dfreybur
Premium Member
http://www.myfreemasonry.com/threads/interesting-trick.23982/#post-134320
In the General Freemasonry sub-forum brother pointwithinacircle2 wrote -
"The difference between Magic and Science is Knowledge, when you do not know how something works it seems like Magic."
There are assorted well know quotes that are related like "Any sufficiently advanced technlogy is indistinguishable from magic" and "Any sufficiently advanced technlogy is indistinguishable from a rigged demo".
I suggest that magic means - Attempts to do what works with an eventual tend towards ceremonies to repeat the original working event. Notice that parlor magic tends to work by tricking the brain into making incorrect conclusions about events. The best parlor magic exploits subtle errors in our perceptual systems.
I suggest that science means - Attempts to do what works by understanding cause and effect to make the event repeatable and to supply explanations that can be used to expand the principle into other tasks that work repeatedly.
Of course there is far more to the definition of either than that, but I think it's useful to consider those as starting points.
I figure people want to do stuff that works and over the ages there was an evolution in how to go about doing that. Magic is what people called the disorganized system used before philosophy and logic were invented by the Greeks. Science is a system devised in the late Renaissance for how to advance knowledge by exploiting human desire for fame. Technlogy is a system that was built by applying science to the mechanical arts.
Long ago some genius figured out the magic of knots and started making snared to catch small game. Much less risky than attacking a mastadon or aurroc with a spear! Best of all tying knots became a teachable skill. It became a craft.
Then another genius figured out that many knots could make a net that could be used to catch fish and to carry around a lot of objects using a lot less material than a leather bag.
Then another genius figured out that with a lot of strings and a lot of knots we could make a flexible material so tightly packed that the strings touched, and cloth was invented.
Now we own clothes and we don't think of it as magical or scientific. Few even think of clothes as technology.
Masonry teaches this system. Inspiration from the divine. Magic from intuition. Knowledge from the liberal arts and sciences. Technology from crafts built on the model of stone masonry. All working in society at one level and in our heads and harts at another level.
In the General Freemasonry sub-forum brother pointwithinacircle2 wrote -
"The difference between Magic and Science is Knowledge, when you do not know how something works it seems like Magic."
There are assorted well know quotes that are related like "Any sufficiently advanced technlogy is indistinguishable from magic" and "Any sufficiently advanced technlogy is indistinguishable from a rigged demo".
I suggest that magic means - Attempts to do what works with an eventual tend towards ceremonies to repeat the original working event. Notice that parlor magic tends to work by tricking the brain into making incorrect conclusions about events. The best parlor magic exploits subtle errors in our perceptual systems.
I suggest that science means - Attempts to do what works by understanding cause and effect to make the event repeatable and to supply explanations that can be used to expand the principle into other tasks that work repeatedly.
Of course there is far more to the definition of either than that, but I think it's useful to consider those as starting points.
I figure people want to do stuff that works and over the ages there was an evolution in how to go about doing that. Magic is what people called the disorganized system used before philosophy and logic were invented by the Greeks. Science is a system devised in the late Renaissance for how to advance knowledge by exploiting human desire for fame. Technlogy is a system that was built by applying science to the mechanical arts.
Long ago some genius figured out the magic of knots and started making snared to catch small game. Much less risky than attacking a mastadon or aurroc with a spear! Best of all tying knots became a teachable skill. It became a craft.
Then another genius figured out that many knots could make a net that could be used to catch fish and to carry around a lot of objects using a lot less material than a leather bag.
Then another genius figured out that with a lot of strings and a lot of knots we could make a flexible material so tightly packed that the strings touched, and cloth was invented.
Now we own clothes and we don't think of it as magical or scientific. Few even think of clothes as technology.
Masonry teaches this system. Inspiration from the divine. Magic from intuition. Knowledge from the liberal arts and sciences. Technology from crafts built on the model of stone masonry. All working in society at one level and in our heads and harts at another level.