The Science of Discworld II

about its own explanations. This attitude contrasts favourably with such modern religions as homeopathy or scientology, creeds that arrogantly claim to offer a ‘complete’ explanation of the Universe in human terms.
    Some scientists are equally arrogant, but good scientists are always aware that science has limitations, and are willing to explain what they are. ‘I don’t know’ is one of the great, though admittedly under-utilised, scientific principles. Admitting ignorance clears away so much pointless nonsense. It lets us cope with stage magicians performing their beautiful, and very convincing, illusions – convincing, that is, while we keep our brains out of gear. We know they have to be tricks, and admitting ignorance lets us avoid the trap of believing the illusion to be real merely because we don’t know how the trick works. Why should we? We’re not members of the Magic Circle. Admitting ignorance similarly protects us against mystic credulity when we encounter natural events that have not yet caught the eye of a competent scientist (and his grant-awarding body), and that still seem to be … magic. We say ‘The magic of nature’ … more the Wonder of Nature, or the Miracle of Life.
    This is a stance that nearly all of us share, but it’s important tounderstand the historical tradition it is grounded in. It isn’t simply a case of admiring the complexity of God’s works. It implies the attitudes of Newton, van Leeuwenhoek and earlier; indeed, right back to Dee. And, doubtless, to some Greek, or several. It involves the Renaissance belief that if we investigate the wonder, the marvel, the miracle, then we’ll find even more wonders, marvels and miracles: gravity, say, or spermatozoa.
    So what do we, and what did they, mean by ‘magic’? Dee spoke of the arcane arts, and Newton was committed to many explanations that were ‘magickal’, especially his commitment to action at a distance, ‘gravity’, which derived from the mystical attraction/repulsion basics of his Hermetic philosophy.
    So ‘magic’ means three things, all apparently quite different. Meaning one is: ‘something to be wondered at’, and this ranges from card tricks to amoebas to the rings of Saturn. Meaning two is turning a verbal instruction, a spell , into material action, by occult or arcane means … turning a person into a frog, or vice versa , or a djinn building a castle for his master. The third meaning is the one we use: the technical magic of turning a light switch on, and getting light, without even having to say ‘fiat lux’.
    Granny Weatherwax’s recalcitrant broomstick is type two magic, but her ‘headology’ is largely a very, very good grasp of psychology (type three magic carefully disguised as type two). It brings to mind Arthur C. Clarke’s phrase ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’, which we quoted and discussed in The Science of Discworld . Discworld exemplifies magic by spells, and indeed is maintained as an unlikely creation by being immersed in a strong magical field (type two). Adults of Earthly cultures, like Roundworld, pretend to have lost intellectual belief in magic of the Discworld kind, while their culture is turning more and more of their technology into magic (third kind). And the development of Hex throughout the books is turning Sir Arthur on his head: Discworld’s sufficiently advanced magic is now practically indistinguishable from technology.
    We can see, as (fairly) rational adults, where the first kind of magic comes from. We see something wonderful and feel tremendously happy that the universe is a place that can include ammonites, say, or kingfishers. But where did we get our belief in the second, irrationalkind of magic? How does it come about that all cultures have children that begin their intellectual lives by believing in magic, instead of the real causality that surrounds them?
    A plausible explanation is that human beings are initially programmed through fairy stories and nursery tales. All human cultures tell stories to their children; part of the development of our specific humanity is the interaction that we get with early language.
    All cultures use animal icons for this nursery tuition, so we in the West have sly foxes, wise owls and frightened chickens. They seem to come out of a human dreamtime, where all animals