S&S vs. SF in BotNS

Jeff Wilson · 22 Dec 2011, 19:57 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at clueland.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:57:32 -0600
Subject: (urth) S&S vs. SF in BotNS
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On 12/21/2011 3:30 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>
>> To me, goety and theurgy are only one branch of magic.
>> Another is the kind that works by sympathy and contagion,
>>   such as sticking pins in dolls or keeping one's accidental
>> cut from being infected by cleaning the knife that caused it.....
>
> Exactly so. The big distinction is between magia, the application of
> natural laws like sympathy and contagion; and goetia, dealings with
> supernatural powers. Some years ago I wrote a mini essay on this for a
> friend who was defending the Harry Potter books for her church:
> http://www.molthagen.de/kerstin/buecher/hp_anleit_ddo.html


As you note, this very broad definition of magia envelops science and 
technology and medicine and 2-3 other chunks of the Dewey Decimal System 
within "magic." In this sense, almost every cause and effect in the 
BotNS is magical, because it is also material.


-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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