Fleeting thoughts: Magic and the contemporary technics: both philosophical comparison and generalization

Quine found many similarities of science and magic. A. & B. Strugatski offered the sci-fi idea of “magic-technics”. Heidegger distinguished the Greek τέχνη from modern technics involving the philosophical problem of technics.

The background outlines both comparison and generalization of magic and technics. The contemporary technics generates artificial devices according to natural laws discovered by science coming true human dreams. Those devices are often too artificial and far from nature unlike the Greek τέχνη revealing the essence(s) of nature in Heidegger’s interpretation. Many human aspirations are waiting for their technical implement.

Magic should also fulfil desires like technics, but in a way is neither scientific nor constructively substantiatable. The magical accomplishment should address nature to follow the human choice by means basically linguistic. Communication between the magician and higher forces or beings is intended. Nature is seen as able to communicate deciding how to fulfil the wishes in a way remaining unknown for the magician.

Science in turn has been called to find the “language of nature” since the dawn of modern age and technics. Mathematics is its main hypothesis as that language. Then all technical devices obeying the mathematically formulated laws of nature might be interpreted as ways for communicating with nature or as successful invocations.

Anyway the distinction between the modern technics and magic might be conserved in a relevant way even after the above interpretation:

The technical devices until now are finite and deterministic. A certain material implementation guaranties for the apparatus to behavior uniformly accomplishing its vocation always if it has not “defected”.

Indeterministic mechanisms or infinite linear algorithms might be considered as that generalization of technics interpretable furthermore as magic. The linguistic means of magic might be always seen as a text (invocation) in the context of nature. The successful communication is right merging the text at issue into that context by an infinite set of links between the text and context (nature). Furthermore, the text as an invocation needs an interpretation (by nature for the communication) and thus implies a certain probability distribution of interpretations.

Technics based on quantum information would approach that infinite or probabilistic “magic-technics”.