What IS magic, really?

[Sashi]

So here's the question: if you literally can't define magic by "violation of the universe" then what's magic?

In X-men "mutant powers" are supposed to be scientific, but the only people with them are those with the "X Gene", so "mutant power" means "having the x-gene". But Dr. Strange does "magic". When Gambit makes cards explode he's using his mutant power to charge things with "kinetic energy" in a way that is perfectly scientifically explainable. Reed Richards could build a gun that fired "kinetically charged" projectiles. But when Dr. Strange makes something explode he's using "magic" in a way that can't be explained, Reed Richards tries to examine Dr. Strange and everything just goes loopy. It's like how irrational numbers can't be expressed as fractions. Think about that: it's not that we haven't found the right numbers to put in a ratio, it's actually impossible to express Pi as a ratio of two rational numbers. But Dr. Strange does those impossible things, not by knowing the secret numbers that can be used to express the ratio of pi, but by working outside the rules of science altogether.

So Reed Richards views Dr. Strange working his magic, and writes "Dr. Strange can do magic" in the laws of the universe ... so magic is now science? Do we just make an arbitrary cutoff? Do we define it circularly "Magic is what Dr. Strange can do but the man on the street can't"? Dr. Strange was an actual medical doctor before he became the Sorcerer Supreme, so is medicine now magic? Or is magic something that exists in a way that violates scientific principles? Not the "laws of the universe" but the actual methods that science uses to figure out those laws.

The closest I can come to something that violates scientific principles is art. The Rights of Spring drove people into a panic the first time it was performed. It's possible to scientifically figure out what sounds make people panic, and it's possible to scientifically figure out what sounds people find harmonious. But is it possible to scientifically figure out what music makes people panic? I don't know, but somewhere in that is where the conversation is.

So this is why I say "fuck you" again. Because your example of a bird flying completely misses this point. The bird just uses hollow bones and aerodynamics to fly (and Angel's "X-factor" gene made him mutate to grow aerodynamic wings and hollow bones so he could fly), but we study that and understand it scientifically, and make airplanes that fly in exactly the same way a bird flies except they use a propeller or jet instead of "flapping".

[JigokuBosatsu]

It does seem a little strange to me that these magic definitions always revolve around terms like "violation" and "molestation" of reality. I don't know that the terminology is correct. Obviously if it is stated in the description of the world that it is possible to do "seemingly impossible" things, then those things are not really violations of any sort of actual natural order, just an expected one. So maybe the term should be a "manipulation" of reality. If it adheres to some sort of scientific (or usable pseudo-scientific) explanation, fine. Dealt with in terms of science. If it achieves its effects in some acausal way, then it's "magic". This way you can have your cake and eat it too... you can have schools of alchemy, wizardry universities, whatever, and magic can be analyzed or taught in some orderly fashion. At the bottom of it, though, it's still MAGIC and we don't really know why it works the way it does, even if there is an identifiable source.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Sashi, if Reed Richards throws his arms up in the air and calls Dr. Strange "magic" and "unknowable to science" because his instruments fail, that's him being a bad scientist. If your compass goes crazy because of a magnetic anomaly, you don't throw your arms up in the air and say that your position is unknowable. If your thermometer breaks when you try to tell the heat of a flame, you don't say that the temperature is undefinable.

If you stick a digital thermometer in Dr Strange's mouth and it reads -20K, you don't say that he violates the laws of the universe and give up. You figure out why your thermometer gives that reading.

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A little about genre:
In the Marvel universe the over-arching definition of cool stuff that people can't do in the real world is "super powers". "Magic", "the x-gene", "getting bitten by a radioactive spider", and "secret technology" are all different ways to get super powers.

In the fantasy genre, "magic" usually fulfills the same role that super powers fulfill in a super hero game.

[Sashi]

I'm not saying that Reed Richards would just instantly give up, or even accept that Dr. Strange was doing things that it was impossible for science to explain, I'm just saying that in order for "magic" to be actually "magic" and not just "science with secrets" it literally has to be unknowable to science. Not like how the Uncertainty Principle sets hard limits on the resolution of an electron microscope unknowable, but that magic can't even be examined using scientific principles. That's really weird. It's such a weird concept that I'm not even sure it's possible to parse it in a meaningful way. Here's my attempt.

Reed Richards is trying to figure out how Sue Richard's invisible forcefield works. He sets up an experiment wherein she uses her force field to levitate a small sphere. As he examines her he finds that the "cosmic rays" altered her mind and body in such a way that part of her brain is a "force field emitter" and that when she changes the shape of the force field there is a large amount of activity in the spacial-temporal region of her brain. He also finds out that the "force field" is an induced discontinuity in Earth's gravitational field and combines these breakthroughs to create new devices that allow manipulation of gravity.

Then Dr. Strange comes in and performs the same experiment. Each time Dr. Strange does his "levitate object" trick, nominally the exact same thing happens: the sphere rises 10cm above the table it's resting on. But each time Reed Richards measures a completely different thing happening:

The electric repulsion between the sphere and table increased by orders of magnitude.
A fluctuation in local gravity.
A sudden gust of wind
An invisible string dropped from the ceiling and winched the sphere up.
Everything except the sphere dropped 10cm
A spirit-form Dr. Strange walked over and picked it up.
Sue Storm unconsciously emitted a force field and lifted the sphere.
A spirit form of Reed Richards walked over and lifted the sphere.
Only the electrons moved, the quarks stayed where they originally were.
etc. etc.

From Dr. Strange's point of view the exact same thing is happening every time: he uses his "levitate" power, and the sphere levitates. Reed Richard's base senses observe the same thing: Dr. Strange kinda stares at the sphere funny, and maybe makes a gesture, and the sphere levitates. But from the point of view of "explain why this is happening" all of the data is utter nonsense.

That's not just fucked up, that's seriously fucked up. I think something along those lines is actually fucked up enough to be the basis of an explanation for "magic" in the world.

A note about genre: we usually don't care about these things as long as the story isn't concerned with the source or reasons for a super's powers.

Reed Richards uses science-flavored phebotinum to make "unstable molecule" suits so that his suit stretches, the human torch's suit doesn't burn up, Sue's suit turns invisible with her, and Ben Grimm's ... holds his mighty rock package. Mutant-flavored phlebotinum explains Wolverine's healing factor, and then science-flavored phlebotinum to explain his claws. We further have Thor using Norse gods magic-flavored phlebotnium and vaguely hermetic traditions/voodoo/demon pact magic-flavored phlebotinum to explain Dr. Strange. And the character called the "Scarlet Witch" actually uses mutant-phlebotnium ... usually. But basically everyone just pushes it down deep and doesn't think about it. The same way we don't think about how Reed Richards could probably put all his "unstable molecule" technology into being so fabulously wealthy that he could just buy Latveria out from under Dr. Doom, because we don't want to tell those kinds of stories so we ignore them as an option.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Alright, so Richards establishes that normal equipment is useless for determining the exact immediate cause of Strange's levitation ability. Still, the same result has predictably occurred each time. That isn't the point at which you give up. It's the point at which you make note of the fact that your instruments aren't helping to determine an immediate cause for the levitation of the sphere, and you focus on other aspects, like how much force Strange can exert on the sphere, and how Strange himself goes about making something lift the sphere.

"Dark matter" and "dark energy" may be bullshit, but people still study their effects on the universe in a scientific fashion.

That said, having something crazy happen each time to cause the same effect is a pretty cool way to have 'generic magic', although it wouldn't work, e.g., with elementalism.

[Sashi]

It's not that something different is happening every time, it's that "the scientific method" breaks down when observations can't be repeated. The cause will never be discovered because the cause does not exist in a scientific way.

The fact that I'm having such a hard time describing this attests to how totally abnormal this is.

It's not that magic is the "divide by zero" of the universe, it's that magic exists outside the realm of the mathematical concept of division.