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I can see where you're coming from, but to be a bit pedantic magick does affect the world on a quantum level, inasmuch as it affects the world generally, including the very small parts like photons.
But I agree, QM isn't the explanation for magic, and it's not a mystical discipline, or the final synthesis of magic and science. It might be a step on the ladder to that synthesis though.
In some sense, maybe, but even that is too close a connection for my taste. It's a leap of logic that I think makes a few questionable assumptions such as that there can be a synthesis between science and magic or that magic is not already a science.
Essentially, as you sorta point out, if you affect the world at any level then you will affect it at the quantum level because "quantum" essentially mean fundamental. If you make a casserole, you are affecting the world on the quantum level, but if you read a description of all the quantum events, or simply the chemical reactions involved in the process, it would tell you absolutely nothing about what's going on because the purpose of making a casserole is not to affect the universe on the quantum level.
I think I pointed out on another thread (or was it this thread) that Frank Tipler in PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY writes that unless it's all nonsense, theology will eventually have to become a branch of science. However, I think he's confusing the purpose of either discipline. Essentially, he's claiming if angels, gods and demons have an independent material existence of any kind then science will eventually find it, and if not, then they aren't real.
However, I believe that "imaginary" items, such as ideas, are real even if immaterial. In this artificial world we live if you look in any direction you will see innumerable objects that began existence as an immaterial idea. I'd say we are as affected by the manifestation of imagination as by "natural" reality.
My point here is twofold: first, if the mystical or spiritual has an existence completely outside material reality, it is still real in a very perceptible sense.
Second, even if it has an independent material existence - that still does not mean that science will ever be able to find it. I liken it to being a Sim in SimCity. From the point of view of the inhabitants, there would be no experiment that could discern whether any event in the city was a "natural" occurance of the operating system of the software or an "artificial" occurance caused by the player. And, like a character in a film that tries to emerge whole into the waking world, there is no amount of scientific advancement on the part of the Sim that could perceive the workings of their programmers or players of the games.
Now, as Brian Green points out in THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS, if string theory is correct (the hypothetical unification of Quantum and Reletivistic physics) - then the world is filled with many more dimensions than we can perceive. That is similar to many magical and mystical ideas, but I think it is a basic error of reason to believe that these basically material dimensions are actually mystical realms or states of being. That there is a heaven, hell or kabbalistic pathway in the universe and that you are actually travelling and touching the world through those specific paths.
On top of all this is the basic error of assuming that there must be a synthesis between mystical cosmology and physical cosmology. Is anyone really proposing to bring quantum physics and anthropology together? Or is there a school pursuing the connection between string theory and etymology?
Magick can already be a science of spiritual practices and propose methods of categorizing and documenting their effects. As Alan Moore stated - if you look at religions as different languages, the Magick is like linguistics.
The point here is that metaphorically you can use fuzzy logic, quantum leaps and multiple dimensions in visualizing much of the concepts promoted in mystical thought, but there really isn't much evidence, or much to be gained I think, in pursuing the idea that they are the same. |
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