]

since it's about harry potter i can totally write what i intendet to when i read the topic yay

read pratchett's discworld books. basically the wizards are the scientists.
i'm rading all of'em since i heard of him i'm like 15 books down the line and happy to have them in my lunch breaks.
love reading anyway!

 

[anthony87]

You should check out Farscape.

It has science, it has magic and it even has sciency magic!

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

since it's about harry potter i can totally write what i intendet to when i read the topic yay

read pratchett's discworld books. basically the wizards are the scientists.
i'm rading all of'em since i heard of him i'm like 15 books down the line and happy to have them in my lunch breaks.
love reading anyway!

On this note, go read teh Science of Discworld. The Wizards create our universe, which run on Physics, rather than Narrative Imperrative like on Discworld. They then use magic to study our universe, wha-ha-hacky hijinks ensue

 

[Weresquirrel]

As has already been said, most technology is about facilitating an easier way of doing something. And if magic is free and abundant, that's the easiest way. There's no need to invent airplanes when you can teleport to places. No reason to invent a gun when a fireball would be less complicated and more effective.

There's nothing to stop a writer making it so that magic is too complex/unpredictable/rare for common use. Or maybe it has a drawback from constant use, or requires expensive reagents or is just too plain unwieldy to use in anything other than highly controlled circumstances. If you have to spend an hour drawing an intricate sigil to form a portal that'll take you a few miles down the road to the shops, maybe you'd invent a bike to get there with less hassle.

The Discworld books get around the problem by having magic being incredibly dangerous. Not only does its use get the attention of things you really don't want the attention of, but it's also wildly unpredictable. Therefore while you do have witches and wizards in Discworld, you also have engineers building devices.

In Guild Wars 2, the Asura race treats magic like science, with golems being treated in the same way that robots are in sci-fi and all around behaving like mad scientists.

 

[maxben]

Brandon Sanderson wrote an interesting book called the Alloy of Law. It was the 4th book in a series, but was different in that the first 3 were semi-Dark Ages magic style things and this one was set in a steampunk universe. He wrote that he felt too many fantasy author ignore the Industrial and Future settings, and that he wanted to write a series that is set in the same timeline, uses the same magical system, but the world evolves. I thought it would be dumb, as I love classic swords and magic fantasy, but it worked extremely well. It helped that Sanderson worked a long time developing the "science" of his magic to the point where it had clear laws that were easily understood and also allowed for new discoveries.

And that is the problem: As Clark states, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic though I would add the addendum that it must not be understood by the observer. Think Sci Fi settings with a semi-magical ancient race with unknown tech or how societies on the peripheries of the Roman Empire later saw Roman invention generations after collapse of that empire. We can also take the opposite, magic that is mapped out and understood is indistinguishable from a science in the eyes of the practitioner.

Now, if the magic had no rules and was unknowable or unconstrained, that could also be interesting. Lovecraft used that technique for example because it laughs in the face of human/scientific progress. After all, if magic was all powerful what use is scientific development? If magical beings were all powerful, humanity is meaningless. And though Lovercraft hinted at rules, the beings he created and their source of power had to be essentially unknowable.

 

[DeltaEdge]

I would think they rarely combine because the more science is mixed into stories involving magic, the more time you have to spend developing your magic and how it works.

If everyone is just running around casting pre-tread magical spells like fireballs and lightning bolts in your story in a way that seems familiar to anyone familiar with magic fantasy, then you don't really have to put down any groundwork, because it's already done for you, and you don't need to really bother as much with world building and can just focus on the story you want to tell.

But if you are trying to insert science(i.e., logic) into your magic-based stories, then suddenly, you have to put a lot more work into developing the concept of magic and how it is incorporated into the world, in order for it to be feasible, and at that point, it becomes more like supernatural science rather than magic in that you develop and actual understanding of how the supernatural elements work, rather than just calling it magic, and then things that just kind of work when you have a non-scientific magic story suddenly come into question when you flesh out the magic, and you have to do a lot more work to explain, say, why people only ever cast fireballs, lightning bolts, and icicles, or you may have to scrap those ideas outright because you found out that they no longer fit in with the logic of your world.

tl;dr inserting science/logic into stories with magic makes it more difficult to write as it requires you to put more effort into explaining what magic is, and how it works, as well as how it interacts with technology.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

On a tangent, I think we had a thread that turned into magic and how it's supposed to be interpreted. One argued that magic is based solely on higher level interpretation with no ability to codify it while I argued that it was merely the ability to understand and manipulate the world parallel to the rules of science. I suppose that resolving that may allow for more of these settings to be made but It will take some time.

I think those two views are incompatible, because they are seeing magic in different ways. Your theory is more scientific, like most modern fantasy writing: Magic has clear rules that can be used to achieve certain outcomes. On the other hand, in most sword & sorcery settings, magic is an incomprehensible force: If Grand Lord Ziggot sacrifices a virgin on the new moon to the sound of a thousand chanting slaves, he will be able to level the city. If I try it, there's just going to be a mess and a very difficult explanation the next day.

I remember a Dragonlance campaign back in the day where the players decided that going to collect/manufacture the eponymous lances (magic artifacts that can pierce a dragon's scales and slay it) was too much trouble, so they spent their time and money developing deathtraps: hidden net-firing ballista, collapsing castles, anything and everything they could think of that would kill a a giant flying lizard that breathes fire. It was fun, but if the rules of the setting were, "dragons can only be killed with dragonlances because magic, there's no other way to do it," things would have been much different.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Shadowrun has magic and technology co-existing.

I think part of the reason they try and keep them mutually exclusive is simply for the purpose of balance for game and fictional purposes. Someone able to both use a gun and shoot fire and lightning out of their hands would be imbalanced, so the idea that you have to specialize in one (or just be ok in both) serves the purpose of balance for the game in question, sort of the same way they often won't let mages wear heavy armor in fantasy RPGs.

Two games/systems that did interesting things with the 'Magic vs. science' concept were "Arkanum", which basically had a magic fantasy world undergoing an industrial revolution, so people basically fell into the camps of "technology is better and will eventually replace magic" or "magic is better and technology is just a blip on the radar that will fade with time". The other was the old "Mage: The Ascension" White Wolf RPG (I'm sure it has a different name now) where Magic was essentially seen as breaking the laws of reality (ie. the laws of science), and thus they were often in contention with one another.

 

[Scorched_Cascade]

I think you might have been watching/reading the wrong things. I can think of a fair amount of examples of Magic and Science getting blended. Both magic being used/studied scientifically and the almost literal blending of magic and technology.

You, my friend, need to meet the Skaven.

Gaze upon his fine rat-ish countenance

Spoiler

These little bastards are so vicious that they eat highly mutagenic magic rocks from their planet's second moon that fall down as asteroids. It gives some of them magic powers and the rest of them...they don't mind spreading the highly toxic magic rocks around...in a manner of speaking.

This is a Skaven Warplock Jezzail. It fires bolts of refined warpstone. They refine it through a combination of sorcery and alchemy:

Spoiler

This is a Skaven Warpfire Thrower. To quote Lexicanum

unleash a deadly mixture of warpstone and highly volatile chemicals, which emerges from the barrel as a gout of unnatural flame. The concoction is particularly hellish and insidious, as creatures who manage to survive contact with the mixture are still subject to its warping effects. Creatures coming in contact with the flame begin to bodily break down, meanwhile sprouting all forms of insane mutations. To the delight of the Chaos gods, the victim is quickly driven insane by the agony and mental trauma, before finally decomposing completely

Spoiler

This steampunk looking thing is a Doomwheel. Rats run around the inside and provide power to the warpstone generators on either side that unleash warp lightning on anything nearby. They're basically using a turbine in combination with magic rocks to generate magic "toxic" electricity.

Spoiler

All in a universe where the majority of other races are using medieval era weaponry, magic or steampunk technology.

If you swap to the 40kverse then there are the Dark Mechanicum who blend futuristic technology with practices and technologies from the warp, the game's psychic dimensions, to create magical machine horrors.

I'd cite some other universes; D&D settings, gunslingers from Pathfinder, Cybermages from Old/new world of darkness, etc, but my post is lengthy enough as it is.

 

[lacktheknack]

It's because magic is something we don't understand.

It's harder than it looks to write a partially-explained universe, since the writer will keep thinking of ways that the magic can "work" that doesn't contradict the more complex scientific aspects. Hence, we either get everything fully explained and plausible (sci-fi) or minimally explained and far-fetched (fantasy), with little in between.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

snip

You do realize Harry Potter is set in 1990's England, which isn't what you would call swimming in pistols and assault rifles unlike America?

As for the rest of your rant post, [user]Asita[/user] sums it up pretty well.

Spoiler

Practicality, in many respects. Allow me to turn to ME2's Legion for the shorthand.


The simplest form of the Magic/Technology division is actually quite sensible for the most part: Magic and Science are effectively two paths to the same end, with magic often being more effective and/or allowing easier access to the same result. If you can incinerate someone by casting fireball (or lightning, if you prefer) with a flick of your hand, why would you even think to build a gun? Fireball already gives you a simple, fast, and effective means of killing someone at range and to a far more lethal degree than a bow and arrow. The gun's niche is, in effect, already filled. Similarly, why would one learn about advanced medical techniques if healing magic could do in seconds what medicine would take months to accomplish? When looked at in this light, it's not so much natural incompatibility between magic and science as it is that they are unlikely bedfellows.

There isn't much point in pursuing chemical/kinetic artillery when you can simply drag a mage or two along, they don't weigh as much as a cannon piece, doesn't require much in the way of supplies (assuming the world runs similar to D&D), and is more versatile to boot.

 

[Cartographer]

The big problem authors run into is, any setting that has acknowledged and widespread use of any form of technology by necessity has to have adopted the scientific method to achieve any of it. If you were to apply that same methodology to magic, especially the "cheating-science" form of magic that most settings use, you'd have no reason for strategic-trans-dimensional-atomic-mana-god-killer scrolls/bows/cannons not to have been made in pretty short order (despite what most "high" fantasy settings tell us, humans are the most warlike and brutal race by a huge margin, it'd be only a matter of time). So the best most authors settle for is a hodgepodge mixture of X amount of technology and Y amount of magic and no matter how smart people in the setting apparently are, none of them will ever be able to advance beyond X or Y without breaking the universe. It's far easier to set your world in the dark ages where no-one is about to invent magic-bazookas, than to answer the questions a high-tech magic world throws up (of course, you still get to ask why so many people are literate in your fantasy setting, there are rarely widespread schooling systems to teach the serfs' kids letters).