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This is what I always keep banging on about - we have loads of data and no theory - which is made even worse by needing some kind of magical model to 'hang your hat on' and then, when the magic works, people declare that model to 'be the theory'. Cue loads of confusion when all the different models show equal amounts of success for different people
And this is the largest gap in the usual skeptic argument, "Well, prove it!" OK, well travel back in time to 1670 and prove: the speed of light in a vacuum, that light is electromagnetic radiation, that bacteria exist, that DNA exists, the mass of an electron, and that sperm and ova make babies. They start from the assumption that science is, right now, able to see and measure all phenomenon. Which is patently false, and any physicist would agree that we don't actually HAVE a full picture of the universe and how it works. It's a very good picture, but it's not complete. Otherwise all the attempts to solve a unified field theory would be done.
And this is the largest gap in the usual skeptic argument, "Well, prove it!" OK, well travel back in time to 1670 and prove: the speed of light in a vacuum, that light is electromagnetic radiation, that bacteria exist, that DNA exists, the mass of an electron, and that sperm and ova make babies. They start from the assumption that science is, right now, able to see and measure all phenomenon. Which is patently false, and any physicist would agree that we don't actually HAVE a full picture of the universe and how it works. It's a very good picture, but it's not complete. Otherwise all the attempts to solve a unified field theory would be done.
My point is that it took new equipment and a new observation with that equipment before a new theory could be formed. There can be a gap of hundreds of years between the equipment being developed and it being used for the observation that kicks off a new hypothesis.
My point is that it took new equipment and a new observation with that equipment before a new theory could be formed. There can be a gap of hundreds of years between the equipment being developed and it being used for the observation that kicks off a new hypothesis.
What system of magic do you think is the closest to being the most effective? I'd imagine that any of our systems will be seen as crude in the distant future but there has to be something directionally correct?
And saying chaos magic is a cop out to this question, as that's more of a meta concept.
What system of magic do you think is the closest to being the most effective? I'd imagine that any of our systems will be seen as crude in the distant future but there has to be something directionally correct?
And saying chaos magic is a cop out to this question, as that's more of a meta concept.
In my case, aspects of chaos magic lined up with what my research was telling me, which is that any system of magic, correctly applied, can be the best.
And what does 'correctly applied' mean? As I see it, there are certain states of mind, certain ways of programming yourself that are requirements for successful magic, but they are inevitably coloured, nay, obscured, by whatever system you use to implement them.
Like I said, magic requires a belief system, but what that belief system is, is unimportant. You just have to believe it in the 'right' way so that it will trigger your consciousness to do the magic.
Why else would people claim the same amount of success for wildly different systems (assuming they aren't lying )
My point is that it took new equipment and a new observation with that equipment before a new theory could be formed. There can be a gap of hundreds of years between the equipment being developed and it being used for the observation that kicks off a new hypothesis.
Sure, it can happen that way, but it's not required. Astronomers knew that Mercury had a weird 'wobble' for ages, and they proposed things like an extra planet causing it. It took Einstein to figure out, without any new equipment or observations, that the 'wobble' was down to General Relativity. After that, of course, there were new observations, but they were to support the theory after it was already created.
