Scientific Proof that Magic Works(!)

[Unseen_Abilities]

Someone should Sigilize for this already

[BaguaKicksAss]

I have no interest whatsoever in the scientific community proving magic works.

[GrandmasterP]

The day any scientist can make a tree in a laboratory then I might take an interest in science, so far... Nada.

[Nungali]

Here is some 'scientific proof' that 'magic works'

 

http://vimeo.com/75736121

 

 

It can never happen though, as I think you suggest, as if (and in the past when) it has been done, its just a re-classification ... the terms then shift from 'magic' to 'science'.

[BaguaKicksAss]

Mathematics used to be "occult" and considered evil....

 

ROFL.

[silent thunder]

Lyle Lovett got to have sex with Julia Roberts.... that proves to me that music is magic.

[Unseen_Abilities]

This thread was obviously made as a joke; I don't see Audiologists recommending Sigil Magic to their patients to heal their Tinnitus any time soon, but it worked for me.

[silent thunder]

I find Pranayama to be magical. One session and my friend was cured of Asthma, which he suffered for over 20 years... he has never touched an inhaler since.

 

edit: although magic is just a word for saying... that's cool and I don't understand how it works...

Edited May 21, 2014 by silent thunder

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Actually, strange as it may seem, magic is the proof of science.

I say this because in the well-formed definition of magic given by Agrippa in his Three Books on Occult Philosophy all of the positive content of modern science and engineering can be viewed as manifestations of Natural and Mathematical Magic. By positive I mean all those conclusions and doctrines of Science that have been the result of Scientific Method and not those derived from or derivable from the false world-view with which the Scientific Revolution started, the mechanistic/atomistic framework based on the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicurianism, and substantially refuted by both Special Relativity and Quantum Physics, viewed as a reductio ad absurdam proof of such mechanistic principles taken as starting points and a return to explanation in terms of Formal causes as Thomas Kuhn explores in 'Concepts of Cause in the Development of Physics', which can be found in a collection of his essays The Essential Tension, on p. 21.

From part of Kuhn's conclusion:

'What is to be concluded from this brief sketch? As a minimal summary I suggest the following. Though the narrow concept of cause was a vital part of the physics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its importance declined in the nineteenth and has almost vanished in the twentieth. ... the structure of physical explanation closely resembles that which Aristotle developed in analyzing formal causes. Effects are deduced from a few specified innate properties of the entities with which the explanation is concerned. The logical status of those properties and of the explanations deduced from them is the same as that of Aristotle's forms. Cause in physics has again become cause in the broader sense, that is, explanation.' (Emphasis is mine) (Kuhn, Thomas; The Essential Tension, p. 28)

Since Magic in Agippa's sense is fundamentally tied to a world-view based on Aristotle's forms, the interpretation of physics in terms of Aristotle's forms, puts them on the same level as Aprippa's explanation of magic, thus magic is the proof of science. QED.

The above discussion is somewhat tongue in cheek, but the fundamental thinking is correct. It was my realization that modern science could be reframed in a Platonic world-view circa 1980, that helped me to adopt Platonism as a fundamental perspective, my 'working model' of reality you might say.

For an interesting view of a thoroughly Platonized universe see:

Max Tegmark on Wikipedia

 

Who in turn came up with this silly nonsense:

Yep, the universe may be a computable function, but it may take a quantum computer to do it. (On Wikipedia)

 

Well, the quantum computer is my idea not Tegmark's, I first came up with it about 2000 in my earliest investigation of the idea of Quantum Computing, though in the end I came to the conclusion that consciousness is not a computable function and that Mathematics is a structure embedded, in a sense, in consciousness by which consciousness becomes aware of itself. Or something like that. We are getting into some pretty deep stuff here, though I think it is ultimately compatible with a Platonic worldview.

 

 

Edit: Corrected spelling of Seventeenth in Seventeenth Century.

Edited May 23, 2014 by Zhongyongdaoist

[Nungali]

Its an interesting view. Many times throughout the past I have seen what I thought was a type of corollary between (what I understood of) new ideas being presented in physics and cosmology with (what I understood of ) some Hermetic and Platonic principles. But sometimes it seems to go full circle ... the 'scientists', at times, seem guilty of the very accusations that other scientists laid upon those with an Hermetic or Platonic view. I haven't really understood that as I dont have the background or facilities to fully understand what they ARE saying but I found this criticism of multi-universe theories;

" For a start, how is the existence of the other universes to be tested? To be sure, all cosmologists accept that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes, but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there are an infinite number of universes, credibility reaches a limit. As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification. Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith." (my emphasis)
— Paul Davies, A Brief History of the Multiverse

?

Which I guess is inevitable given my above thoughts? In any case, both views are probably equally unrefined in my understanding. But many times, when reading some of these theories and ideas I hear the echo of things I have read about in Platonism and Hermetics .

Here is a vague struggling explanation, that I hesitate to outline as I probably do not understand both sides, but on a very basic level, as an outline; when looking 'into matter', beyond the internal 'event horizon', at its core structure and particles I have read that some theories postulate a 10 or 11 level model, and have read it described as '3 dimensions with another extension of 7 packed into each other ( or condensed in some way) and another one as somehow outside the rest'. This seems to me like an inverted Tree of Life ... with the 'Supernal Triad' as the physical world of 3 dimensions and the 7 principles now 'beyond the abyss' forming an 'abstract / ideal' world.

Also reading through Butterfield's History of Science , some of the old concepts ideas seem right but just slightly out of tweak due to other larger concepts held ( like the separation and 'settling ' of the elements relating to specific gravity - except they saw the earth as THE centre of everywhere and not each object as having its own gravity and centre).

So ... a mathematical structure can be 'self-aware' and see its structure as a subjective environment ... I will have to think on that - beyond The Matrix that one . .... And now complex computer models have found a place in the lists of existing Universes; " The simulated multiverse exists on complex computer systems that simulate entire universes." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse.

But I like your general idea, I was coming from the view that once science 'discovers' the working behind something it would pass into the realm of science and no longer be 'magic' ... but if science demonstrates or develops a theorem that is the same as one already postulated by Aristotle / Platonism / Hermetics .... well .... - but that might just 'give the Emperor some new clothes' ... IMO some 'science' doesnt seem like 'real science' (i.e. demanding proofs and repeated results) at all ... maybe the definitions will change? If science and 'magic' are going to meet, both may have to move towards each others outlooks and methods?

Ed; I probably need to read up on the anthropic principle from a scientific perspective.

Edited May 23, 2014 by Nungali

[solxyz]

Here you go:

 

http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm