(urth) S&S vs. SF in BotNS

[David Stockhoff]

On 12/22/2011 2:57 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
> On 12/21/2011 3:30 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>
>>> To me, goety and theurgy are only one branch of magic.
>>> Another is the kind that works by sympathy and contagion,
>>>   such as sticking pins in dolls or keeping one's accidental
>>> cut from being infected by cleaning the knife that caused it.....
>>
>> Exactly so. The big distinction is between magia, the application of
>> natural laws like sympathy and contagion; and goetia, dealings with
>> supernatural powers. Some years ago I wrote a mini essay on this for a
>> friend who was defending the Harry Potter books for her church:
>> http://www.molthagen.de/kerstin/buecher/hp_anleit_ddo.html
>
>
> As you note, this very broad definition of magia envelops science and 
> technology and medicine and 2-3 other chunks of the Dewey Decimal 
> System within "magic." In this sense, almost every cause and effect in 
> the BotNS is magical, because it is also material.


Yes!