Theories of Magic: The Nature of Observable Reality

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Shadow Puppets

In the previous article, we saw some ideas about what magic might be, and evidence that effects of magic could at least theoretically be possible within our current scientific knowledge. This article is going to look more at how magical effects could (at least theoretically) be generated.

Remember that our working definition of magic is the use of spiritual and ritual activities intended to accomplish some sort of change in the universe. So at this point we need to ask ourselves some pretty fundamental questions about what the universe actually is.

This is a harder question than it might seem at first. The simplest answer, of course, is everything you can observe using your physical senses. But that appears to be incomplete, because there are many things that you probably treat as being part of the universe that you yourself cannot see: A faraway galaxy observable only by telescope, atoms and molecules too small for you to notice without an electron microscope, infrared and ultraviolet waves, the TV show you have never seen and do not really care to, and so forth. And to make matters worse, some of what you can observe is not in fact part of the universe: desert mirages, “seeing stars” after taking a blow to the head, itches from limbs no longer attached to the body, etc.

Plato's Cave

As it turns out, the universe appears to change based on human observation. The idea that there is a single observable external reality also flies in the face of what happens when we attempt to more completely describe the universe through the tools of science – observation, deduction, prediction, and testing. While there are some behaviors of the universe that seem to be extremely well-defined, such as the speed of light in a vacuum, there are others that seem to be equally extremely undefined, such as whether a subatomic thing is a wave or a particle at any particular moment.

This leads to an idea that has been around a long time: That the universe is not so much an external environment as it is the sum of the perceptions of living beings. In other words, instead of "what you see is what you get" it's more "what you get is what you see". In Plato's Republic, Plato puts forward (through the character of Socrates) an allegory of a cave. In the cave, the people are chained so that they observe one wall. Behind them is a great fire, so that shadows of the people are projected onto the wall. The people, who have never observed anything other than the shadows, assume that the shadows are all that there is to see (514a). One obvious interpretation of this is that what we perceive is at some level a collective illusion rather than an unchangeable objective reality.

How Does This Help?

If, as this idea suggests, your consciousness is part of what makes up reality, then it creates a mechanism for changing reality: Change your own consciousness, and possibly other peoples' consciousness!

This does all suggest important limits, however: We are talking about tinkering with the exact positions of electrons, whether a chunk of matter-energy behaves like a wave or a particle, and other tiny effects. Now, tiny effects can have important consequences, but what you should not expect to be able to pull off are flashy effects like levitation or fireballs. Even if you think reality is entirely illusion, you would be hard-pressed to maintain belief in such effects while your own physical senses are telling you the exact opposite of the effect you want. In addition, for something that spectacular, not only would you have to contradict your senses, you would have to convince everybody else in a position to observe the effects that what you believe is happening is what is actually happening.



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