Where did the whole wizards as magic scientists thing come from?

Because things can change

youtube.com/watch?v=ZTf2EzTd1TE

>this butthurt arts major (pardon the redundancy)

You know what I meant, and you'd also know full well that philosophy has rules and rigor too.

>Symbolism and emotion

Do certain symbols and emotions consistently correspond to certain effects?

>Do certain symbols and emotions consistently correspond to certain effects?

Oh fuck, you have autism.

Oh fuck, you have no arguments.

...Assuming that the laws of physics don't change, either spontaneously or gradually over time. In our world that's assumed to be the case, because otherwise postulating theories about the past or the future is impossible. But there's no reason that has to be true in every universe, especially not a fictional one.

>The symbols are sapient, and won't do anything if they know you're trying to study them

WHAT NOW COCKSUCKER?

The surging ignorance of your question leads me to believe that you have been isolated from a knowledge of human civilization by disability, indolence or both.

Shouldn't this be entirely dependent on the rules that magic follows in the setting?

>equal parts priest, philosopher, theologian, mystic, and crazy person.

Where do you think modern scientists came from?

I still don't see any arguments, just personal attacks.

Then in this setting, scientist-wizard is impossible because magic is lolrandom. Also if the laws of physics change over time, the changes have to be infinitesimally small and slow for life to be possible.

Well then check your neurotypical privilege and explain it in small words that autists can understand.

Scientists are philosophers of the fourth type. Sorcerers are philosophers of the third. They are not dissimilar creatures.

>Also if the laws of physics change over time, the changes have to be infinitesimally small and slow for life to be possible.

Depends what defines "life".

Humanoids of the type we play in nearly all RPGs joker

He may be talking about the variable speed of light. That said, it's not necessarily that physics change as much at its constants are not as stable as previously though. Just see the vacuum metastability of the Higgs field.

This can't be stated enough.

Men of certain dispositions are attracted to certain roles, and while the art itself may have evolved over the years, its practitioners have not. The astronomers of today are the astrologists of yesteryear.

That's exactly what early scientists were.

Yes, and? In Dark Souls, humanoids are composed of dust and fire. In our world humans are composed of elements, arranged into proteins and suchlike.

There's a lot of ways for a sapient humanoid to be constructed, especially in the hands of a particularly creative writer.

That's what they were.

If you're wondering why it became so rigid, it's the logical conclusion of having to create rigid rules to balance magic in an RPG. Essentially, crunch bled into fluff as there wasn't any good way fluff wise to explain why magic could be used in such a predictable way.

>Do certain symbols and emotions consistently correspond to certain effects?

No, symbols and emotional reactions can vary widely enough because of cultural differences and individual reactions that consistency is difficult to achieve.

Alternately, symbolic connections can't be replicated. Unknown Armies does this well with 2nd edition's tilts - you need to make a symbolic representation of your magic's desired effect, and once you've used it, it can't be used again and you have to figure out how to create a different symbol of the same effect if you want to use it twice.

Stereotypical wizards are essentially a combination of Persian magi (which were a kind of priest) and European alchemists. Alchemists were essentially scientists before science was really a thing; they performed experiements with various substances to understand the nature of matter (and to be able to do stuff like turn lead to gold or create an elixir of immortality), and in doing so discovered many principles of chemistry, even if they didn't really understand the physics behind it (since that would have required several branches of science that didn't even exist then). There's also not much difference between philosopher and scientist, historically. Both seek to understand the world, and the Greek philosophers based a lot of their ideas on observing nature and trying to deduce how things work (it was only later that science became its own thing and took over the "observe how things work and make theories based on it" thing, leaving philosophers to...Do whatever the hell philosophers do these days. Publish books, mostly?). So wizard have effectively always been "magic scientists".

The more rigid, close to modern scientific method portrayal how wizards and magic works is probably largely due to RPG mechanics. If you have players using magic, you need to set up well-codified rules on how stuff works (i.e. a fireball spell always produces a ball of fire with radius of 10 feet that deals 4d6 in fire damage). And having magic work like that in the rules effects the way players and writers perceive it, leading to it become very much de-mystified in-universe as well (note that havign well defined relationship between things doesn't necessarily de-mystify things; the real alchemists did know that mixing certain substances in certain quantities would produce a certain effect, but if asked to explain why, they would likely answer that it was due to the spiritual/elemental/symbolical connection rather than being able to explain how the chemical reaction works).

>No, symbols and emotional reactions can vary widely enough because of cultural differences and individual reactions that consistency is difficult to achieve.

How's that any different? It's still comparing things like "casting fireball while angry vs. casting fireball while afflicted by ennui". Or "casting heal through a staff topped with a symbol of healing versus one topped with a symbol of lightning". It gets more handwavey and subjective for sure, but it still boils down to the caster's emotional state. If their physical and biological science advances far enough they'd probably start looking to nail down the neurological connection to magic.

>Alternately, symbolic connections can't be replicated.

Sounds like that kind of thing would be a named Law in that universe.

I think the reason people feel put off by wizards being treated like scientists is that so often, they're just used as an excuse to recreate modern technology with more glowy bits. A more interesting approach to magic-as-science would be to start with peculiar premises, and follow those premises through, logically, to strange and counter-intuitive conclusions. Conclusions that, themselves, enable surreal new technologies to be invented.

Consider these premises, that I made up on the spot:

Ripple is a martial art that involves conducting "Ripple Energy" through water, allowing one to wield water itself as a weapon.
Bronze is an element, made from hardened sunlight.
One can conduct Ripple Energy through bronze as easily as through water.

Conclusion: bronze, and by extension, sunlight, are both types of water. This is supported by the presence of bronze ore in the sand and soil of riverbeds all over the world; ore that can be harvested for use in smelting, and is a renewable resource.

This is what makes science so fascinating: that the things we think are obviously true are often far from it, and that the things that are actually true can be so weird and counter-intuitive that they raise even more questions. That's the kind of magic-science people want, not guns that shoot magic missiles instead of bullets.

>
How's that any different? It's still comparing things like "casting fireball while angry vs. casting fireball while afflicted by ennui". Or "casting heal through a staff topped with a symbol of healing versus one topped with a symbol of lightning". It gets more handwavey and subjective for sure, but it still boils down to the caster's emotional state. If their physical and biological science advances far enough they'd probably start looking to nail down the neurological connection to magic.

Because in combination the effects become unclear. "Casting fireball while angry" does something different than "Casting fireball while afflicted by ennui" and both of those do something different than "Casting fireball while angry and you've had a really big lunch so you're really only angry in a very general sense, and you're a member of a magical order that views fire as a rejuvenating rather than destructive force, having been raised in a culture that sees it primarily as destructive, so there's an inevitable conflict."

It's easy to say "Ah, this is a natural law" and assume the effects can be categorized, but only when dealing with very broad effects that aren't interacting with each other all at the same time, and with subtle differences based on the user. "Handwavey and subjective" doesn't begin to cover it.

>Sounds like that kind of thing would be a named Law in that universe.

Continuing with the original example, it's not because it's sort of a useless law - knowing you need a replacement symbol doesn't necessarily mean the symbol will have any weight to it, or that you'll make an effective one. Couple this with the setting's tendency to treat tilt magic as invisible - there's no obvious visible effect the character can see and say "Okay, this worked" and the mechanical effect could be chalked up to magical thinking - means nobody would make an effort to codify that law.

Cont.

>Priest
The Catholic Church was the patron of the sciences for centuries, and even today there's the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Also Jesuits were pretty big on the secular sciences.
>Philosopher/Theologian
In the Middle Ages, you weren't one or the other. You were both at the same time and a scientist on top of that. All of that was Philosophy: the general love of wisdom and exploration of truth in all its facets. It wasn't until the Scientific Revolution until the scientific fields became more or less specialized according to modern norms.
>Mystic
You mean mystic in the spoopy occult stuff sense, or the guys who try to find God through logical reasoning? Even if only limiting ourselves to the Christian definition (and there's no real reason to do that), "mysticism" means so many things and has changed definition so often throughout the ages, it means practically nothing.
>Crazy person
The popular depiction of scientists shows them as excentric geniusses who appear downright mad to the average layman, or idiot savants.

Your reasons why wizards as magic scientists don't make sense are precisely the reason why we see wizards as magic scientists.

As for being a law in that universe, you're not totally wrong - there was a period in-setting where scientific magic was generally in vogue and the big deal, but it became static as it turned into real science in and around the 18th-19th centuries, and budding magicians had to look for new avenues of power.

Generally speaking I think it's fine if, out-of-setting, we can point to specific laws that govern magic, and I have no objection to that. I think insisting it must always be treated as a science in the setting itself kills a lot of the mythopoetic stuff (god I hate that word) that makes magic interesting.

It's probably a by-product of modern information specialization. People associate all research to science, because they don't ever dare venture to the world of philosophy, and math is a chore or only a tool.
Of course, this means that the very meaning of 'science' is less rooted in the actual scientific method, and more in the popular idea of science. In particular the social media works with this type of 'knowledge'.
Those who actually do venture deep in the realm of science rarely interact with other sections, and just dig deeper until their research is relevant only in a group of other experts of the field. With the exception of social sciences which are always interesting in military and political use, even if not fully understood.

Wizards are also associated with forbidden knowledge, and there is this silly meme of medieval ban on all knowledge, so the strong independent wizards just had to be scientists. Because Galileo memes.

Well, at least warlocks and wizards are still understood as separate, so not all is lost to naivete.

And philosophers, priests, mystics and crazy people were the the ones searching for the truth to things rather then simply accepting that rain makes you wet, fire burns, and animals kill you and your children while you try to get by. They were the seekers of truth. They would find it, or think they found it, and bring it back to others to explain WHY rain made you wet, fire burned and animals ate you and your children while you tried to get by.

Once people hear the reasons, they figured, like most autists on this board, that they could game the system and make it so that rain didn't make them wet, while still making plants wet, fire burned only other things, not yours, and animals got eaten by your and your children rather then the other way around.

Eventually, given time, the crazies got around to the right answers. Now, we have warnings that the rain is coming and shelter and clothes that avoid us getting wet. Fire now is mostly controlled and tamed to the point that we have fire burning inside metal boxes that propel plastic boxes down the faster then the fastest animal and it carries us with it. And we have nearly tamed or destroyed nearly every other animal on earth.

The reason they are compared to scientists, is because they, like our proto-scienctists, are searching for the truth. Probably to game the system, but that is just our nature.

>a wizard should be equal parts priest, philosopher, theologian, mystic, and crazy person
The first scientist was Galileo, though he identified himself as a mathematician and was renowned as a crazy person (thought the sun caused the tides, helio-centric before it was cool, said Copernicus was a loon and that planets had circle (not elliptic) orbits once it *was* cool, etc.)

Up 'til then, "learned people" were some combination of priest, philosopher, mathematician (a branch of philosopher) theologian (a branch of philosopher), and mystic. And crazy person (a branch of philosopher?), if your political enemies have anything to say about it.

It came from us. We the players, who wanted to show how superior our intellect was and how we could win the world if we were a wizard.
Tldr: autists speerging

But that is kind of what science used to be like. Isaac Newton believed in alchemy or somesuch IIRC.

Still, would be cool if wizards were less like current establishment science and more like secret crackpot societies where half of the rituals they perform is just intended to obfuscate how magic actually works.

>And philosophers, priests, mystics and crazy people were the the ones searching for the truth to things
You do understand that people did that without scientific method, right?

>Alchemists were essentially scientists before science was really a thing

This is an anachronistic understanding. Alchemy is also deeply rooted in mysticism.

>philosophy has rules and rigor too.

Read Nietzsche. He became a highly successful philosopher primarily by successfully desystemizing it and outright ignoring what was considered proper procedure in philosophy.

You also forget that Veeky Forums is now mostly made up of aspie idiots who think game rules=the only way magic works. the idea that magic is mysterious and unpredictable triggers them so badly they have to make it scientific so that they can cope with it.

God help them if magic is anything but scientifically reproducible and understandable. because then it might not obey the dictates of logic and physics, which is of course how everything works in fiction.

>rather then simply accepting that rain makes you wet, fire burns, and animals kill you and your children while you try to get by
They absolutely did "simply accept" things. We still do today. Science is about describing "how," not "why."

youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8

Alchemy was also literally synonymous with chemistry when it was a thing.
There's a reason they both have "chem" in them, it's the same word.

Except the "chemistry" of yesteryear involved a lot of mystical symbols and elemental spirits and transcendence and shit

And in doing so they developed the scientific method.

They didn't, it was popularized by rationalist philosophers

>a lot of mystical symbols
Repurposed symbols that carried no implications. That was purely a matter of notation.

>elemental spirits and transcendence and shit
Old-timey physics said that all physical change/motion was caused by the *direct and deliberate* action of non-physical spirits.
In Greco-Roman times that mostly meant (classical) Daemons, Christian priests liked to prescribe it to angels (or in some cases God).
It's a silly excuse, but answers to "why" always are.

Uh, I am sure that the wizards in Vance's Dying Earth books are scientists trying to reconstruct technology from thousands if not millions of years ago.

And that IS where D&D magic is based on.

Adding on to your points, a lot of people would consider modern scientific equations occult (in the original sense of the term).

Look at this shit.

>Besides magic is often rooted in in distinctly subjective and non-empirical matters such as symbolism and emotion.
If similar or consistent symbols and emotions produce similar or consistant results, then the empirical method is applicable.

>If similar or consistent symbols and emotions produce similar or consistant results
They don't. Now what's the next step?

If they didnt, then magic would be completely random and unpredictable, probably even impossible.

If there is no underlying structure or reason that governs magic, it is worthless as a profession or discipline beyond being a glorified dice roller.

Sounds cool, what is your source ?

Then any attempt at magic has as much chance to turn your eyeballs into hungry wolverines as it does to do anything remotely helpful for your current situation, so the best thing you can do is never ever use it.

>non-empirical matters such as [...] emotion.
>non-empirical
A pianist/scientist/inventor nailed this down in the 70s.
Sentics. Go read it, shits cash.

>another stemlord confuses understanding the physical mechanisms of emotion equals actually understanding emotion

Autism.

They don't. They produce results that are entirely dependent on the subjective context of the individual and rely strictly on phenomena and concepts that can only understood non-empirically.

God fucking damn, STEMlords are the worst part of gaming.

>empirical understand is the only form of understanding

Oh my god, the pure fucking autism. Empiricism itself is self-refuting; there's a reason logical positivism died.

>Alchemy was also literally synonymous with chemistry when it was a thing.
>There's a reason they both have "chem" in them, it's the same word.

I'm not denying that chemistry sprang from alchemy, but alchemy is not just chemistry. There's a reason one of the biggest alchemical traditions was rooted in Taoist mysticism.

yeah, just because Taoists were really interested in chemistry.

Fine then; do consistent symbols and emotions in regards to a specific individual (or perhaps those similar to him as well) produce consistent results?
In that case, then yes, it is an empirical system in regards to that individual.
If similar individuals with similar mindsets and culture can produce similar results based on similar symbols and emotions, then there is a weak empirical basis upon which magic can be studied.

If magic of different individuals is completely different with no link, then magic itself cannot be taught or trained from master to adept, it can only be personally discovered through some method.

>empiricism is wrong, despite the fact that it works
Listen, I know you're mad that you wasted nearly a hundred grand on your philosophy degree, but that's no reason to get asshurt at STEMfags for being useful while only political philosophers have relevance in the world.

Ok, I studied history in college, not science or philosophy, so break it down for me. It sounds to me like no consistency between input and output could only result in pure chaos. What am I missing?

>If I do X, Y happens
>If I do something similar to X, something similar to Y happens
>nine times out of ten, if I so something similar to X, something similar to Y happens
>better tell my kids and village this so they can do Y
Boom, proto-empiricism.

Dying Earth by Jack Vance.

Because they believed that taoist mysticism could grant them enlightenment and immortality, and saw chemistry as just a portion of this tradition.

I'm the OP by the way, and I'm not exactly opposed to magic having a consistent study, what I'm opposed to is the fact that the consistent study of magic in a lot of settings takes the form of the sciences after science split off from philosophy and stopped being considered a subset of it (I still maintain that science is just applied philosophy, and many STEMlords seem to take for granted the work of epistemological philosophers in granting them the basis they work with).

Sorcerers and such in fantasy and myth would often evoke the names of gods and focus on mystic rites meant to be pleasing to them, real-world occult traditions were often rooted in theology and philosophy (Kabbalah and neo-Platonism come right to mind), and on a personal note, if you want magic to be something other than pulpy superscience, it should at least somewhat defy methodical investigation.

Frankly, I suspect the whole thing of it being "science with the ability to turn people into frogs" is basically just a wish-fulfillment fantasy of the sorts that are into gaming; dreaming of a world where their being good at calculus will grant them something other than a future in a menial office job.

>Listen, I know you're mad that you wasted nearly a hundred grand on your philosophy degree, but that's no reason to get asshurt at STEMfags for being useful while only political philosophers have relevance in the world.

I didn't waste any money on a philosophy degree. I just understand that empiricism can't empirically verify itself. It works, but it's a philosophical dead-end; you'll never understand truth with it.

Empiricism itself can't validate itself, you have to take that it's valid on a leap of faith. You'll never be truly certain if what you're seeing actually is, and it wont tell you what you're actually interacting with, only what you see.

There are other methods of inferring information such as deduction, logical inference, or intuition.

The subject of what is, and what it's like, questions like whether or not we have free will, what is a moral life, what's the purpose of our existence, etc. can't be concluded with empirical study.

You assume that there is truth to be found at all, or more precisely, that there is absolute truth.

99.5% certainty of truth is enough to build all of human civilization, and its the closest approximation we have of truth and knowledge, so why be so bothered about it?

>Sorcerers and such in fantasy and myth would often evoke the names of gods and focus on mystic rites meant to be pleasing to them, real-world occult traditions were often rooted in theology and philosophy (Kabbalah and neo-Platonism come right to mind), and on a personal note, if you want magic to be something other than pulpy superscience, it should at least somewhat defy methodical investigation.
Sounds pretty empirical to me; it can be deduced what rites and rituals are pleasing to gods in such a way that brings about desired effects to said gods, even if only probabilistically rather than deterministically.

You must understand; ANYTHING that has an effect on physical reality and follows some structure of cause and effect, no matter how absurd or obfuscated, can be studied empirically. It just takes a lot, lot longer to figure out the inputs required for a proper output.

Not him but one possible case is subjectivism of magic. Consequences depend on person in question and his qualities, at the same time it's impossible to measure said qualities by comparison to others. You can figure out general way of how to achieve right state of mind and body to access magic but the result is anything but guaranteed (because there are a lot of important factors about yourself you don't know and can't learn by convient methods).

>Sounds pretty empirical to me; it can be deduced what rites and rituals are pleasing to gods in such a way that brings about desired effects to said gods, even if only probabilistically rather than deterministically.

The gods themselves aren't machines. They've got subjective, non-empirical tastes that you have to please, and could very well wreck your shit for offering something that has become displeasing to them.

>You must understand; ANYTHING that has an effect on physical reality and follows some structure of cause and effect, no matter how absurd or obfuscated, can be studied empirically. It just takes a lot, lot longer to figure out the inputs required for a proper output.

This is another thing. A fantasy setting not need not be rooted in modern scientific physicalist notions of what reality is. Fantasy settings could easily run on metaphysical notions that can't be understood empirically, only deduced through logic, free will could indeed be strictly non-deterministic, hell the world may not even be composed of atoms or physical matter as we understand it at all.

>99.5% certainty of truth is enough to build all of human civilization, and its the closest approximation we have of truth and knowledge, so why be so bothered about it?

I'm not bothered by it. Empiricism and the scientific method are awesome. I just recognize its limitation.

>If I do something similar to X, something similar to Y happens
>nine times out of ten, if I so something similar to X, something similar to Y happens
Yet you didn't have nice digital devices on hand or even pen and paper to collect and store the data precisely every time. Your observations were corrupted by your emotional state, human memory and perception so in the end you figured out something to explain why Y happens and X is only one of possible causes. You tell your kids and village about that.

But how does that come into play in a conversation about something with tangible results (ie the magical effect)? To be honest I don't have a strong grasp on what empiricism is, but I assume its the logic I'm using?

It seems to me like the argument against scientific understanding of magic, is that magic could have no connection between cause and effect? Is that assumption correct or incorrect?

>Empiricism itself can't validate itself, you have to take that it's valid on a leap of faith. You'll never be truly certain if what you're seeing actually is, and it wont tell you what you're actually interacting with, only what you see.
If the alternative is to trust only your mind, to turn your thoughts on in themselves, why would you not take the leap of faith?
Far better to live a meaningful delusion than a lonely truth; solipsism is cancer and you should know that.

>You can figure out general way of how to achieve right state of mind and body to access magic but the result is anything but guaranteed
What, do you think that modern science is deterministic? I'm not a quantum physicist, but there is most likely a probabilistic element to reality.

>The gods themselves aren't machines. They've got subjective, non-empirical tastes that you have to please, and could very well wreck your shit for offering something that has become displeasing to them.
That's just another layer of obfuscation on top, comparable to the concept of physical constants, such as the speed of light, changing over time. It doesn't make science impossible, only harder.

>This is another thing. A fantasy setting not need not be rooted in modern scientific physicalist notions of what reality is. Fantasy settings could easily run on metaphysical notions that can't be understood empirically, only deduced through logic, free will could indeed be strictly non-deterministic, hell the world may not even be composed of atoms or physical matter as we understand it at all.
Then how do you DO anything in such a reality? How do you bring about a desired effect? Can you replicate that effect in any way?

*

It's not necessarily that magic could have no relation between cause and effect, just a somewhat shaky one that someone would have to rely on things other than strict empirical study to understand. For instance intuition.

Empiricism is basically the idea that you learn by sensing. A famous proponent of it would be David Hume, who pointed out that logical induction is impossible (just because every swan you've ever seen was white, and every one everyone else has seen was white, doesn't mean the next one wont be black, and he's not wrong on that) in his famous problem of induction.

Is it truly a limitation if there is nothing beyond it?

Fire burns wood and wood sustains fire, that much is a general fact regardless of if the observer believes it to be because of invisible fireflys that eat the wood and give off heat and light, or if they believe it to be combustion as we know it.

"X does Y" does not concern how or why X does Y, only that X does Y. Put something into the magic black box, and you get something out.

>Empiricism is basically the idea that you learn by sensing.
When dealing with physical reality external to ones own existence, that is the only way to learn.

Rite of AshkEnte:
>three small sticks and 4 cc of mouse blood
>OR, a fresh egg and two small sticks

>If the alternative is to trust only your mind, to turn your thoughts on in themselves, why would you not take the leap of faith?

Not proposing that you shouldn't. Science based on empirical reasoning gave me the medical science that has saved my life repeatedly.

>Far better to live a meaningful delusion than a lonely truth

Well, you can just kind of accept that there is a limit to how useful empiricism is as a tool. It is supposed to be a tool, not a way of life. Taking it to its conclusion leads to the complete insanity that is radical empiricism.

>solipsism is cancer and you should know that.

Solipsism is basically the first thing you have to overcome in creating a philosophical understanding of life. So I don't disagree.

>Then how do you DO anything in such a reality? How do you bring about a desired effect? Can you replicate that effect in any way?

You learn through other forms of reasoning, and get on with your life knowing that your senses can't perceive everything that is. The same way we do now, since we're in a universe with genuinely random events that do have macro-scale ramifications.

This is making it sound like magic would be social science instead of hard science.

>Is it truly a limitation if there is nothing beyond it?

Can you empirically verify that?

I tease. But seriously, we get by with all kinds of non-empirical reasoning daily. Empiricism is a tool, not an idol.

>"X does Y" does not concern how or why X does Y, only that X does Y
I said nothing like that. "Yet you didn't have nice digital devices on hand or even pen and paper to collect and store the data precisely every time. Your observations were corrupted by your emotional state, human memory and perception so in the end you figured out something to explain why Y happens and X is only one of possible causes."

You can't figure out that X causes Y, only that something causes Y and X is one the possible cause. On top of that you came to conclusion that Z and W causes Y too. You tell your kids and village about that.

There's logic, rationalism, and intuition. There's a priori forms of knowledge, which are completely distinct from sense-experience. Mathematical knowledge is an example of this.

>Taking it to its conclusion leads to the complete insanity that is radical empiricism.
What do you mean? I just accept that everything is, at some level, physical.

>You learn through other forms of reasoning, and get on with your life knowing that your senses can't perceive everything that is.
Our biological sense are limited, yes, but just as we use tools to build better tools, we can use our senses to perceive better senses.

We can't see infrared radiation, but we can build tools that allow us to see it as visible light.

>The same way we do now, since we're in a universe with genuinely random events that do have macro-scale ramifications.
I don't see how that relates to being unable to sense the totality of creation. Could you expand on that?

You would be right, had I said "Only X causes Y"
I said "X causes Y", which makes no claim as to whether X is the only cause of Y or not.

None of those deal with physical reality, however; they are entirely internal that can be, in some cases (such as mathematics), used to model physical reality in a satisfactorily approximate way.

>What do you mean? I just accept that everything is, at some level, physical.

If you're going to be completely empirical, much of math goes straight out the window until you can empirically verify it by counting beans.

>We can't see infrared radiation, but we can build tools that allow us to see it as visible light.

Empiricism did that just fine. But we're probably never going to build a tool that explains consciousness or answers the question of free will.

>I don't see how that relates to being unable to sense the totality of creation. Could you expand on that?

We already live in a universe that isn't completely causal. We accept on a daily basis that the causality as we understand it works well enough, and we continue existing in a universe where we can expect repeatable results (because we can, just not in a strictly absolute sense), and it wouldn't be much different in this hypothetical realm of metaphysics where non-causal, non-physical factors that can't be understood empirically definitively exist.

on ye olden days, scientists were also crazy philosophers

>I said "X causes Y", which makes no claim as to whether X is the only cause of Y or not.
In case above you don't have right tools at hand to accurately pinpoint that X causes Y 9 out of 10 times X is involved. Presence of other factors and causes of Y only corrupts your observations even further.

Mathematics is useful for describing aspects of reality. That doesn't mean it has to have any inherent connection with reality at all.

Those "questions" are positively frivolous.

Well that's kind of my point. Mathematics is an example of something that largely isn't understood through empiricism.

Science Fantasy is cool though.

Yeah, I'm sure glad the question of morality didn't have a hand in the formation of our modern democratic liberal republics that guarantee a bunch of basic freedoms to their citizenry.

>If you're going to be completely empirical, much of math goes straight out the window until you can empirically verify it by counting beans.
Alright, fine, you caught me there. I'll retract my statement and instead provide that thought itself is purely physical, but can describe non-physical/abstract concepts.

>But we're probably never going to build a tool that explains consciousness or answers the question of free will.
The best thing about empiricism is that, even though nothing can be proven true, things generally can't be proven impossible. Empirical consciousness is a black swan.

the difference is that the probabilities involved in our reality are effectively infinitesimal on all but the largest of scales, far beyond the current scope of human thought or civilization.

Then have fun with it. I'm not knocking super science, or at least that wasn't my intention.