
Natural Magick (1584) - brudgers
http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281b/Philosophy%20of%20Magic/Natural_Magic/jportat2.html
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api
A modern version of this should be written in this exact style:

"On the generation of diverse animals and plants through descent with
modification..."

"Of the refinement of the silicate ores and the arrangement of circuits
thereon..."

"Of the splitting of the atomes to obtaineth warmth, light, and terrible
destructive forces whose mere possession shall discourage all enemies from
waging war upon thee..."

~~~
olooney
You may enjoy Uncleftish Beholding[1] by Poul Anderson. It's a short essay
describing atomic physics explained with pure Anglish words instead of Greek
or Latin loan words.

> At first it was thought that the uncleft was a hard thing that could be
> split no further; hence the name. Now we know it is made up of lesser motes.

> Some of the higher samesteads are _splitly_. That is, when a neitherbit
> strikes the kernel of one, as for a showdeal ymirstuff-235, it bursts into
> lesser kernels and free neitherbits; the latter can then split more
> ymirstuff-235. When this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of
> the whole, but nevertheless it is awesome.

> For although light oftenest behaves as a wave, it can be looked on as a
> mote, the _lightbit_.

[1]:
[https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/complexity/people/studen...](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/complexity/people/students/dtc/students2011/maitland/fun/)

~~~
voldacar
Uncleftish Beholding is amazing!!! It would be so cool if more people tried to
write like this, even just as an experiment. It's kind of sad how the english
language seems to be almost shameful of its heritage with all of the pseudo-
greek/latin scientific words people make up.

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RenRav
The parts of fruit preservation were interesting, though I couldn't get the
link to work for the section detailing preservation using salt water. I never
heard of encasing unripe fruit still on the vine with mud. Burying grapes in
sand with a jug overtop reminds me of "Dr. Beals Seed Viability Experiment".
This ongoing experiment is over a hundred years old. Never imagined it could
be used to preserve food as well.

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Merrill
>"The Unicorn is allured by scent."

>Tretres writes, that the Unicorn so hunts after young Virgins, that he will
grow tame with them. And sometimes he will fall asleep by them, and be taken
and bound. The hunters cloth some young lusty fellow in maids cloths, and
strewing sweet odors on him, they set him right against the place where the
Unicorn is, that the wind may carry away the smell to the wild beast. The
hunters lie hid in the meantime. The beast, enticed with the sweet smell,
comes to the young man. He wraps the beast's head in long and large sleeves.
The hunters come running, and cut off his horn.

[http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281b/Ph...](http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281b/Philosophy%20of%20Magic/Natural_Magic/jportac15.html)

~~~
dmix
Wow, I'm genuinely curious what the inspiration for such writing was. Are
there hidden metaphors or analogies like other mythical beasts?

Some things don't change. The only big separation historically is what was
allowed to be written on paper, scolls, and tablets when doing so was rare and
expensive. But we still get some perspective on the human mind in the popular
mystical characters and stories people invented.

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jbattle
It's slightly shocking to read this and realize how many outright falsehoods
these people were being told. It's almost wonderful that knowledge advanced
when people were being taught stuff like this by authorities ancient and
modern:

> Diodorus says, that near to the city Thebais in Egypt, when Nilus
> overflowing is past, the Sun heating the wet ground, the chaps of the earth
> send forth great store of Mice in many places, which astonishes men to see,
> that the fore-part of the mice should live and be moved, whereas their
> hinder parts are not yet shaped. Pliny says, that after the swaging of
> Nilus, there are found little Mice begun to be made of earth and water,
> their fore-parts living, and their hinder parts being nothing but earth.

~~~
darepublic
I ended up reading the lodestone section and realizing that it was a
description of magnets.

~~~
raldi
Which section is that?

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darepublic
[http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281b/Ph...](http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281b/Philosophy%20of%20Magic/Natural_Magic/jportac7.html#bk7I)

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techload
Also very interesting: "A true & faithful relation of what passed for many
yeers between Dr. John Dee..."
[https://ia802605.us.archive.org/32/items/truefaithfulrela00d...](https://ia802605.us.archive.org/32/items/truefaithfulrela00deej/truefaithfulrela00deej_bw.pdf)

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tempguy9999
This stuff is absolutely fascinating as it gives an insight into a worldview
that we (well, many in the west) have lost, and not so long ago either. I wish
I had time to read this lot.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
It helps with the worldview, but it doesn't give us context as to how it's
contemporaries interpreted it - was this a popular book that was accepted and
acknowledged, or was it a fringe effort that remains?

~~~
tempguy9999
At a guess? That this was the way they interpreted the world so they'd read it
much as we'd read a science book (those that were literate) - why do you
assume it was fringe?

It's easy to forget how different things were. Mathematics was considered a
branch of magic, possibly even by newton, and there's evidence that the romans
equated magic with mathematics (I have looked before but can't find my
original ref, sorry).

Astronomy grew out of astrology. Chemistry grew out of alchemy. It was thought
mice were produced abiogenically from the decay of grain - literally rotting
grain produced mice (found a ref, gives quite a bit of detail:
[https://www2.nau.edu/gaud/bio301/content/spngen.htm](https://www2.nau.edu/gaud/bio301/content/spngen.htm))

IIRC a cart ran out of control and killed someone. The cart was put on trial,
found guilty and hung (edit: for murder). I think that was some medieval
times. It's easy to assume one's own worldview is, was, and always will be.
That's why I find some history so fascinating.

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dr_dshiv
What is a good definition of magic? Does magic necessarily NOT exist by
definition, or do many/most/all forms of it not exist due to empirical
results? Does magic that works become science?

~~~
yters
I'd define it as the nonphysical controlling the physical. Math is one obvious
example of such magic.

Hence why Bacon, who originated modern science by rejecting teleology and
promoting math, was an occultist.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Math is an invented tool. It controls nothing.

~~~
yters
If math is invented, then why are some answers right and some answers wrong?

~~~
TimTheTinker
Same reason that while DnD is an invented game, some actions are allowed while
others are not. To be coherent, a system (invented or not) must remain
consistent within itself.

In math, a wrong answer isn't so much "wrong" as it is _inconsistent_ with
established mathematical properties/rules.

~~~
yters
So it sounds like some aspects are not invented.

~~~
TimTheTinker
As a knowledge structure (axioms and theorems), math is absolutely invented.

The fact that it often corresponds to our experience of reality is a
consequence of thousands of years of refinement with the goal of making it
describe reality as closely as possible while remaining internally consistent.

But that doesn't make it any less invented... just a very helpful tool for
modeling reality.

~~~
yters
It seems you are confusing the mathematical language with the concepts
themselves.

~~~
TimTheTinker
You’re stretching my thinking — thanks for that. It can be hard to delineate
the difference between the properties of reality itself and a knowledge
structure, built by people, that undeniably corresponds very closely to
reality and is internally consistent — the two tests for truth.

I think we can both agree that reality (the physical universe) is well-
ordered, self-consistent, and eminently logical in its operation. (Side note:
my own belief is that it exhibits these qualities because it reflects the
character of its Creator.)

And yes, it obeys certain concepts with absolute constancy - which we have
worked to discover and which our mathematical language describes.

But I still maintain that the math and physics knowledge we have is at best
limited and at worst an incomplete set of poor approximations. Because they
cannot (and I maintain they won’t ever) account for everything we observe, or
answer every question we have about the universe, and because its axioms have
led to all sorts of abstract structures that have no relation at all to
anything ever observed, I still think it’s fair to call math “invented”.

That being said, the real concepts we attempt to grasp in what we observe of
the universe are clearly vastly superior to our comparatively small efforts to
understand and model them.

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doctor_m
...and here I was, thinking that this would be a treatise on Haskell...

