Define magic

[fjodor]

In view of some of the discussions going on I'd like to hear opinions on what magic really is. I rounded up some definitions I found on wikipedia:

1: Magic, sometimes known as sorcery, is a conceptual system that asserts human ability to control the natural world (including events, objects, people, and physical phenomena) through mystical, paranormal or supernatural means.

2: Magick, in the broadest sense, is any act designed to cause intentional change. To change nothing into something and something into something else. (Alistair Crowley)

3: In the fictional Harry Potter series created by J. K. Rowling, magic is depicted as a natural force that can be used to override the usual laws of nature while still being approached entirely scientifically. (it's not really a definition, but still an interesting view)

4: Personally I would define magic as follows:
The ability to influence matter, time and/or space without the use of physical tools. (I need to think this one over in more detail, but for now it will do.

Very interested in reading other views! Let's keep numbering the definitions in order to make discussions and referrals easier.

[todd]

Maybe the real problem with the word "magic" is that it means so many different things that it's hard to be certain about the definition.

In "The Lord of the Rings", when Galadriel's showing Frodo and Sam her Mirror, she says to them "[T]his is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy [Sauron]."

[nikita]

I'd define magic as an event or ability that breaks the laws of logic.
This is hard to do, because I think such laws are fundamental and true everywhere (although this can not be proven).
Thus, no magic could exist in the world as I see it.

However, as has been frequently pointed out in many threads: Everything we cannot understand can be labeled magic. One real difference between "magic" and "yet unexplained" is in the question of whether you are going to accept not knowing how it works or try to figure it out. (Annie vs. Kat)
I once watched a talk by Michael Shermer on creationism and science and he said that religion (in this case magic) and science are verbs. They are ways to deal with given information. People who explain events as magic or divine interference tend to stop thinking and start believing when they don't know the answer. Even though you can believe AND do science - it is not a black or white kind of question.

[ding]

Magic is a symbolic lexicon and accompanying grammar system utilized by an entity by procedural means to interface with and command a closed-source engine that generates or manipulates the environment in which said entity exists.

If said engine is self-aware, the interface is prayer, and the body of knowledge is religion, which is a subset of the category of magical frameworks.

However, if said engine is open-source, the interface is scientific inquiry, and the body of knowledge is the theory of everything, which is independent of the category of magical frameworks.

It really comes down to whether you think existence is open-source or not... or somewhere in between, which I suspect is an assumption of ethereal science.

[Tierra Y Libertad]

4: Personally I would define magic as follows:
The ability to influence matter, time and/or space without the use of physical tools. (I need to think this one over in more detail, but for now it will do.

What about magic wands/staffs/herbs/chalk/symbols/familiars?

[warrl]

For genuine physical-world magic I'd look for violation of one or more of just a few laws of physics - and only on condition that said laws continue to stand up to experimental pounding by non-magical means - such as:

(1) Conservation of matter & energy
(2) Speed-of-light limitations
(3) Causality - the chanciest of these four because the theoreticians don't have even a really good hypothesis on why time runs in only one direction.
(4) Quantum probability functions.

Now we are pretty confident that the blinkerstone violates either #1 or #4; there's no other obvious way that thinking at a rock can produce a fire which doesn't consume the rock or anything around it. Either the energy comes from nowhere, or it is gathered from elsewhere (someplace at least moderately distant) in a not-in-the-entire-lifespan-of-several-universes improbable fashion.

[fjodor]

Feb 6, 2009 5:57:56 GMT Tierra Y Libertad said:

4: Personally I would define magic as follows:
The ability to influence matter, time and/or space without the use of physical tools. (I need to think this one over in more detail, but for now it will do.

What about magic wands/staffs/herbs/chalk/symbols/familiars?

I see those as catalysts and aids rather than the actual magic. Just like guns don't kill, but people who use them do.

[blackmantha]

I have a couple of definitions which might be used.

1. Any procedure for obtaining results whose inner workings are unknown.
This is based on the idea that the laws of magic are just natural laws, and the distinction magic/science is just a point of view. The problem with that is that that would place frontier science, where phenomonon are observed which are as of yet unexplained, at magic. You could replace "unknown" with "unknowable", but that would mean no magic is analysable, and that isn't neccesarily true.

2a. Physical phenomona which always need thought to occur.
2b. Mental phenomona exceeding the theoretical capabilities.
Part A is the most important one, part B added because magic doesn't have to be physical. This one is based on the idea that all magic has to be done conciously (or at least by living creatures). Any non-magical physical process can occur wheneven there is an appropriate configuration of matter and energy, but magic needs to be done by someone or something.

[murgatroyd]

I think my favorite is this, though I can't remember where it came from:

"Magic is talking to the universe in a way it can't ignore." (probably paraphrased)

[fjodor]

Feb 6, 2009 8:59:08 GMT blackmantha said:

I have a couple of definitions which might be used.

2a. Physical phenomona which always need thought to occur.

That could include any deliberate twitch of a muscle. What about this one: "physical reactions caused by remote mental actions". That could apply to a frog turning into a prince. The kiss would only be the interface. It could also apply to a boy turning into a crane bird.

[menschenjaeger]

Best definition of magic I ever saw (sure it's not original, but still) was in Warren Ellis' Planetary: "Magic is the cheat codes for reality."

[Jonny Rocks Hard]

I see magic as a way of enforcing your will onto reality in such a way that it manifests. This is why Wizards and such usually need a powerful mind to do so; a weak will could not bend reality. Depending on what you are pulling from, magic could be one of many different things of course. In D&D it seems magic is more of a science; at least to Wizards. Sorcerers seem to have their magic pre loaded into their brain. After enough "calling" on these powers, they lose these powers until they rest.

[Count Casimir]

Magic: Making the laws of physics your bit--oh right, serious answer. Sorry.

Building from what blackmantha said in one of the posts above; when I think of magic, I tend to imagine an unexplained process that appears to violate the stated laws of physics, while in reality finding loopholes and methods of using the mind to work around said laws.

[Refugee]

David Brin: "Magic is the persuasive telling of untruths." As I recall, he doesn't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but then, telling untruths is his job.

In a world where magic actually works, as in GK, anything that breaks thermodynamics looks pretty damn magical to me. Nikita invokes others laws as well, but I think thermo is the one that really attracts attention.

[imaginaryfriend]

How about, "Magic is a hidden source of power?" I'm uncomfortable with a definition of magic as unnatural because many belief systems consider magic completely natural. With magical beings their magic is an innate part of who they are; Coyote using magic is as natural with him as me using my hand, for example. At the same time, while you may see evidence that someone or something is magical by an aura or some effect you never actually see magic. You can measure its effects but you can't describe it or weigh it with the same terms and measures you use on physical forces.

Magic can supposedly be gained through the study of the occult, or in other words, the study of hidden things. There have been plenty of magical things (intelligent and non) and magical systems that have required ingredients or tools. One of my favorites is the symbolic magic that holds that if you make a replica of something or reenact some series of events that the thing or the ritual gives you power over the real thing through a greater interconnectivity.

Also, "hidden power" is a catchall that can include sleight-of-hand and illusion as well as not understood or misunderstood technology. I believe in some of Pratchett's Diskworld novels his magical system has included all sorts of sociological stuff that gives one person power over another, too.

[fjodor]

But if the source of power is no longer hidden, does that mean the magic disappears? That would support Kat's view on magic, wouldn't it?

magic is not be bound to logic. turning wine into water would be magic, for example; that can be done through a distillation process. The other way around however, is a different story. So a magical act wil have an effect on the physical state of an object that defies logic. Magic can change the molecular or even atomic structure and mass of objects, change normal dimensions and alter time. In order for magic to exist, matter and space transfer from and to parallel dimensions should be possible.

[imaginaryfriend]

I'm working a subtle shade of meaning in that definition. If the source of the power is revealed to the extent that it can be replicated and there is no mystery left, then yes I'd agree that it's no longer magic, or better to say it is no longer magic to those in on the secret except maybe as a convention. But does that mean there's no such thing as magic?

Maybe it's like a rainbow. You see a rainbow (or not) because of your perspective relative to other things but knowing that doesn't negate your experience of it. Rainbows may not exist in the same sense as a chair but it's not right to say rainbows aren't. You can explain a rainbow to someone but the abstract knowledge doesn't really take anything away from the experience for most people. Those who lose awe of rainbows when they learn what they are are the same people who know how to replicate them on a small scale, but even then there seems to be a residue of "magic" left behind because they don't have the power to equal the real thing in size or control over when it appears.

[Uncle Putte]

I've little to add on the topic in the form of analytic dissemination of magic, but I do wish to note that magic is, and has always been practiced also as means of self-expression, recreation, self-suggestion and all in all a way of having a bit of fun. It's still commonplace enough for people, especially children, over here in Finland to practice traditional rituals such as that of the chants and rites of the Midsummer festival's night. Most of the people who enact them are conscious of the impropability of finding the fern flower bloom, but the excitement of the search and merely playing on the thought of something as fantastic as that would exist is both refreshing and entertaining on it's own right. That kind of magic is, to be honest, nearly guaranteed to work, as it's objective isn't really the promised results but rather to put a smile on the practitioner's face.

[warrl]

Feb 13, 2009 22:45:10 GMT Uncle Putte said:

I've little to add on the topic in the form of analytic dissemination of magic, but I do wish to note that magic is, and has always been practiced also as means of self-expression, recreation, self-suggestion and all in all a way of having a bit of fun.

In our world, magic's primary power is definitely suggestion, and mostly self-suggestion.

Although there is some room for making suggestions to the universe - probably not to the extent of obvious violations of the laws of physics, but our parking god is quite improbably effective. To the point that friends have spontaneously asked us if we have one.

In the Gunnerverse, there definitely is something going on that appears to violate the laws of physics and has no way of working their technology has been able to detect to date. And it responds to the plain will of certain people (with a blinkerstone as a training aid). Might as well call it magic, because there's no definitively better term.

[strainofthought]

Feb 11, 2009 3:03:40 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

I'm working a subtle shade of meaning in that definition. If the source of the power is revealed to the extent that it can be replicated and there is no mystery left, then yes I'd agree that it's no longer magic, or better to say it is no longer magic to those in on the secret except maybe as a convention.

I think what makes something magic is that if the source of hidden power is revealed, it ceases to exist, because it was never actually there to begin with. It's magic! Several posters have mentioned the need for a conscious aspect to magic, but mentioned only intent on the part of an actor. I think perception is at least as important.

Tom has adhered fairly strictly to one rule in his depiction of magic throughout Gunnerkrigg Court: magic is not what has not yet been explained but what cannot be explained, what exists as it does explicitly because it has not been explained. Kat is free to believe that supposedly magical phenomena can be analyzed somehow; that doesn't mean she will be able to do it. The ambiguity is important; the unexplained can only persist by maintaining it. It's not that if you got a fairy under a microscope you couldn't see it's cell structure, it's that one way or another the fairy will always manage to prevent you from getting it under the microscope. Magic doesn't stand still while you try to analyze it and somehow thwarts your efforts by being arbitrarily inscrutable; it is a moving target, one that needs ambiguity, and seeks it out.

There's a great scene in the webcomic Zebra Girl where wizard Jack the Plaid tells mortally wounded Sam Sprinkles to keep his eyes closed while Jack tries to heal him with magic, because "If you can't see it, it has no reason not to happen."

[imaginaryfriend]

Feb 14, 2009 5:38:47 GMT strainofthought said:

I think what makes something magic is that if the source of hidden power is revealed, it ceases to exist, because it was never actually there to begin with. It's magic! Several posters have mentioned the need for a conscious aspect to magic, but mentioned only intent on the part of an actor. I think perception is at least as important... Magic doesn't stand still while you try to analyze it and somehow thwarts your efforts by being arbitrarily inscrutable; it is a moving target, one that needs ambiguity, and seeks it out.

Well, it's true that most authors of fantasy add rules of magic to the worlds they create and treat them like natural laws in their work. Whenever there's someone trying to analyze the why of magic there's some who always whip out a magician's force, Schroedinger's gun, or other plot device whenever the readers are getting close to a moment where they'd have to confront that boldly, but more authors seem to use a combination of fruitless analysis and an infinite regress of results to protect the hidden aspect of their magic. That is to say, you can analyze magic and sometimes make a useful breakthrough but the analysis will always be incomplete in some other, usually smaller, way (like Zeno's paradox but with magic instead of motion). It's also possible to employ a useless form of analysis and get wrong or stupid results that likewise leave the sanctity of magic intact. In some works there's never any attempt to explain magic rationally at all.

[random] Actually, your example with the fairy reminds me a great deal of some of the real life gilded-age experiments with sense perception that I had to read about in college. I'm going to be thinking about what a fairy would look like squished between two microscope slides for the rest of the day so let me return the favor. You guys would probably not believe some of them if I told you but there was one guy who proved the sense of dizziness rested in the middle ear by surgically removing the middle ears of some mice. He then placed four of them on a machine he made that was shaped a little like the face of a fan laid flat; on the left and right blades there was secured a mouse that had the left and right middle ear removed respectively, the top one had a mouse with both gone, and the bottom was a control mouse who hadn't been cut up. Depending on which way he spun the fan-thing one of the mice with one inner ear would get dizzy but not the other, where the healthy mouse would always get dizzy and the one with no inner ears wouldn't ever. It's bizarre, but that's how science learned how sense organs work. Before that we all had a sort of magical understanding as the sense being a virtue of the sense organ. [/random]

Anyway: As an example from GC, it's not that the blinker stone disappears every time you try to place it in an electron microscope but that the examination shows that it's a monocrystal of some sort, and reveals nothing else. Mr. Siddell didn't just create a rule that there are intelligent magical robots and make that rule equal to the law of gravity and conservation of mass/energy in his world of fiction; the robots have been revealed as sophisticated but normal robots that have a special mysterious extra chip. There will probably be more said about that chip eventually, but I'm expecting that whatever comes out in the wash will raise more questions than it answers.

In some of those fictional systems rationality is granted its own magic-like power, the power to defeat or remove magic whenever the two come into contact. I think with those there's actually either a hidden rule about the magical nature of man combining to form some sort of anti-magical effect or the requirement of faith for magic to work successfully, or both, because there's no reason that magic can't work openly in a fantasy story. In many works of fiction the magic happens despite people in denial all around it.

[shadrach]

2: Magick, in the broadest sense, is any act designed to cause intentional change.

Contemporary ceremonial magician Donald Michael Kraig, in his Modern Magick, expands on Crowley by defining magic as "the science and art of causing change...to occur in conformity with will, using means not currently understood by traditional Western science." Still not an airtight definition--it could also include Chinese acupuncture, which works in a way not presently explicable by Western medicine--but it's handy enough.

[imaginaryfriend]

Maybe it would help the discussion to ask, "What is the opposite of magic, or clearly not magic?" According to the dictionary to be mundane is to be of the normal world, to be earthly, common, routine, and unexalted (to us humans). If we accept mundane to be the opposite of magic then I could revise my definition of magic to say, "To do magic is to access a source of power that is hidden to ordinary humans." Or, to restate: "Magic is an act that demonstrates access to a power hidden from normal humans, or the quality or ability to do such an action."

I believe that contains both Wiki definitions #1 and #2, fits most fantasy fiction, covers everything I posted before about perspective and magic by inanimate objects, resolves any questions about magic being done by non-thinking objects or to do tasks that could be done without magic, and in general can cover any magic we may encounter in real life. It doesn't include sleight-of-hand or illusion. If we accept this definition then to be consistent we'd have to call those things non-magical.

It also doesn't cover fantasy fiction where all humans naturally possess magic. The definition I propose also assumes that to do magic is to demonstrate yourself as something other, maybe better, than human. A human learning magic is no longer human in some sense. Is that a problem for the definition or can we live with it?

Also, since the source of the power isn't specified, it begs a question about what sources of non-human power can and can't fall into the "magic" category. According to my definition, non-human alien technology isn't magical if the aliens are human-like or the technology is something mundane humans could understand. That sounds about right to me. A telepathic or similarly gifted species of humanoids (like Vulcans from Star Trek) would be a gray area; I suppose it would depend on if humans could access the source of power or not. If the source turns out to be biology then it's not magic. If the source is supernatural, then it is magic.

Therefore, I ask the forum: Is all supernatural ability magic? Is the only difference between a miracle and magic the who that is acting, or is there a division between types of supernatural powers that we should take notice of?

[djublonskopf]

In pretty much any fictional universe where magic "exists", said magic operates under a set of internally-consistent rules. Operating within those parameters, a given magical event could happen exactly the same way over and over and over again. Magic is a testable, repeatable phenomena.

But if this is the case (within the fictional reality), then magic ought to be treated the same as any other physical law. If magic is as reliable as gravity (even if magic only engages "on command"), there is no reason that magic should be labeled "supernatural" while gravity is labeled "natural".

So any appeal to magic as being "supernatural" fails within these fictional realities. In the Gunnerkrigg universe, magic appears to operate under a set of (very) predictable parameters, and can be reliably controlled. It's not "supernatural" except from the viewpoint of the reader.

Really, in works of fiction, magic almost always means "each part of the ruleset for this fictional universe which is different from the ACTUAL ruleset of the universe occupied by the reader/viewer/etc".

[imaginaryfriend]

Welcome to the forum, Djublonskopf! I couldn't agree with you more with respect to the natural or unnatural state of magic, though some authors like Lovecraft who have different dimensions and competing natural laws may present a problem. In fantasy stories where some people can reliably and predictably use magic and some can't, we could say that this is just another rule the author has included, or maybe that there's two sets of rules, one for mundanes and one for magical people. Magical things that work unreliably are no problem because essentially they're just plot devices that the author can use when useful to push the narrative this way or that.

However, have we lost something of the definition of magic if we view it as merely a literary construct? What about cases where magic happens in a story through intervention of a (god) entity, like how Coyote gifted Reynard with the power to switch bodies? Would we then have to say that it's a rule for some characters within a story to rewrite other rules the author used up to that point, or is each incident an additional rule on its own? Is every revision/addition to the laws of the fictional universe equal to gravity or do these point to a hierarchy and "meta" rules? If the former, then we can't really discuss magic, as it's impossible to give any meaningful answer to a "why" question about a story (magical or not) except "because the author said so."

Fantasy fiction authors who use magic in their works are mostly borrowing an old and very well-known (but hard to define) concept. Many authors reinvent magic in new ways in the course of telling a story, but they're working within bounds formed by their society; maybe there's a subtle negotiation between the author and the audience about what sort of fantasy (including magic) is acceptable and what would be too outlandish.

[warrl]

Feb 24, 2009 0:22:07 GMT djublonskopf said:

In pretty much any fictional universe where magic "exists", said magic operates under a set of internally-consistent rules. Operating within those parameters, a given magical event could happen exactly the same way over and over and over again. Magic is a testable, repeatable phenomena.
(snip)
Really, in works of fiction, magic almost always means "each part of the ruleset for this fictional universe which is different from the ACTUAL ruleset of the universe occupied by the reader/viewer/etc".

I can think of exceptions to both the above paragraphs, but they are moving toward something:

In any decent fiction using magic, the magic has costs and or limitations that constrain the magic-user. And those costs and limitations are knowable in advance.

(The most bizarre one I've read, magic had no cost and no upper limit on its power. Catch: a direct square law. A mage's power over something INCREASED with distance. A mage could blow up a city on the other side of the planet, move stars from a few dozen light years away, but if there were a fly in the room with him he'd have to reach for a flyswatter just like anyone else.)

[djublonskopf]

Feb 25, 2009 9:24:46 GMT warrl said:

(The most bizarre one I've read, magic had no cost and no upper limit on its power. Catch: a direct square law. A mage's power over something INCREASED with distance. A mage could blow up a city on the other side of the planet, move stars from a few dozen light years away, but if there were a fly in the room with him he'd have to reach for a flyswatter just like anyone else.)

What was this in? That's crazy! Crazy awesome!

[djublonskopf]

Feb 25, 2009 6:55:47 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Welcome to the forum, Djublonskopf! I couldn't agree with you more with respect to the natural or unnatural state of magic, though some authors like Lovecraft who have different dimensions and competing natural laws may present a problem. In fantasy stories where some people can reliably and predictably use magic and some can't, we could say that this is just another rule the author has included, or maybe that there's two sets of rules, one for mundanes and one for magical people. Magical things that work unreliably are no problem because essentially they're just plot devices that the author can use when useful to push the narrative this way or that.

However, have we lost something of the definition of magic if we view it as merely a literary construct? What about cases where magic happens in a story through intervention of a (god) entity, like how Coyote gifted Reynard with the power to switch bodies? Would we then have to say that it's a rule for some characters within a story to rewrite other rules the author used up to that point, or is each incident an additional rule on its own? Is every revision/addition to the laws of the fictional universe equal to gravity or do these point to a hierarchy and "meta" rules? If the former, then we can't really discuss magic, as it's impossible to give any meaningful answer to a "why" question about a story (magical or not) except "because the author said so."

Fantasy fiction authors who use magic in their works are mostly borrowing an old and very well-known (but hard to define) concept. Many authors reinvent magic in new ways in the course of telling a story, but they're working within bounds formed by their society; maybe there's a subtle negotiation between the author and the audience about what sort of fantasy (including magic) is acceptable and what would be too outlandish.

Hmm . . . I like the point you bring up (and thanks for the welcome. I didn't actually realize there was a forum beyond the daily "comments" on the front until just a few days ago. Otherwise I would have joined a while ago.)

Here's what I was trying to say: in a "universe" where magic was real, the residents of that universe would have such a fundamentally altered notion of "the way things are" that what we the audience see as "magic", they would see as "just the way it is". And as they figured out the mechanisms behind that, as "science".

For example: let's say we lived in a universe where blinker stones existed. I can sit on the top of a mountain, and just imagine my blinker stone (which is currently down at the bottom of the ocean), and pop! It's in my hand.

Now in our current, real-life universe, that violates several physical laws. Newton's first (an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force). The law of conservation of energy (by traveling from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the mountain, the stone has gained gravitational potential energy without any discernible work being done on it), and possibly even the "no information can be transferred faster than the speed of light", if the teleport really is "instantaneous".

But in our "blinker-stones-really-exist" universe, things (like blinker stones) can sometimes pop from one spot to another instantaneously. If this universe's Newton had known this, he never would have written his first law the way he did in the real universe . . . because it's not a law, unless whatever is acting on the blinker stone is also considered a "force". But it doesn't produce an acceleration, just a displacement . . . so then Newton wouldn't have written his second law the way he did, nor his third (where's the equal/opposite reaction?).

Blinker stones can gain energy without work being done to them (the change in altitude greatly changes the gravitational potential energy, for example), so nobody would have postulated a "conservation of energy" law to begin with. Things can travel faster than light (instantaneously!) so nobody would have ever decided it was a rule that faster-than-light was impossible. These would have been observed events, and the people trying to order and explain the universe would have to take them into account when crafting their "physical laws".

The "science vs. magic" fight set up in so many works of fiction would only happen if the scientists lived in a universe that followed our (the audience's) set of rules, but the magicians lived in a universe that followed a different, "magical" set of rules. Which is ridiculous because they live in the same (fictional) universe. There's no reason scientists in the Gunnerkrigg universe would be beholden to the audience's conception of "natural laws", because the natural laws of the Gunnerkrigg universe appear to be different than the natural law of the real-life universe.

If I'm talking past you instead of responding to you (imaginaryfriend), I'm sorry. I think this is responding to what you said, albeit obliquely.

[warrl]

But in our "blinker-stones-really-exist" universe, things (like blinker stones) can sometimes pop from one spot to another instantaneously. If this universe's Newton had known this, he never would have written his first law the way he did in the real universe . . . because it's not a law, unless whatever is acting on the blinker stone is also considered a "force". But it doesn't produce an acceleration, just a displacement . . . so then Newton wouldn't have written his second law the way he did, nor his third (where's the equal/opposite reaction?).

I can think of two ways this could be incorrect. (And if there are two, there are probably more.)

First, if the "science" stuff was developed in a period when those people had no contact with the "magic" stuff, so none of that had any effect on the theories' development. That COULD BE the case here (apparently when Coyote arrived, humans had bows, swords, and cell phones), but we don't know.

Second, if the "magic" stuff is sufficiently specific, say ONLY blinkerstones, the "science" stuff could all be developed with an annotation "... except for blinkerstones." Of course, there'd be a major effort among scientists to understand WHY that exception. That is probably not the story here because there are so many other manifestations - talking animals, ghosts, whatever it is that allows Eglamore to single-bound tall buildings and Anja to see the Forest's sigil through the wall, Jones, fairies... But apparently they have tried, and so far have failed, to understand why blinkerstones work.

[imaginaryfriend]

I can imagine a world in a fictional novel where humans use magic so frequently that they consider it mundane and natural, and anyone who can't use magic is called handicapped. I can also imagine a fictional world where magic is unknown and everyone has a mechanistic concept of reality, and magical thinking is considered insanity.

On the other hand, I can't imagine a world populated by humans where the concept of magic doesn't exist. In a world where what's magical to us is common I think that whatever powers they do not have would then be defined as magic. I can also imagine a world of aliens who have no concept of magic but to me there would have to be something missing from their mental makeup (from a human perspective). I figure they'd have to be incredibly literal and lacking in imagination or interest in history; I think they would either be easily tricked and deceived by other races or too lacking in concepts to freely communicate with humans, and if an author tried to portray such a race otherwise I'd have trouble raising enough willing suspension of disbelief to continue reading.

I freely admit that I have no evidence to offer that my viewpoint must be the case, nor can there even be experiments to try to prove it either way at this time, but judging from how universal the concept is within human cultures and how deep it runs, if we are projecting human-ness onto these creatures then I believe we must also assume one degree or other of magic will go along with them.

Djublonskopf, I have to agree with you in that most authors of fiction structure their universes exactly the way you describe. However, I also agree with Warrl and will carry Warrl's points even farther and say that bodies of scientific knowledge are dynamic, complex, sometimes nonlinear in development and in the final analysis wholly dependent on sense experience. They can also be thoroughly warped by traditions, superstitions, religions, politicians, and even fads. The complexity is sometimes represented in fiction and sometimes not, but there are historical examples we can look at. The root cause is that scientists are humans.

I started to write an essay on knowledge theory problems but instead let me share this story someone once told me.

Once there was a pre-technological culture that venerated white cranes. Nobody in their whole history had ever seen a crane of any other color than white, but one day a hunter on the edge of their territory came across a black crane in a marsh by a remote lake. He hurried back and told the rest of his village. They sent out parties to search the marsh but no black crane was found, therefore nobody believed him. He had to be a liar, of course, because everyone knew there was no such thing as a black crane. Everyone knows that cranes are white. The more he told his story the more they became offended by what he told them. Eventually they banished him.

From their perspective they had very good cause to do so. The phenomena of the black crane couldn't be repeated and ran counter to everything they knew and believed; because he wouldn't recant or shut up about it they saw him as a lunatic, blasphemer and a liar. While he was clearly disruptive to their society, that doesn't change the fact that the hunter actually saw a black crane.

The moral of the story is, "Lack of evidence is not the same thing as evidence." That got me out of a traffic ticket once.

Oh, and PS: The blinker stone doesn't violate conservation of mass/energy because it acts as a lens and not a source, and when it teleports an identical one appears while the previous one vanishes.