Science and Magic are mutually exclusive.

When you explain something, anything scientifically it becomes science.

If something, a random effect for example, cannot be explained scientifically it can safely be classed as magic.

Lets take alchemy for example, it was magic until it was dragged into the realms of science......now it's science

well i always thought magic as a science

So magick is the unknown in general and not any type of universal power/personal skill? Would that explain the lack of enthusiasm towards attempts to explain magick scientifically?

i'f like to read a scientific explanation that doesn't discount the power of belief...

I've found a quote... very suitable here:
Hmm... it makes sense....

Hypnagogia doesnt discount belief completly. Its a early theory into how the (subtle) power of the human mind effects itself and other people in a state of half aweness. It plausible that someone could change others, give their mind subconscious suggestions through this type of communication.
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles...pnagogia.shtml

i'll buy that but too often the arguement against magick is a complete discounting and denial to any validity of a "believers" experience...scientists believe by testing and retesting...believers believe on the basis of exerience...

You can experience something and still not know how it happens, just as you can experience things that never really happened in the first place when reexamined. Its best to examine something and test a theory properly before its either fully discounted as a possablity or accepted as fact.

Well actually that was a quote referring to "Magic" as computer jargon...
http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/m/magic.html

have you ever tried to get a fairy to pose for a picture, how does one film energy?

It can show up with a PKE meter?

If its not a visable form of energy then it might leave a heat signature that can be picked up.

Isnt the brightness exerted by faeries just a spell of faerie fire? I wonder if faeries ever turn off their glow...

I'm glad that a thread like this popped up. I was actually about to create one when i noticed it had already been made. But as we can see already, its not "magick vs. science." Its really "magick and science" cause like Redmeat said they are interchangable. Someone had said that they were surprised that there were not more studies proving the science behind magick. As a magick practitioner I am fully aware of the forces at work behind my art. However, without the correct terminology i cannot prove it scientifically. The number of studies increases every day. We now have new sciences like parapsychology leading the way towards a new understanding of subtler enrgies. But with these new studies comes information that discredits other scientific "facts" So you can imagen the amount of scoffing and ignorance directed towards these new sciences. Some skeptics will go out of their way to discredit new sciences. but i'm sure you all knew that anyway.
Pete A Sanders puts psychic phenomona into a scientific perspective in his book You Are Psychic His research on the developement of pyschic abilties is supplemented with scientific observations and clinical evidence. Good Book.

Science and magic equate. It's when you throw "reason" into science that they start to pull away. They are both cause and effect understandings of the world of phenomena, but when you equate (western) reason with science, you get messy. Every culture has reasonm it just works different ways in different cultures. It's not people are doing things that make no sense, people want things to make sense to them to agree with it. Western reason has all these rules and regulations that are really only used to rationalize one's actions. People don't reason, people rationalize.

Either way, science and magic do the same thing in practically the same way.

A good way to insult Science is to say Magick is basically the same as it. Ouch!

Luckily, science doesn't have feelings. When a person in a debate allows themselves to get emotionally perturbed, the subject seems to stray off the path of facts and into the realm of opinion. Lets stay on the main road here. :argue:

The fact is, equating the two is incorrect. Science is not the same as Magick at all. Magick is more about feelings and what works for individuals in their own particular belief systems. Science is universal, applying to everyone.

Science may be more universal, but not because it's science. It's more universal because our culture enforces the ideas of science more readily and often than it enforces magical ideas.

The reason the ideas of Science are so universal is because Science gets results. If Magick was the dominant force in our world, we would still be sheltering in caves from angry storm gods.

Ah, the classic argument. Magic and Science are the same thing. In our culture, they permutate differently, but for every other culture in the world, their science is magic. Until you start arguing that our culture itself is better, you have to accept that they are the same kind of knowledge.