Are mad scientists just modern wizards, or is magic not a science until the mechanics of it are understood?

Are mad scientists just modern wizards, or is magic not a science until the mechanics of it are understood?

In a setting with magic, applying scientific principles to magic is a valid way to go about things.

Also, mad scientists are usually just mad engineers. You don't need to do any research to build a death ray.

I mean, that's true, yeah. Except for the part where having to either look up information or doing any product testing counts as research.

But what if I want to test one type of death ray vs. another? Is a necronium core better than wonderflonium?

I hear they're both unstable but I hear necronium is suppose the kill things up to 30% deader.

Magic, in the real world, is simply ascribing some unknown force to a thing you don't understand. Science is a process by which people evaluate evidence and make and dismiss hypotheses based on said evidence, eventually arriving at practical models for how the observable world works.

Science also requires certain assumptions: Firstly, the only useful knowledge is acquired via the senses, and the senses work well enough that they can be trusted to gain insight into the way the world works. Secondly, an experiment or law or theory can be repeatedly challenged, and have the same result no matter where in the world it is performed, and if it does not, then it must be discarded.

Magic can be a science depending on the setting, but the general assumption is that magic just does whatever (and this is usually how people justify dragons, monsters, spellcasting, etc.).

Personally, I'm okay with mad scientists (and engineers) being wizards, but the point behind mad scientists is that they use the scientific method without regard for ethics or consequence. If "super science" is magical in some way (breaks with our understanding of the universe) it would be best if it were internally consistent and able to be replicated.

The same can be said regarding magic in fantasy settings, as well.

>fishtastic but true

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Wizards are just fantasy engineers.

Then that's researching, instead it.

Necronium does kill things faster, that's true. And as long as you're fine with your henchmen, your target, and the surrounding countryside ALSO dying, have at it.
Personally, I prefer soul shards. They're more expensive, but they make your death rays emit nice particle effects.

Depends entirely on the origins of magics and how they function within a setting.

Ebin XKCD meme

If you understand it, then it isn't magic. You can know the how, but not the why. The why is 'it just works'. Why do certain symbols affect certain spirits on certain days, or certain plants have certain effects when mixed together in a silver bowl? What exactly is a 'pure heart'? It's a hidden layer of nature, a huge bizarre web entangling all the physical and mundane, connecting it all to the wider, thin realms of spiritual existence.

The wizard knows many hows and his insight is that he knows it is the will or nature of the spirits and gods. He exists within mysticism and ritual and esotericism. There's no perfectly reproducible effects within magical arts. It's all entirely dependent on different people and circumstances and skill unknown to humans.

The mad scientist is a scientist, that's all, just exempt from ethics and/or sanity.

I personally hate treating magic like a science. Obtaining it through magic study is fine though.

Science is about learning the laws of physics and using them, whereas magic should be about ignoring and breaking them.

I'll never understand this premise. You are learning how to do something in a repeatable way but people get so caught up in the "mysticism" of magic that your sperg out at the idea of applying the scientific method to it.

Would you call various side show stunts with electricity magic as well? I mean it works well enough when you're trying to inspire the fear of god into people who don't understand how you can walk around charged with 20,000 volts of electricity and not be hurt why should it be any different with some grey beard who learned how to throw fireballs?

>repeatable

As I said here:
>There's no perfectly reproducible effects within magical arts. It's all entirely dependent on different people and circumstances and skill unknown to humans.

For magic to be magical, it has to remain in some way beyond us, above us or innately strange. Or it isn't magical. It's scientific. Science is just learning about the world and how it works. Magic can be said to be 'why' it works, and how to get around the why.

I wouldn't call a sideshow stunt magic, it's science. It's a show. A stunt. Entertainment. Electrcity isn't magic. Can it be used in or for magic? Maybe.

Magic isn't some kind of separate set of laws away from the physical. It isn't some defined energy source to tap into. That's just fantasy science. Magic doesn't have lab tests because its effects are dependent on an infinite number of circumstances which don't follow mundanity. It IS mystical, it IS weird, that's the whole damn idea of magic as magic, a hidden realm of knowledge above all else, yet intricately entwined with the world and stars and moons and stuff. It's not clearly defined at all, because that's the idea.

Perhaps magic works that way for whatever setting you favor but that's the beauty of a thing that doesn't exist.

I just don't see the point in calling a force with clearly defined rules and reproducible effects, studied to hell and back, magic. It really is just science at that point.

If magic can't be reliably reproduced, then there's no reason for the academic study of magics. No wizmen with tomes in secluded towers, no great libraries, no real way to teach magic, as you need to reinvent the wheel every time.

If all magic was Wild Magic, magic casters would be much less popular.

And I don't see the point in a force that's "so mysterious" it can be done by farting as equally as waving your hands around an saying jibberish.

If you learn how to do something chances are you're going to find some way to make the effect repeatable and the premise that it's so mysterious that it can't be "learned" is ridiculous to me.

I mean, if I saw someone waving a wand that was essentially shooting lightning it looks pretty fucking magical on the offset even when I realize how it can be done but more often then not in settings and periods where the wizards are essentially the scientist and scholars of their time the common folk arn't nesscesarily going to understand that the wizard was able to cast fireball by using batshit and some words of power any more then a real life peasent from ye olden days understand that the weird guy made a loud bang by igniting gunpowder.

Wizards, sorcerers and other magical type are usually depicted as wise and knowledgeable. They understand forces that to normal seem impossible to comprehend. To some degree the mystical can be understood, it may work in way that doesn't play well with the rest of our universe as we perceive it but it works none the less.

Going by proper definitions the magical studies should be very distant from known natural studies. It is far beyond any definition of natural, it is supernatural.

The traditional mad scientist works very well as wizard in different skin. He has a degree of understanding in something that shouldn't be understood. The forces he's meddling are so far beyond the normal ken of humanity his studies appear insane. The things he has to do achieve his goal seem esoteric and counter intuitive compared to the normal academic process.

To the scientist or wizard and like-minded people (or things) their practice is purposeful and necessary. Their world view has different rules than everyone else but it has rules. One day we might be able to see the things they do but that day is very far off.
Until then, they'll be in their towers, looking through entrails, electrifying corpses, and consulting twisting hexagrophic displays for bizarre wisdom.

vancian magic is truly cancer.

Into this argument I inject a middle ground. Magic is a mystical thing that has rules to some degree but those rules are completely unique from individual to individual. Someone through life experience and emotional and mental stimulation can find different elements of magic throughout their life that match to them as a person. Magic can be learned well enough but it is very difficult to teach it to another. A wizard with an apprentice does not teach the student written spells but rather he puts them in scenarios where he himself learned the spells and sees what happens. Different wizards learn different specialties and abilities based on how their own personal magic manifests. Magic is built on individual revelations, not as a structured universal force that applies to everyone the exact same way. This is why so many wizards seem wild and improper. They're dunked headfirst into the mindset that their rules are their own, the rules of others do not apply to them, and it's up to them to experience more and more to develop their own talents.

This is why wizards get so powerful as adventurers. There is so much new stuff going on plus they're clashing and working in tandem with their allies and enemies. It very quickly shows them how their nature interacts with others and gives them more inward inspiration.

I'd also add the primary difference between mad scientists and wizards is how their environment responds to them.

M.Scientist
>Your notes are gibberish, your conclusions are insane and you're experiments are morally reprehensible.
>You small minded fool! This is the greatest breakthrough in the history of man!
>No, it's delusional bullshit and you're dangerous lunatic

Wizard
>I hear you can raise the dead
>Well by mapping the sephirot I can find the appropriate cosmic link to certain realms of...
>That's fucking heresy bro
>You, don't understand, I'm only exercising curiosity there's nothing evil about my craft!
>Tell to the stake wizman
>Curse you, you small minded foooool!

Reliably. It can't be reliably reproduced, but it can be reproduced. How? It's magic. There's no end to its vagaries. There's no end to folklore, variations of stories, folk medicines and charms and prayers and rituals and whatever else, they all work one way somewhere and one way somewhere else. It's as versatile as it is frustratingly specific. I don't think I'm explaining myself right. It's weird, its conceptual. It isn't a set framework that will never deviate like the solidity of physics. Magic has no rules, only guidelines and from there, you're on your own.

puts it very well. Magic isn't some unified force. There's discrepancies and individual traits and bizarre variables. I think that's what's most important. It's this decentralization that makes it beyond and strange and mystical. It's ultimately unknown and unknowable and that's what makes it so strange, capricious but tantalizing.

>If you understand it, then it isn't magic. You can know the how, but not the why.
Origins of the most kinds of magic and witchcraft as we understand them today are in Kabbalah, alchemy and Gnosticism. It very much knows "why". The thing is - it largely combines the rationalistic approach with the mystical and transcendent nature of the subject.

>but people get so caught up in the "mysticism" of magic that your sperg out at the idea of applying the scientific method to it
Because science is capable of true understanding of a subject (if we go with scientific realism, which is generally more popular in the Western world compared to Instrumentalism), but Magic is the domain of the divine, which is quite beyond the understanding of mere mortal creations. It's the light of the original Spark of creation, that men can catch the sight of thanks to the same divine spark within them and due to being created in God's likeness, but can never truly grasp. That's the appeal of it - it's something that can be touched and used almost to the point of mundane use, but it still remains a mystery.

I don't declare that it's the only true interpretation of magic, but i do certainly find the idea of magic as merely expanded science boring AF.

>If magic can't be reliably reproduced
It can and can't be at the same time. Paradoxical nature is a part of the charm.

These guys get it.

...

When I imagine magic and science in the same setting I'm thinking more SCP type of deal: It doesn't all have to be completely understood but the effects can still be measured and quantified to the degree that humans are best able to.

No one knows why this guy who's been alive for 200+ years sitting in a chair and has had no need to eat sleep breath or shit but apparently he was able to by believing his body was turning to stone because he was so insane that it somehow worked. Science can't explain why this is happening but we know kind of what's going on.

To take D&D for example there's no way in hell you can't tell me a wizard wouldn't find some enterprising way to make use of the spells beyond just the way they are written but apparently wizards in D&D are too dumb to realize the true level of utility at their disposal.

If you want to be meta about it you get Tippyverse but then again how it goes down and how magic is understood depends entirely on the setting.

Also I just like science-magic and magitek because it's cool.