Re: Just how does magic work?

In message <news:3spijvFov5o3U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
"Electric Frog" <BounceDave2702@xxxxxxxxx> enriched us with:
>
> "Gerrit Vicin" <gerrit@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1130843279.686929@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> I think you can also ask thusly about mathematics: Do people
>> invent or discover it?

Actually with mathematics it's a bit of each, mixed differently
depending on what area you're contemplating. Some of the stuff they do
is primarily invented, but there is usually an element of discovery as
well, and some of it (trigonometry seems as good an example as basic
algebra) it is almost exclusively discovery.

>> Because of the seeming existence of constances like pi I rather
>> think the latter.

Are you sure pi is a constant? >:->
(Well, if physicists can seriously debate whether 'constants' such as
the speed of light in vacuum or Planck's 'constant' are really
constants, then we can at least question pi -- in particular since the
circumference of a circle centered about a cosmic string is less than 2
times pi ...)

> Similarly in all science Gravity has always existed,

As an actual effect, yes.

As a part of the model, no (depending, of course, on what you
understand by 'gravity')

> Light showed propertied of being a particle and a wave and no-doubt
> there must still be things that we've yet to discover

Always!

> I guess there must be experts in various field (thaumaturgy for
> example) who're pushing the understanding back. Maybe no-one
> knows quite how magic works yet

The best examples of research that we know of in Potterverse are the
rooms in the Department of Mysteries. These people are apparently
studying basic magic -- the fundamental forces and interactions of
magic.

Dumbledore's research appears to have been more practical -- applied
magic (the twelve /uses/ of Dragon blood).

Of course we can set up models to describe how magic might work -- it
is quite fun to do so ;-) -- but in the end we must keep in mind that
Rowling has probably never looked at it from that point of view. It is
the scientific mind that postulates 'Magions', the wave/particle-like
excitations of the magical field ;-) (or whatever model one might
prefer), and Rowling's mind is not scientific as we've seen many times
before.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>

Men, said the Devil,
are good to their brothers:
they don't want to mend
their own ways, but each other's.
- Piet Hein, /Mankind/
.

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