It’s all done with mirrors.
Science, in other words! 
I think this is really the key here.
A number of posters upthread have basically said: “We in 2022 understand the universe to within a few decimal places of perfection. There are no future surprises, only refinements. So ‘magic’ or even ‘quasi-magic technology’ is an obsolete concept. A 17th century peasant could believe in magic, but I know that any amazing trick of e.g. aliens is based on science, and on our comprehendable science, all the way to the core. Even if it’s a starship or making the sun rise in the west.”
IMO those folks are confused. We in 2022 do have a much better grip on real reality than scientists of e.g. 1750 or even 1850. Much less the “natural philosophers” of 1050. But our list of known unknowns is daunting and our list of unknown unknowns is by definition … unknown.
There is still plenty of room for “looks like magic to present day experts.” Not because we are stupid; we’re not. But because we are still profoundly ignorant of much of what science will eventually show us about the universe.
Not just that, but our knowledge of engineering is essentially negligible. Yes, we have excellent knowledge of the interactions of the fundamental particles. Basically everything is explainable in terms of that. And yet we have no idea of the limits of, say, nanotechnology. We know that it’s possible, because of life, and because chemistry allows it. But we have no idea what is possible and certainly can’t build anything with any sophistication. And one can go deeper; we don’t know if femtotechnology is possible but we can’t exclude it.
Reanimating the dead is well within the laws of physics. Trivial, really; just a matter of rearranging the atoms. With only a little more sophistication, one could do so in a way that defeats our best present-day instruments (perhaps only by lying to the sensor inputs), so a being that wished to appear magical could do so easily.
So even limiting ourselves to known physics, “magic” would be trivial to display with even modest jumps in engineering prowess.
Anyone who lives in the advanced biosciences realizes we’re back at the witch-doctor-and-rattle stage of understanding everything in that arena, versus just the obvious surface stuff. And much of that we know we also know we misunderstand.
And I give the same answer again. The point of Clarke’s Law isn’t to win debates against charlatans with access to super science. It’s a way to think about how human knowledge progresses.
I noticed that you said “science,” though, because the original quote is about technology. And that’s not just splitting semantic hairs. It’s important to remember that science is a process for understanding the world around us. It’s a verb that’s been nouned. If we used “my” science to understand “your” magic, we’d start with stuff like, “What happens if you use a four pointed star instead of a pentagram? Or a six pointed star? What if we substitute eye of newt for eye of salamander? Or eye of toad? If the spell doesn’t work when we broaden definitions, what if we shrink them? Does it work with iris of newt?” Because that’s what science really is, doing the same thing over and over, with minor variations, and observing the results.
You apply enough science to magic, and eventually, it just becomes another kind of science.
The City and the Stars is one of the Clarke books I’ve reread the most. (And also the first version, Against the Fall of Night.) Did you know that Clarke predicted virtual reality RPGs in it?
Diaspar is an excellent example of what he was talking about. To us it seemed like magic - the Buddhist-like reincarnations, for example. Yet it was clearly advanced technology.
BTW we’re getting to a no moving parts world. My computer is a bit too old for this, but the disk drive that was washing machine size with lots of moving parts when I was in grad school is now something with no moving parts in new PCs. Does a 3D printer really have moving parts? Kind of, I suppose, but nothing like a lathe.
Childhood’s End was closer to real magic.
Yes, they have moving parts, they run by motors, just like a lathe. Resin printers have less moving axes than filament, since the X and Y are handled by light, but they still need a moving z-axis and that’s not going away any time soon. Even the fancy laser sintering ones have that.
What they don’t have is the motors doing the actual work (in combo with cutters), like lathes or mills do. So in that regard, they’re an advancement.
Although I love The City and the Stars, I struggle to imagine what a 3D printer with no moving parts might look like.
Maybe a Star Trek replicator, which ‘materialises’ solid objects in thin air? That sounds like Clarketech to me.
According to everything we know about the universe, FTL is impossible. I personally don’t think it is, or that we will find a way around that limitation. I do think that we know enough to rule that out.
Which is why it is so surprising when the aliens show up in FTL ships, demonstrating that everything we think we know about the universe is wrong.
Or if they do something even more surprising and impossible that we can’t even imagine.
Agreed, and it’s also not meant to literally say that things that we can’t explain with our limited understanding of the universe is actually magic. Like I said upthread, it’s more the other way around. If you see something that looks like magic, then it’s almost certainly just technology that you don’t understand.
Right, but I used the word “science” in response to your use of it. If you, with your pathetic and inferior knowledge want to challenge my claim to possess magic, you are not able to do so other than through philosophical argument, that in the past everything claimed to be magic turned out to be explainable with science, you can’t actually show how I did my “trick”. You may not believe that it’s not magic, but you can’t prove that it’s not.
In order: you get an australian shepherd puppy, all glass within 10 miles shatters, you don’t want to do that if you ever want to have children, you get the best latte you’ve ever tasted, and I’m starting to get bored with your questions, I think I’ll head off to Rigel 7 and bask in the unquestioning worship of the natives of that planet.
And that only works if you have access to the materials to make those experiments. If I’m not cooperative in your investigation, then you aren’t going to get far.
If the magic is consistent. If every time you wave this wand something completely different happens, sometimes including nothing that you can perceive, then your experiments and observations will not give any explanation as to how it works, how to predict its effects, nor how to replicate them.
But yeah, most fictional magical systems have rules, and if it has rules, then it’s something that can be studied scientifically. Even DnD style magic can be considered a form of science, as the wizards study how to manipulate the weave in order to get it to create the wanted effects.
In the time period when Clarke produced his rules he had lived his life in a world which believed far more in the existence of magic than it does now. In his lifetime virtually everyone started their life with a firm believe in the supernatural that might later be convinced that there were scientific explanations for most or all of what was considered magical. The world is different now, there is no shortage of those still confirmed in their believe in magic and superstition, but far more of the world accepts scientific explanations and places them in the forefront.
I’ll also not that Clarke didn’t say anything at all about understanding sufficiently advanced technology, only that in his opinion it would have to be indistinguishable from magic without that tight of an explanation of what he meant. Certainly sufficiently advanced technology could be seen with wonderment by anyone but the definition of magic in that context is going to be perceived differently over time.
You can’t actually show how all magic tricks work now. You can’t prove some aren’t done by magic, only relying on your belief that there is a scientific explanation. I can’t explain how all of science works right now either, sometimes science appears to be magical, but that doesn’t make it indistinguishable from magic. Sometimes the explanations for science aren’t even correct and may change in slight ways or greatly over time but those are not changes that turn science into magic.
The world is no different. Most people still believe in magic. Most people now might use the word “science” or “technology” to label the magic they believe in, but their belief in it is no different than it ever was.
If your senses present you with something that seems impossible, and your only recourse is to doubt your senses, that what you believe in isn’t actually science. The whole point of science is that it is accessible. No one human can access all of science, it’s true, but if you pick any one human-sized piece of it, you can examine that one piece and verify it, no matter which piece you choose. And if your senses give you answers other than what you expect, then you don’t just give up on your senses; you find new ways to apply your senses, likely involving making changes to the things you’re sensing and observing those changes as well. And if, after you’ve applied your senses in every way you can think of and the results are all consistent with one and only one hypothesis, then you accept that hypothesis, even if it’s not at all what you expected. That’s how science works.
But that’s not what most people do, even today. They see something that seems impossible, and they say “science says that’s impossible”, and that’s the end of that, because to such people, “science” is a thing not to be questioned.
Clarke’s not that far in the past, in fact, the third law was coined after we had put a man on the moon. He wasn’t trying to convince people to be skeptical about mystics and mediums, he was stating that if we encounter things that appear to magic to us, that they are actually technology we don’t understand.
Between religion and flat earthers, there are still plenty who ignore science and insert their favored magical thinking instead.
I’m honestly not sure what you are trying to get at here. It’s not that something has to be indistinguishable from magic to be advanced technology, it’s that if something looks like magic, then it’s actually advanced technology.
Sure I can. I can set up high speed cameras from multiple angles, I can go backstage and see the wires and ropes, I can inspect the wardrobe that the assistant disappeared out of and find the mirrors and trap door.
Once again, I fail to see what point you are trying to make here. When does science appear to be magical? That’s pretty close to an exact contradiction in terms.
And no one has said that it does.
Once again, to reiterate, the entire point is, if you see something that looks like it is magic, if you examine and investigate and according to everything that you and your team of physicists and engineers and scientists know, it is not possible, then though it is indistinguishable from magic, it is actually advanced technology. I think that somehow you have continued to miss that point, as nothing that you have said addresses it in any way.
Right, and the point of the quote is that it should be, “What we know of science says that’s impossible, so let’s figure out how it works.”
And let’s remember the first two laws
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
which support this point.
“Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!” Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius.
Surprised no one has posted the colliery-
“Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced”
Your responses in this thread remind me of those questions theists ask of atheists 'If God appeared in front of you, then would you believe in him?" God doesn’t exist so the question is irrelevant.
You are basically positing magical situations and asking for scientific explanations. I doubt very seriously that an alien civilization would commit the resources to reversing the spin of a planet - not enough net gain. But if they did, there would machinery involved and upon inspection of that machinery a scientific explanation could be deduced.
If a real god couldn’t make you believe then they ain’t worth much as a god.
Yes - it’s no use to simply say “science tells us this should be impossible” if we see it actually happen – either we are misunderstanding what we’re seeing, or the explanation is above what we can currently grasp, but it is knowable, just maybe not by us and not now. Some people are getting hung up on the use of the term “magic” and in a sense that it should be even unspeakable and unthinkable. But Clarke is not saying it “is” magic, he is saying "the general observer couldn’t tell it apart from magic" – and that does not necessarily mean this casual observer will call it by the word “magic”. In this case, it can mean “sufficiently advanced technology will have people say this is something unexplainable and should not even be possible the way I understand the natural world”.
Let us not flatter ourselves that there is nothing that would initially leave any of us shaking our heads in bafflement going like, “wait, that should be impossible” and take us a bit of time and effort to wrap our heads around that there is nothing wrong with what’s being observed, it’s us who are not understanding.
Well, then again TBF depending on the tradition you are working with, some gods are not exactly impressive. Not everyone comes across as Krisna revealing himself unto Arjuna.