Re: Just how does magic work?


"Gerrit Vicin" <gerrit@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1130884352.702601@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> zgirnius schrieb:
> >>>zgirnius:
> >>>Yes, there are some lovely constants with amazing properties (pi, as
> >>>Gerrit Vicin poionts out). But do the real numbers (of which pi is one
> >>>example) really have an existence independent of us?
> >
> >>Gerrit Vicin:
> >>I'd dearly like to know. Since I don't I deliberately wrote 'seeming
> >>existence' (meaning independently of us as you nicely put it).
> >
> >>>zgirnius:
> >>>Or is it that once
> >>>we create the real numbers, we can then discover some of the amazing
> >>>properties some of them, such as pi, have?
> >
> >>Gerrit Vicin:
> >>What would your answer be?
> >
> >
> > I guess I would probably answer 'both'. (Wishy-washy of me, I know!) It
> > does not make sense to me that abstract constructions of mathematics
> > have an 'existence' independent of us. But once we create them, there
> > is definitely a discovery process. If we have created (or discovered)
> > the real numbers, and two-dimensional space, and we define a circle in
> > that space in the usual way, we are not free to create pi. The ratio of
> > the circumference of a circle to its diameter is one particular real
> > number whose value happens to be between 3 and 4 (3 and 4 are the
> > numbers 1+1+1, and 1+1+1+1, of course). And it has other properties and
> > relationships to other numbers and objects which I would say are
> > discovered as well. But this is not at all immediately apparent from
> > the basic definitions of real numbers, spaces, and circles...someone
> > discovered it.
>
> I've just realized that I've been quite inaccurate: I consider
> mathematics rather the language which helps us describe certain
> phenomenoms much in the way you suggest with magic below (and, of
> course, with physics). By means of mathematics we can describe the real
> numbers, a circle and pi... The terms we use, mathematical terms, are of
> our own creation. Yet the phenomenon behind might not. I prefer to think
> that if a circle exists somewhere out there in the universe pi also does
> regardless how we name them.
> Well, that's interesting. But I'm afraid I just don't know enough to go
> deeper into the subject (though I don't want to end this disussion by
> saying so),
>
> >>Gerrit Vicin:
> >>I suppose that by no means we can answer the question as to how magic
> >>works. Nonetheless I mused whether there might be a hypothetical analogy
> >>between math and magic (except from both starting with 'ma') in the
> >>matter of being either created or discovered.
> >
> >
> > I'm not sure that math is a good analogy for magic. Magic in the
> > Potterverse seems to be a real phenomenon, like natural phenomena in
> > our world. I would think it would be more like physics. It works in
> > some way, acording to some principles, which people can stumble across
> > by accident or through a designed experiment to test a hypothesis.
> > (Though, if magic has any sort of rules or logic to it, I do not doubt
> > that mathematics is an excellent language for expressing the theory of
> > magic...)
>
> I've just thought of this kind of holistic sentence about potions
> Professoer Slughorn asked of his students (answered correctly by
> Hermione of course). I can't remember exactly how it goes now. But I'm
> just picturing it formulated as a sum written neatly with a Sigma and so
> on...
> :-)
>
> gerriT
>

I would presume there is some sort of higher education system in the
Wizarding world, though there are so few wizards/witches there may be only
a few, it sounds as if there isn't one in Britain but I would presume there
is one somewhere in Europe where further research is carried out. There
would also be some independent reaserch, after all someone is writing those
books in the library.


.

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