Why is it Magic and Science/Technology can't ever seem to coexist?

[Riverwolf]

There's only one thing that separates magic and technology as far as I'm concerned: we understand how technology works. Magic is mysterious, and therefore far more interesting to me. In science fiction, the "technology" is generally made up and wouldn't work in real-life settings, and so is still, for all intents and purposes, magic, except being explained in sciency terms (usually incorrectly.)

For me, the mystery that comes with magic makes it far and away more interesting than the boring, mapped-out technological understanding. As a result, even in real life I tend to regard technology as essentially magic, from modern computer science to the ability to make a usable tool from banging rocks together, just to give it that air of mystery that keeps me interested.

It's just more fun in my opinion to call down thunder from the heavens by lifting a staff up in the air and shouting something in some arcane language, than doing the same thing after rambling on and on in incorrectly-used scientific/technological terms.

As for where the "scientists" are when a fantasy story is set in the dark ages, well, unless you count the wizards (the historical post-Roman European equivalents to modern scientists were basically regarded as church-approved wizards, and would often present themselves as such), I would agree that there should be more nonmagical alchemists and philosophers running around blowing themselves up trying to transmute base metals into gold. There are such people in Game of Thrones, but that's the only fantasy series I've seen (that's published, anyway) that has them. (...well, I suppose you could count the witches in Minecraft, since they use potions for everything.)

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking about, but I know of a lot of settings where they mix "science" and magic. I say "science" because in a world where magic exists, science isn't going to be entirely realistic. Most of the Final Fantasy games I've played do this, there's a lot of magic assisted technology in the world, often including guns and such, and there are plenty of scientists. You could also cite Fullmetal Alchemist as an example, notably one where the science is a little more grounded in reality. There's guns, tanks, etc, that all work exactly like they would in the real world. Even the "magic", alchemy, is considered a science.

Those are just two, but I could probably think of plenty examples of settings that do just what you want

 

[gagagaga]

Gen Urobuchi seems to have made a point of his writing career to include regular guns getting shit done better than whatever fantastical things he includes in the setting. It's most prominent in Fate/Zero and Madoka Magica to a slightly lesser extent, but it shows up in literally everything he writes.

 

[RariShyZealot]

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't MLP have Magic AS Science? Twilight goes on a rant about curses not being real and the Pinkie Sense not making, well... Sense. Because neither of the two phenomena can be explained, which apparently magic can. I don't know how, but I trust Twilight (A student of one of the oldest, most powerful beings in the world and extremely skilled sorceress/bookworm) to.

 

[gunny1993]

Wheel of Time series has magic and technology, to a point. (Throughout the series the crossbow and cannons are invented and incorporated into warfare alongside magic)

And quite frankly the point of magic is that it is mystical, that's the appeal, if you go around quantifying it you ruin all the fun involved and get terrible stories where you're constantly getting caught up inside the quantification.

Real life is for understanding the universe, fiction is not, it is for exploring ideas.

 

[SD-Fiend]

I can't add much more than an example but in Bravely Default I feel that the juxtaposition between Magic and Science was done well. The land of Eternia was called the land of eternal youth because it had made advancements in medicine hundreds of years ahead of the rest of the world by using the White Magic given off by the Earth Crystal. Using the crystals for the purpose of healing was even part of one of the main (sort of) villains backstory.
.

 

[GabeZhul]

I would say science and magic don't fit together in fiction because they don't fit together in real life either.

Magic has many names in our world. You can call them charms and curses or astrology and homeopathy, at the end they all share the same fate: being discredited, superseded or completely disproven by science as we learned more and more about the universe and how it works. Just think about it. Two hundred years ago our ancestors still believed in witches, curses, demons, charms and potions, while today all of these things have been shoved aside to the fringe as we learned that they don't work or even exist.

Thanks to scientific advance, all the "magic" and "wonder" disappeared from the world (well, unless you are really gullible and/or uneducated, but I digress). This cultural phenomenon, the abandoning of the magical in favor of the rational, like many other similar phenomena slowly seeped into our fiction, maybe even unconsciously. It found a very fertile ground in fantasy, where all this magic is real, and thus introducing rationality there lets the writers explore new and interesting themes that in some ways mirror the real world, aka exactly what fantasy was all about since the very beginning, only in a new context.

All things considered I would say this is at the heart of the science vs. magic trope.

Captcha: "rodents of unusual size"
No captcha, I don't think they exist either.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Actually nobody said that technology "didn't work" in the Harry Potter series. I believe Mr Weasley had all manner of Muggle artifacts. I also recall them calling a gun a single-purpose wand which is why wizards generally didn't bother with them (your phone only calls people? mine takes pictures, plays games...) Also, if you had read the books, advanced wizards didn't yell out their spells. That was something Harry was trying to learn.

You should check out Shadowrun. They have science and magic co-existing and it's quite cool.

I do love that. Yes, the gun only kills people and looks cool. However, they have a lot of shit that can only do one thing. The fucking moving pictures they're so proud of, hey thats great. We got fucking Youtube, and porn. Who the hell wants a picture that movies anyway? isn't that why we take pictures? To preserve that moment in time? But I liked to think current muggle smartphones would blow their fucking minds, especially since Word Of God says in an actual war between the two worlds we'd win. And why wouldn't we? We have planes, and nukes, and will fucking drop one.

Admittedly, I am just going on the movies, but I can't tell you how infinitely stupid it
looked to me when they'd point their wands like weapons, paraphrase the War Doctor "THEY ARE SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS!"

But basically, why would you want a gun? Well A. Most magic folk wont know what the hell it is till it's too late and B. well it comes down to which is faster? Casting a spell or pulling a trigger.

snip

You do realize Harry Potter is set in 1990's England, which isn't what you would call swimming in pistols and assault rifles unlike America?

As for the rest of your rant post, [user]Asita[/user] sums it up pretty well.

Spoiler

Practicality, in many respects. Allow me to turn to ME2's Legion for the shorthand.


The simplest form of the Magic/Technology division is actually quite sensible for the most part: Magic and Science are effectively two paths to the same end, with magic often being more effective and/or allowing easier access to the same result. If you can incinerate someone by casting fireball (or lightning, if you prefer) with a flick of your hand, why would you even think to build a gun? Fireball already gives you a simple, fast, and effective means of killing someone at range and to a far more lethal degree than a bow and arrow. The gun's niche is, in effect, already filled. Similarly, why would one learn about advanced medical techniques if healing magic could do in seconds what medicine would take months to accomplish? When looked at in this light, it's not so much natural incompatibility between magic and science as it is that they are unlikely bedfellows.

There isn't much point in pursuing chemical/kinetic artillery when you can simply drag a mage or two along, they don't weigh as much as a cannon piece, doesn't require much in the way of supplies (assuming the world runs similar to D&D), and is more versatile to boot.

Yes, I know england has strict anti-gun laws... BTW, you can have Piers Morgan back... Well gladly take Jeremy Clarkson, he's pretty badass.

I still hate that excuse though. Has fucking Harry never seen a movie? Or a TV Show? Am I to believe there are no criminals in London with guns? and why would Harry at all not consider it? After all the vice versa is true, he can walk into say a Crystal Meth lab with nothing but his wand and walk out okay because the gangsters in there don't have a concept of magic.

what annoys me though, is the lazyness of it. I seem to think Humans in the real world, even if we could just create fireballs or levitate an object, we'd still demand a reason for WHY we can do it. Perhaps we'd choose a religious reason, but even then we'd still question that. Every character in fantasy just seems like a moron that takes everything at face value, and I hate that. I need a character like MassEffect's Mordin, constantly curious.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

As has already been said, most technology is about facilitating an easier way of doing something. And if magic is free and abundant, that's the easiest way. There's no need to invent airplanes when you can teleport to places. No reason to invent a gun when a fireball would be less complicated and more effective.

This is my other problem with magic not creating technology.

Why does ANYONE on our planet try to climb Mt. Everest? Because it's there.

Why would anyone create an airplane when they can just fly magically? To prove they can.

It seems like in a lot of fantasy the characters are just intellectually lazy. They fucking have Dragons in Skyrim, but not a single person has thought to try to study them? Examine their bones?

Yet go play Fallout 3 and one of the first missions involve studying the Molerats, or dropping a recording device in the Mirelurks eggpile.

Science encourages people to learn, magic tells you to stay where you are.

 

[IFS]

The main reason is that Magic vs Tech is a pretty easy metaphor for Nature vs Progress, and also allows for characters who are powerful in different ways while preventing one from grabbing both sets. The problems hit when its done as a lazy shorthand though, rather than using it for any particular purpose in a work. There are works that use it well (A good, if old, game example is Arcanum) and works that avoid it and just let the two mingle. Its not really any worse than any other trope imo, which is to say its perfectly fine when used correctly.

 

[Atrocious Joystick]

What I´m more intersted in is why magic never takes science´s place? I would think that people living in a medievalish setting would maybe think about other things to do with this here magical power than kill people with it and/or use it to prevent others from killing them. Sometimes they will experiment weird ass things for no reason. No wizard ever seems to think "Hmm, I have a power source of unimaginable proportions here. Maybe I should use this to power transportation, help grow crops, heal the sick, light the streets and warm houses."

 

[Naqel]

It's not that they can't co-exist, it's that mixing magic with science is hard to pull off properly.

If you delve into science behind things, you need to delve just as deep into the science behind magic, and that will rarely make much sense, or hold up to scrutiny.

Most successful settings that do that simply go with "magic can power devices, devices can empower magic", and leave it at that. It's not very science-y, but it also leaves a lot of wiggle room for "inconsistencies".

 

[dyskordian]

I'll attempt to not get to high and mighty about this, but basically OP needs to expose himself to more fantasy genre entertainment.

Dune is very sci/fi with magic and both exist well and are well explained, even when getting some very interesting results of accidentally blending the two (Paul's sister...).

The books of Brandon Sanderson are also so fantastic examples. In Elantris the magic users had been using their magic for good and helping out the rest of the world when suddenly their magic stopped working and technology and theology run rampant with the former magic users being ostracized plague victims and horribly mistreated. In Mistborn the magic is VERY central to the entire plot and very well mapped out with some major science style work going into it (not quite all of it since you do have people walking around with railroad spikes all the way through the heads) but if you make it to the second and third books you find out what the ruler/god of the planet had done with his magic and how it had completely effected the world including all the technology and sciences with it.

So the shortish answer is that, the more popular culture takes on magic are largely based on Merlin of Camelot and on Tolkien's Middle Earth and that is why a lot of fantasy isn't so fantastic (something that Yahtzee has mentioned several times, see his Dragon Age reviews) and very medieval Europe. But there is a HUGE amount of fantasy out there and this is an issue that has been addressed again and again, but you are going to have to leave the mainstream/Hollywood paths to find it.

 

[Nimzabaat]

Actually nobody said that technology "didn't work" in the Harry Potter series. I believe Mr Weasley had all manner of Muggle artifacts. I also recall them calling a gun a single-purpose wand which is why wizards generally didn't bother with them (your phone only calls people? mine takes pictures, plays games...) Also, if you had read the books, advanced wizards didn't yell out their spells. That was something Harry was trying to learn.

You should check out Shadowrun. They have science and magic co-existing and it's quite cool.

I do love that. Yes, the gun only kills people and looks cool. However, they have a lot of shit that can only do one thing. The fucking moving pictures they're so proud of, hey thats great. We got fucking Youtube, and porn. Who the hell wants a picture that movies anyway? isn't that why we take pictures? To preserve that moment in time? But I liked to think current muggle smartphones would blow their fucking minds, especially since Word Of God says in an actual war between the two worlds we'd win. And why wouldn't we? We have planes, and nukes, and will fucking drop one.

Admittedly, I am just going on the movies, but I can't tell you how infinitely stupid it
looked to me when they'd point their wands like weapons, paraphrase the War Doctor "THEY ARE SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS!"

But basically, why would you want a gun? Well A. Most magic folk wont know what the hell it is till it's too late and B. well it comes down to which is faster? Casting a spell or pulling a trigger.

I think you missed the point just a bit. A gun requires a twitch of a finger and can possibly hit one person, maybe even fatally. A wand requires the flick of a finger (or less if you're Dumbledore or Voldemort) and can act as a flamethrower, immobilizer, transmutation device, rocket launcher, weather control device, megaphone, mind control device, levitator, portable hand, instant lockpick and the list goes on and also never runs out of bullets. Why would a wizard want a gun? It's like asking why you never see people in Star Trek choose a slingshot over a phaser.

Also, wizards who interact with muggles regularly would know what a gun is and the (minimal, compared to a wand) danger that it represents.

One more thing... how would dropping a nuke on London be considered "winning"? Since wizards can teleport at the same age muggles can drive you'd just be killing muggles. Is that the suicide squad approach? "We'll kill so many of our own people that you'll surrender out of pity!" Interesting strategy... Though i'm pretty sure the ability to control the mind of anyone without magical blood (ie heads of state, military commanders etc) kind of trumps any conventional weapon.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Actually nobody said that technology "didn't work" in the Harry Potter series. I believe Mr Weasley had all manner of Muggle artifacts. I also recall them calling a gun a single-purpose wand which is why wizards generally didn't bother with them (your phone only calls people? mine takes pictures, plays games...) Also, if you had read the books, advanced wizards didn't yell out their spells. That was something Harry was trying to learn.

You should check out Shadowrun. They have science and magic co-existing and it's quite cool.

I do love that. Yes, the gun only kills people and looks cool. However, they have a lot of shit that can only do one thing. The fucking moving pictures they're so proud of, hey thats great. We got fucking Youtube, and porn. Who the hell wants a picture that movies anyway? isn't that why we take pictures? To preserve that moment in time? But I liked to think current muggle smartphones would blow their fucking minds, especially since Word Of God says in an actual war between the two worlds we'd win. And why wouldn't we? We have planes, and nukes, and will fucking drop one.

Admittedly, I am just going on the movies, but I can't tell you how infinitely stupid it
looked to me when they'd point their wands like weapons, paraphrase the War Doctor "THEY ARE SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS!"

But basically, why would you want a gun? Well A. Most magic folk wont know what the hell it is till it's too late and B. well it comes down to which is faster? Casting a spell or pulling a trigger.

I think you missed the point just a bit. A gun requires a twitch of a finger and can possibly hit one person, maybe even fatally. A wand requires the flick of a finger (or less if you're Dumbledore or Voldemort) and can act as a flamethrower, immobilizer, transmutation device, rocket launcher, weather control device, megaphone, mind control device, levitator, portable hand, instant lockpick and the list goes on and also never runs out of bullets. Why would a wizard want a gun? It's like asking why you never see people in Star Trek choose a slingshot over a phaser.

Also, wizards who interact with muggles regularly would know what a gun is and the (minimal, compared to a wand) danger that it represents.

One more thing... how would dropping a nuke on London be considered "winning"? Since wizards can teleport at the same age muggles can drive you'd just be killing muggles. Is that the suicide squad approach? "We'll kill so many of our own people that you'll surrender out of pity!" Interesting strategy... Though i'm pretty sure the ability to control the mind of anyone without magical blood (ie heads of state, military commanders etc) kind of trumps any conventional weapon.

Heres the deal, most magic folk know absolutley jack shit what we actually have in that world. Furthermore, it seems even if your like Harry and come back to the real world, you don't pay attention at all to whats going on. Harry ever get around to getting a cellphone? An ipod? And don't blame it on his relatives, at a certain point he had magic and they lived in fear of him.

So no, they aren't going to reconize a gun or a bomb falling out the sky. Hell they wouldn't even know a bomb was coming, they have no concept of radar. Ya know that entire act where Voldemort just invades the school? Gee don't you think some security tech, a fucking camera, alarms, that sort of thing would of been nice? What the hell do they do if the school catches on fire? Hogwarts ain't up the firecode.

 

[RJ 17]

This is sorta a harry potter rant, but it goes pretty much well with all fantasy settings.

Aside from the fact I hate magic, I hate fantasy settings because they're always set in the bloody darkages. No one understands how modern medicine works, chemical reactions, hell even fucking geology. And my question is, why?

Why is there never a scientist in any of these settings?

The gun argument is always a good one, in Harry Potter "they" say that muggle technology doesn't work. Well what is a gun really? Theres a mechanical component, and theres a chemical reaction with the gun powder. So are we to believe a rope and pully wouldn't work at hogwarts? The gun powder, fine, I could by that however FIRE is a chemical reaction too, and if that doesn't work then how the FUCK do the candles in the mess hall burn a blaze? Or are these some bullshit magic candles?

And fine, gun powder doesn't work, well there are all these magical chemical reactions (Poitions), can one really not somehow mix something together that can create the small explosion to shoot the bullet? I think the advantage of this is obvious, you wouldn't have to yell "OBLITERATE!" or whatever before you attack giving your opponent time to counter attack. Furthermore they'd be all "OBLI-Ack!" because you just shot them in the throat.

And I'm sick of how no one ever cares how the magic can even be done. A lot of people ***** about George Lucas creating the Midichlorians, but at least the fucking Jedi took the time to understand how they could tap into this spiritual energy.

I'm afraid the existence of a franchise known as Warcraft goes against pretty much your entire premise here. Same with Lord of the Rings which has a wizard using black-powder bombs to blow up a wall. I'm certain there's others as well.

Warcraft, for instance, takes place in your average Tolkein-esque High Fantasy world with elves and orcs and goblins and dwarves and wizards and dragons. But they also have guns, mortars, flying machines (helicopters), zeppelins, tanks, submarines, battleships...hell, the goblins even have a frickin' mech with a giant buzz-saw for a hand that you can buy to clear-cut a forest in a matter of minutes.

What it boils down to is the fact that a lot of writers don't seem to enjoy mixing their peas and carrots. They either want to write in modern times, high fantasy, or sci-fi setting. That doesn't mean that all High Fantasy settings out there completely ignore technology and science.

Hell, look at the steam-punk dwarven ruins in Skyrim, filled with all sorts of robotic gizmos and steam pipes and automotons.

In short, I see your point...but I think that you're painting with too broad of a brush here.

That, and there's the classic saying that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

 

[Vault101]

There's this awsome comic called saga which is like Star Wars on acid with better writing...it has both tech and magic

But tnen the tech is Star Wars level tech they aren't going fir detailed explanations

 

[Nimzabaat]

Heres the deal, most magic folk know absolutley jack shit what we actually have in that world. Furthermore, it seems even if your like Harry and come back to the real world, you don't pay attention at all to whats going on. Harry ever get around to getting a cellphone? An ipod? And don't blame it on his relatives, at a certain point he had magic and they lived in fear of him.

So no, they aren't going to recognize a gun or a bomb falling out the sky. Hell they wouldn't even know a bomb was coming, they have no concept of radar. Ya know that entire act where Voldemort just invades the school? Gee don't you think some security tech, a fucking camera, alarms, that sort of thing would of been nice? What the hell do they do if the school catches on fire? Hogwarts ain't up the firecode.

So your plan, in a muggle vs wizard conflict is to nuke the human race, revealing anyone surviving to be wizards and then...what?

That sounds a bit like one of the Russian tactics in World War Z. The one where they nerve-gassed their own people to separate humans from zombies.

So if the muggles have that kind of mentality in charge of their military the wizards don't really need much magic, just patience. It sounds like we'll happily defeat ourselves.