*arrives in the aftermath*

... Hum, to me, science and magic don't form a balanced whole (as in, you can raise your faith in science without having to lower your faith in magic).

I don't believe in karma and universal balance in their stronger sense.
Hypothetically speaking, if I steal something relatively cheap in a shop and don't get caught and am able not to feel guilt over it, there'll be little to fear from my point of view.
Likewise, if I give a beggar a coin in a location I'm never going to go to again, the most likely eventual result from my perspective will be that I'll be one coin poorer, and only that (even though the beggar might survive longer thanks to my donation, but more about that later on).

That doesn't mean stealing is a good idea. Although the universe won't be out to get me if I start doing it, it'll change my state of mind and eventually my state of being. As I become more familiar with the act of stealing, I may start aiming at bigger things, and end up getting caught over something overly blatant. Or people might start asking questions about how I'm accumulating this much wealth. Or tons of other things. From a general point of view I'll be more likely to be perceived negatively by my social circles, which is very likely to create a self-reinforcing loop. And I don't want to become a pessimistic jerk.

Likewise, giving an essentially meaningless (to me) coin to a beggar isn't senseless, because it puts me in a positive, empathic and altruistic state of mind. The universe won't make efforts to award me, but for instance I might become more sensible to other people's feelings and spot opportunities where less sensible people would only notice everyday life. That could eventually mean success or failure in my career as an artist.

There is no semantic equivalence - the meaning of a given act isn't absolute. An act that may be of little importance to me (such as sparing one coin) may be capital (a matter of life or death) to someone else.

The ability to empathize with others makes one better at reading a given act's value from someone else's perspective; high empathic abilities mean (among other things) you're better at detecting the actions among your world of potentials that will have a greater meaning for others and to act upon them. It can potentially be more effective than making huge efforts for the sake of someone else without first making sure they mean something for that other person too.

...

Back to the main topic.

Science is both a tool and a belief. This article analyzes that fact excellently.

Methodological naturalism - the assumption that everything in the universe is bound by the laws of nature and nothing else - is necessary to be able to do anything within sciences. If you refuse to apply it science becomes precisely what it's meant not to be - magical thought.

One shouldn't forget that's an assumption and it's only useful when thinking scientifically.

Ontological naturalism - the *belief* that everything in the universe is bound by the laws of nature and nothing else (basically, the belief that methodological naturalism isn't just a tool invented by science but an essential truth of the universe) - doesn't have anything to do with science. It's a belief system, the same way Christianity, Shintoism or Wicca are.

Ontological naturalism isn't any more valid than magical thought is. It may be more rational, but it's still an essentially uncertain belief. As such, it cannot be proven or disproven.

From my point of view (I'm talking about personal beliefs, not objective truth here), ontological naturalism is right for "dead matter". Basically, if another universe existed and didn't contain any form of high-level-thinking life (ie undetermined outcome sources), that universe would be entirely bound by its laws and ontological naturalism would hold.

However, our universe isn't such an universe. We (high-level-thinking animals, that includes more than just humans) live in it, and there may be other undetermined outcome sources around on other planets.

Our presence as observers and actors transforms the universe in ways that science can hardly deal with. There is also the issue of how the anthropic principe is taken - our existence means the universe is fit for intelligent life, but what if it was the other way around? What if the universe was a consequence of our existence?

All these things lead me to believe magic can exist and is a matter of point of view (what some will see as mundane events may be perceived as magical events by others). It exists because civilization exists (and civilization, at least until recently, has built itself on the existence of (divine) magic).

Basically, there is no natural karmic balance in the universe, but the existence of "others" and the self-modifications I've described earlier create an artificial but self-reinforcing karmic balance for civilized beings.

That'll be all for now. What do you think?

One last point:
The fact that I can speak to your experience so well implies it there is something in common. I take hope from that, that we are both exploring the same discipline, studying the same kinds of experiences. It decreases the probability of the "I'm a complete nutjob" theory, which was my most reasonable theory until this morning.

Plus, if this is some kind of a discipline, a way of perceiving the world that could be codified, researched, taught and expanded... doesn't that kind of inspire a wild hope or two?

Actually, what I was talking about before may be relevant:
Science is a discipline of thought that reaches "Truth" by attacking what is wrong with an idea.
Magic is a discipline of thought that reaches "Truth" by developing what is right.

Science provides certainty. "This is the answer and we have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that it is so." The disadvantage is that it is slow and the leaps it can make are incremental. You have to have a very firm foundation to practice any kind of science at all.

Magic deals in metaphors, uses myths to explain things. Certainty is never an option; it doesn't indicate what is factual but rather what is wise. "This is a good idea." is the most it can ever say. However, it is flexible. It can wrap around foreign cultures, moral dilemmas, conceptual dynamics (the process of development of ideas). It is as home with art as it is with stellar movements. In situations of ambiguity, it is effective -- a claim science can not make. And a human life is full of ambiguous situations.

To put it another way, where science focuses on particulars, magic focuses on patterns. Looking at a set of relationships between a set of objects, it abstracts those relationships and sees what can be discovered by applying to other objects. "Pattern recognition and noise filtering," which is how computer science refers to it. Basis of intelligence.

Ghar! This topic is so interesting I'm almost annoyed!

First off, I've run into the same trouble with the term magic. Magic is loaded with so many bad connotations that I don't want to include, but there isn't a better term for it. Quantum mechanics indicates if we perceive something we are having an effect on it. Bell's theorem indicates a connection between every event in existence and every other event in existence. Magic is, to me, the engineering discipline springing out of the scientific field only pointed to by these two ideas.

Maybe I could describe it as saying ideas are things, that the physical world effects the ideas it expresses and the ideas effect the physical world that is expressing them. But that's to dry, it doesn't capture the music of a sunrise more fully appreciated. I could talk about concepts not as platonic ideals but as skandas - a Sanscrit word meaning "heap" which shows up in Buddhism when they talk about the body -- literally calling it a pile of stuff, instead of an atomic unit as we normal imagine.

"Making an art form of the practice of existing." *That's* magic.

This question/chain of thought has been plaguing me for the past decade. It's really not something we can ever know, like we know if we drop a plate it falls. We can test that. Any time you have one or two things interacting, Newtonian physics is right. It's when you have more things that Newtonian physics breaks down.

And that's the major problem: Karma is inclusive of all things, so we really can't measure it. It's just too complex. But we can get an idea of it, an intuition. That's the magic of it. ^_^ Understanding then what you need to do to stop the negativity, that's the science of it.

when it comes to magic vs. science, many people never realize that in many regards they are very similar. take a modern witch, for example, preparing for a spell. she has to make sure she has the right tools (candles, athame, incense, ect.) all in their proper place with a specific purpose. by channeling her energies, she can elicit a change in events. a scientist must also make sure that all his tools are in order according to their purpose and, through various processes, he too causes a change. even though the tools and methods are different, both are after a specific result and the witch can get many of the same results as the scientist.
I got this from Thor, but i think it was Arthur C. Clark that said "Magic is just science we don't understand."

Hello,

Say weren’t you supposed to be getting married sometime soon; taking a break from working on the vows to practice poetically waxing here eh?

I do like the symmetry of quoting Newton, as he is said to have dabbled in alchemy quite extensively. Not shockingly as others have mentioned alchemy was just chemistry back when it was fun! Nothing quite spruces blasphemous science up like quasi mysticism. Philosophically however Fullmetal did just lift a lot of existing dogma, and add a bit of flash for entertaining tv.

I would assert that science and magic/mysticism have always occupied the same function. While they differ in forum each seeks to disrupt the balance; by having the odds stacked in the users favor. As cheesy as it sounds we are primarily creatures of hope. Anything we can do to give hope has a place, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tip the scales more with science as well. I also wouldn’t claim that breaking the balance necessitates negative results. Typically things that self destruct would have done so regardless. The hope of perceived expectations merely kept them aloft long enough for the resulting crash to be spectacular!