The Engineering of Coincidence: a scientific explanation of magic

What is magic? We all know that magic exists, but can it ever be explained? Over thirty years ago, I set out to answer these questions, and to look for a truly scientific explanation of magic.

Now, I'm not bright enough to invent new physics, or dumb enough to try and pick loopholes in the physics we already have, so my only choice was to take our most successful physical theories dead seriously, with as few assumptions as possible, and see where that led me.

My definition of magic is - as the title of the book says - 'the engineering of coincidence', or, more simply, "being lucky on purpose". The ability to influence our outcomes in life, purely by the way we think about them, as the root of all magical practice.

I am not claiming to have discovered any kind of ultimate Truth; my work is independent of any specific magical system.

Magic enriches our lives; is it too much to ask how it works, as well?

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This is my first published book; thank you to @SkullTraill for letting me post this.

 

[Morell]

The readable part is truly impressive. It's heavy enough to be keeping hard facts, light enough to be readable.

This is stuff well done.

 

[StoatCatcher]

I liked your book. It didn't have anything necessarily "new" to me with regards to how a more "psychological" or "scientific" model of magic might work but it for sure organizes it all into a neat package I can point to others. My only complaint is not really your fault so much as the fault of every other questionable author and grifter that likes to slap terms like "quantum" or "dark matter" everywhere to give their stuff an air of legitimacy (I saw an ad on TV for a "quantum energized" mattress this year, I am not making this up). It's sort of the modern day Magnetism. But I do think you use the terms and concepts in a better way than most, regardless of how tired I am of seeing it as an explanation for everything. Good stuff.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I liked your book. It didn't have anything necessarily "new" to me with regards to how a more "psychological" or "scientific" model of magic might work but it for sure organizes it all into a neat package I can point to others. My only complaint is not really your fault so much as the fault of every other questionable author and grifter that likes to slap terms like "quantum" or "dark matter" everywhere to give their stuff an air of legitimacy (I saw an ad on TV for a "quantum energized" mattress this year, I am not making this up). It's sort of the modern day Magnetism. But I do think you use the terms and concepts in a better way than most, regardless of how tired I am of seeing it as an explanation for everything. Good stuff.

I totally agree with you about the random scientism where the author doesn't really have any idea. I read a book by one (well known) author which tried to explain things with both the collapse of the wave-function, and the multiverse, in the same book, despite the fact that these two interpretations are mutually exclusive.

I will admit to feeling a little hurt though, as this is precisely the kind of rubbish I wanted to avoid in writing my book I spent a few years making sure that the first section was both accurate, and self-consistent. And constantly asking myself: "Am I wrong?"

As I said, I'm not clever enough to make up any "new" physics, so I wouldn't have expected you to declare anything as new - except perhaps the way that you look at it. I usually compare it to being shown that the Earth goes around the Sun after a lifetime of thinking that the Sun went around the Earth.

There's a great book by Felix Flicker - 'The Magick of Matter' where he uses magick as a metaphor to explain some pretty complex physics. This paragraph stood out for me:

"The modern name for magic is physics, and the name for a wizard’s magic is condensed matter physics. Before we discuss what these names convey, you must understand that this book comes with a warning. Once you have learnt how a spell is cast, the effect of the spell will cease to appear to you as magic. It will become mundane. Everyday. Boring. This is the cost of magical knowledge. It will take a great deal of practice, and patience, for you to regain the sense of wonder you had when the magic was performed for you."

In actual magic, this happens because it is so rarely that anyone actually explains why magic works instead of just creating/using another magical system.

But again, I get it. When Grant Morrison's 'The Invisibles' came out, I read the first couple of issues and thought "I know all this already!" and stopped buying it. It was only later that I bought the whole thing as graphic novels and understood the scope of the things they were talking about.

 

[StoatCatcher]

I will admit to feeling a little hurt though, as this is precisely the kind of rubbish I wanted to avoid in writing my book I spent a few years making sure that the first section was both accurate, and self-consistent. And constantly asking myself: "Am I wrong?"

Oh don't worry, I do think you managed to communicate these ideas in their proper scientific context. I just get a little tired of seeing them pop up everywhere.

With regards to me not finding anything new in it I just mean it in the sense that I've been discussing and reading similar ideas elsewhere for some time now, so it felt more like an organized compilation rather than a completely fresh take, which I guess was what I was expecting. But it is a very clear and concise one.

Grant Morrison's 'The Invisibles'

I had a similar reaction when I first read Alan Moore's "Prometheia", maybe I need to revisit it one of these days.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

With regards to me not finding anything new in it I just mean it in the sense that I've been discussing and reading similar ideas elsewhere for some time now, so it felt more like an organized compilation rather than a completely fresh take, which I guess was what I was expecting. But it is a very clear and concise one.

I'd be interested to know which books you're talking about, because I've not seen my ideas (as I present them) anywhere else. Of course the subject matter is the same, because, well, it's physics, but whenever I see people talking about it, they're always talking about the universe being a dynamic thing, where the only dynamicism is where we are, on the inside.