WEBVTT - There But For Science: Blood Navigation 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:14.200 Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:16.800 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:19.720 You know we've just on the podcast here. We've discussed 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:22.880 before how science is sort of this gigantic slime mold 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.159 feeling its way through a maze. You've got tapers of 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:29.560 its substance seeking down long, twisting corridors in search of 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.519 that that food prize. I guess the food prize of 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:35.480 knowledge in this case, and when they find it, uh, 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:38.320 when we find it, it's on the Greater Meals and uh. 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:41.159 And when this science slime doesn't find it, well, the 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:44.800 tintrals of inquiry tend to dive back, and the system 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:49.440 knows which tunnels are fruitless. So this scenario is somewhat 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.080 true even in times before science, or times during which 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:56.440 scientific inquiry was still held back by various shortcomings, because 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.720 humans still proceeded on a basically by a trial in 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:02.400 her basis. And there's no surer way to air than 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:06.639 to base a hypothesis on purely magical thinking, right, because 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:10.640 today we're going to be talking about some sympathetic blood magic, 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.880 some magical thinking that has supposedly been at least proposed, 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:19.080 if not actually used, in the history of what would 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:24.280 you call it seafaring navigation, uh, finding one's one's allies 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:28.200 under cover of deep ocean and determining one's place on 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:31.880 the globe. Now, I like this metaphor Robert of the 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:36.240 slime mold as as as the model of scientific progress, 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:39.679 because one of the interesting things about scientific progress is 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:44.440 we can almost definitely say that progress is actually made 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:48.240 in science. In other realms, it's debatable whether progress is made. 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:52.000 People argue about whether there's actual progress in philosophy. We 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:55.880 just had our interview with our Scott Baker, and Scott 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:59.680 did not seem to think that philosophy actually made much progress. 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.440 He said, you know, we're still asking the same questions 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:04.560 that we were asking thousands of years ago, and we 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.280 don't really have new answers to them. Science isn't like that. 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:12.240 Now we definitely know things that we used to not know, 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:15.040 and we can use that knowledge, and yet there's nobody 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:18.160 at the top of the scientific process. There's no brain 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:23.239 of science making decisions about what's knowledge, what's not knowledge, 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:26.200 what's true, what's not true, what areas are the best 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.320 to explore. So in the way you use this analogy 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:31.960 of the slime mold, it's almost like a a It's 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:35.359 a process that's blind from the top down and yet 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:39.760 really does make true progress from the bottom up. Yeah, 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.080 there's no there's no brain here in the slime mold. 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.360 There's no king of science, no secret caball running the 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:49.000 whole scientific operation. And I think the fact that science 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:51.440 is like that, that it doesn't have a top down 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:55.800 control process, that it's just this emergent phenomenon that nevertheless 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.960 produces real results and actual progress in the world that 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:03.280 you can be quite sure are real progress. It it's 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:05.760 one of those things that makes it hard to define. 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.960 And we've talked about the difficulty before in defining science 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:13.399 and producing a definition of science that is quote necessary 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.160 and jointly sufficient. We talked about that back in our 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.840 episode about you know, beyond this veil of testing, like 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:24.160 whether things that were maybe post empirical could still be 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:29.280 considered science. And so a necessary and jointly sufficient list 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:33.679 of properties to describe science would be something that describes 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:37.480 everything within the category of science and nothing outside of it. 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:40.520 A good example would be a list of properties that 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:44.360 are necessary and jointly sufficient to describe a triangle. Right. 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.440 A triangle is a closed two dimensional figure with three 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:52.280 straight sides and three angle three angles. This rules in 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.840 everything that is a triangle, and it rules out everything 0:03:55.920 --> 0:04:00.600 that is not a triangle. Sometimes it's really difficult to 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:03.680 do something like that with science. How can you come 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:06.880 up with a list of properties that describes everything that 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:11.720 generates true scientific knowledge and rules out everything that doesn't. 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:15.640 So it seems to me sometimes science might be more 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:19.120 like the concept of a game, things that fall into 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:23.839 a category that Wittgenstein would have called family resemblances. There's 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:28.360 sort of like overlapping similarities between the things we call science, 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:32.440 But there's no list of properties that everything has an 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:36.960 equal measure and that nothing that is not science can claim. 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:40.440 But nevertheless, we do know some really basic categories that 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.200 we can say pretty much seem like they pretty much 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:45.479 always appear in science. Right. One of them is going 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:49.520 to be subjecting ideas to empirical testing. That means you 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:53.080 can't just do science in the hypothetical at some point 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:57.480 it needs to encounter a test in real world conditions, right. 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:02.040 And then the other thing is the um when successful 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:06.359 science produces ideas that generate accurate predictions about reality. So 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.440 if you're doing science right, you should be able to 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.760 predict the future with the ideas you create from it. 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:17.720 That's right now. There are plenty of inherently supernatural notions, 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:20.960 of course that that cannot be proven one way or another. 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:25.000 But when you engage in this process to produce a definite, 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.240 measurable result, then you have something. If you're if you're 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.719 gonna work some sort of magic and and there's a 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:35.200 definite result, something measurable, something observable. If you set out 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:37.680 down this path, you're gonna get an answer, and uh, 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:39.920 you can probably know what that answer is going to be. 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.120 If if you you, if you have you know a 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:46.120 fair amount of scientific reasoning about you. Yeah. I think 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:48.160 one way of putting what you're getting at here and 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:50.960 and correct me if I'm wrong, is that if there 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:54.560 is genuine magic power in the world, you actually should 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:58.120 be able to do science to detect it, Like even 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:00.920 if the causes of it are not necessary early physical 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:04.680 as we would understand the classical concept of physicality, if 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.840 there's some other kind of property in the universe guiding it, 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:10.960 we should still be able to do science to detect 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.839 magical phenomena as long as the magic behaves in a 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.360 consistent way. I think this is the thing that's crucial 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:21.600 to me. And maybe from here I would split proposed 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.760 magic into two categories. There are two camps of it. 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.760 One is what you might call magical law. In this sense, 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:32.279 it's something that happens in the universe, and it happens 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:36.760 outside the laws of physics, and yet it's still behaves consistently. 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:40.120 You do the same stimulus, you get the same results. 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.760 So every time I cast a spell of the same type, 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:47.200 I get the same actual outcome. The other one I 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:50.920 would call capricious magic, and this is magic where it's 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:55.000 not really clear what the consistency of cause and effects 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:58.719 should be. Maybe it works, sometimes it doesn't work other times. 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:02.039 If you have a magical system like this, you really 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:05.400 can't do science on it, because the idea of science 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.920 is that you can reproduce your results, right. Yeah, Well, 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:11.080 this makes me think of a few different examples here. 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:16.440 So obviously the existence of God, like a big g God, 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:21.120 a divine being that created the universe, that is most 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:22.680 degree that that's not the kind of thing you can 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.960 really scientifically prove one way or the other. Right, there 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:28.560 could be, there couldn't be. In science doesn't really give 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:30.760 you much help knowing the answer, right, and you can 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.560 always sort of adjust your parameters for that question to 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.120 lean one way then or the other. But what an 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:38.200 area where it becomes a little more interesting is when 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:41.360 you look at let's say, the healing powers of prayer. 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:43.120 And there have been a number of studies that have 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:46.720 looked into this. This is an area where, on one hand, 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:50.080 it seems rather straightforward. You know, okay, this person praise 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:53.000 and then we can see if if health changes, But 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:56.080 of course you're you're engaging not only like magical thinking, 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:59.240 but also varying levels of psychological responses. Right, you could 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:01.440 have a placed effect and stuff like that. And that's 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:03.920 why if you wanted to do a genuine good prayer study, 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:07.640 it would need to be blinded with proper scientific procedures, 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.680 so the people and administering the study and the test 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:13.720 subjects and all that don't in fact know whether they're 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:15.960 the ones being prayed for or not. But then on 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:20.440 the other hand, something like turning um staffs into serpents 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:24.480 or water to wine stuff is like a genuine miracle, uh, 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.200 that's where it's very clear. Yeah, where there's no like 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:30.760 mediating chance effects, right, unless you ended up explaining in 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:34.079 a way by sort of the you know, thou shalt 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:36.280 not put the Lord thy God to the test kind 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:38.400 of a scenario, and then you're opening it up to 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:40.440 you know, you don't know what's going to happen, right, 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.679 you put it back in the capricious magic category. Not 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:46.800 to say that if you believe God behaves that way 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.400 that you necessarily believe your your deity to be capricious. 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.439 But at least the outcomes seem capricious, there's no way 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.640 to predict them, and if there's no way to predict them, 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:58.800 then there's really no way to test it to see 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:03.520 if it's true. So we're gonna continue talking about this topic. 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:07.760 But essentially, as the title of the episode suggests, we're 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:10.080 we're kind of playing a what if game to some 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:13.000 degree as well as we discuss UH as we dive 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:15.640 into some history and some science here, because it's always 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.760 it's endlessly fascinating to to play what if games with history. So, 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:23.080 what if European imperialists had suffered more from the New 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:27.239 World illnesses the native people suffered the old world pathogens? 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.000 What if the wrong herald had won at the one 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:33.280 the Battle of Stanford Bridge in ten sixty six? Uh? 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:35.319 And and what if the divine win did not save 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:38.840 Japan from Mongol invasion? Okay, but these are all fairly 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.040 standard historical outcomes. I mean, we like to play the 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:44.560 game of alternate history. You know, everybody plays it, with 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:46.640 the Man in the High Castle as one example of 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.040 how many people have played this. What if the access 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:51.240 powers of one World War two? What would the world 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.839 look like? But that's all that's all non magical? Are you? 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.760 Are you planning to explore with me, how would history 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:02.920 look different if magic had been real to a certain extent? Because, yeah, 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:05.040 any of these events, if they had occurred, they would 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:09.480 not have changed our understanding of physical reality. But we're 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.640 gonna look at a couple of cases where some degree 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:16.520 of if not scientific investigation, then then then at least 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.720 semi scientific and inquiry went into a scenario and attempted 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:25.640 to solve a real world problem with essentially magic. Either 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:29.719 if any of these cases had gone differently than yes, 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:31.760 we would have we would have an age of magic, 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:35.040 because it would have changed everything. We would live in 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.679 a drastically different world. Okay, well, I have faith in you, Robert. 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:40.760 I want to follow you down this rabbit trail, so 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:42.760 so take me wherever you're thinking we need to go. 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:44.600 All right, we're gonna do a quick break and when 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:48.480 we come back, we will consider a world, a magical 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:53.520 world where navigation of the high seas depends on the 0:10:53.559 --> 0:11:02.360 magical torment of dogs. All right, we're back. So we're 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:06.080 gonna be talking now about longitude and the then the 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:10.520 the actual problem of longitude is it related to too 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.800 high season navigation? Okay, Now, which one is longitude? That's 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.600 east west direction, right, Yeah, that's right. Longitude is east 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:22.200 west positioning. Uh. Latitude is north south positioning and uh 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:24.200 and and we'll get into too why this is a 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:26.920 problem in a bet. But first of all, let's let's 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:31.120 let's break down, um, the potential solution that was that 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:34.720 was that was instrumented, and that entails the use of 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:39.360 sympathetic magic. Okay, Now, sympathetic magic dates back to humanity's 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:42.520 distant prehistoric past. This is the idea that you can 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:44.960 heal a wound by treating the weapon that caused it, 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.760 or that possession of an individual's toneo clippings gives you 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.319 power over the former owner that you have to hide 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.440 your hair after you cut your hair, so which doesn't 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:57.080 get it to use it against you. Really, I mean, 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:02.640 there's a there's a rich variety of sympathetic magical uses 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:05.840 throughout history. Yeah, sympathetic magic, I think is considered a 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:10.800 major class of of magical behavior. And this is the 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:15.880 Scottish anthropologist James Frasier actually wrote plenty about sympathetic magic. 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.439 We've talked about Fraser on the show before. I always 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:20.960 want to call him Frasier, but there's not that extra 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.800 I in his name. So James Fraser wrote The Golden Bow, 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:28.320 you know, one of the big influences on T. S. Eliott, 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:31.320 one of the big influences on modernism generally. It was 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:35.360 this anthropological work that was attempting to explain the origins 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:40.520 and of religious customs around the world. And it is 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:43.520 a fascinating book to jump into. It's one of those 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:45.520 that I've never read cover to cover, but I jump 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:49.680 into different chapters and read them. And Fraser, I think 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:54.080 would not hold up to modern scrutiny in terms of 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:57.120 anthropological methods. So I'm sure a lot of what he 0:12:57.200 --> 0:13:01.560 reports is not necessarily corre act to data about you know, 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:04.360 different people's all over the world. It's based on a 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:09.440 outmoded anthropological data gathering method. You know, he's relying on 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:13.679 all these weird anecdotes and stuff. But he also just 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:16.920 has a lot of really interesting analytical things to say 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:19.840 about the way people think about magic and the way 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.360 people think about religion, and the relationship between different magical 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.640 and religious ideas. So he breaks down sympathetic magic into 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:32.040 two different categories. One is homeopathic magic, which is the 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:37.280 law of similarity, and the other is contagious magic, which 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.920 operates on the law of contact. So I'm going to 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:42.760 read a quote where he talks about the difference of 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:47.080 the ideas here quote. Homeopathic magic is founded on the 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:52.120 association of ideas by similarity. Contagious magic is founded on 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:57.920 the association of ideas by contiguity. Homeopathic magic commits the 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:01.160 mistake of assuming that things which read symbol each other 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:05.840 are the same. Contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.720 that things which have once been in contact with each 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:13.000 other are always in contact. But in practice, the two 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:17.160 branches are often combined, or, to be more exact, While 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:22.400 homeopathic or imitative magic may be practiced by itself. Contagious 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:26.080 magic will generally be found to involve an application of 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:30.520 the homeopathic or imitative principle. And I think there's a 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:32.960 lot to what he's saying there. We've got this general 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.840 idea that you can use one thing that's like another 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.479 thing in order to have some kind of magical influence. 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:42.440 I think of a you know, a doll that represents 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:44.760 a person, looks like them, and you can use that 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:49.800 to manipulate the person. But almost any time you have 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.400 the idea of contact, you can't just touch a random 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:56.320 thing to a person. Usually, maybe in some cases you 0:14:56.360 --> 0:15:00.360 can touch a random thing to somebody's arm and then 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:03.360 now you've got power over them. Usually it seems like 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:05.040 it needs to be a thing that has some kind 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:08.320 of sympathetic route with the person, like it's it's it 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:11.840 was formerly a part of their body, or it's something 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:14.560 that belonged to I don't know, a member of their 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:18.320 family or something like that. Now, another one of the 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:21.600 key observations I think Fraser makes is that in the 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:27.360 mind of the magic believer, quote logic is implicit not explicit, 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:29.480 And I think this is one of the things that's 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:33.480 key to understanding what magic is when when we try 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:37.200 to reckon the idea of magical thinking versus scientific thinking. 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:41.840 And I would put it like this, with scientific explanations, 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:44.640 a lot of times when you when you see a 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.920 phenomenon in the world, it doesn't seem to make much sense. 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:50.640 You don't understand why it happened. But when you get 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:55.720 a scientific explanation, it starts to make more sense. Right, 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:59.480 And the deeper you go, the more everything fits together 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:04.160 and the call usal relationships become clear. Magical thinking, on 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:06.560 the other hand, means that the more you try to 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:11.480 explain exactly how magic works, the less sense it makes. Yeah, 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:15.840 just think about watching fantasy movies or reading fantasy books. 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:17.880 I would say in my experience, I don't know if 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:22.040 maybe you'll disagree, but in my experience, the more general 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:26.680 and vague the magic, the easier you accept it, and 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:30.640 the more explicit it gets about magic powers, how they work, 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:34.600 where they come from, the function of magic objects all that. 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.480 If it gets really deep into the weeds, almost like 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:43.040 trying to explore the scientific causation underlying magical influence, it 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:47.000 becomes more and more ridiculous and makes less and less sense. 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:49.960 At least in my experience, I would agree with without 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:52.360 in most cases, I think that they're the rare exception. 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:53.800 And one of the reasons, one of them the many 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:55.520 reasons I love this series so much is that our 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:58.760 Scott Baker's dark fantasy series, though the Second Apocalypse, like, 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:02.440 he has a really thought out magical system that's ultimately 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:06.720 based in philosophical models, So that one works for me. 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.120 But I think for the most part, you're You're correct. 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:13.000 There's a certain I think part part of the thing 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:14.679 is here is so you have a wizard on the 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:18.000 screen and casting a spell using you know, homeopathic magic 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.560 or contagious magic perhaps, like both of these are forms 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.920 of magic. It kind of made to make a subconscious 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:27.560 sense to us in just in our daily lives. But 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:30.679 for instance, with with contagious magic, I instantly think of 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:33.800 examples of someone's someone's like, oh, you know, I shook 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:36.320 hands with a famous person. I'll never wash this hand again. 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.479 Four sentiments of like, oh, this this shirt was touched 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.440 by by, uh, you know, Paul McCarthy. I can never 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:47.400 wash this as Paul McCarthy. Yeah, Paul McCarthy the Beatle, Right, 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:50.800 Paul McCartney McCartney. McCarthy, sorry, I've got a lot of 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:57.440 man you got ripped off on eBay, Robert Darnet Paul McCarthy, Um, yeah, 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:01.159 I thought he was really down on communism for an 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:04.960 old school rocker. But anyway, uh my My point being 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:07.440 that both of these types of magic kind of play 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:11.040 into the ways we we think about objects and we 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:14.800 think about contact. Oh totally. Yeah. I think it's interesting 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:20.960 that that you see homeopathic alternative medicine still being practiced today. 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:23.560 The idea, you know, and and it really does have 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:26.720 a root in this idea of homeopathic magic because here 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:30.960 it's the idea of similarity gives things magical influence over 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:36.240 one another. In homeopathic medicine, so called medicine. The it's 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:39.119 the idea is basically that like cures like one the 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:44.640 thing that produces one effect will also cure that effect. Yeah, yeah, 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:47.600 this is a good point. Now, I mentioned this weapon 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:49.679 example earlier, and that's going to be a key to 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:51.760 what we're discussing about the idea that you could heal 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:54.200 the wound by treating the weapon that caused it. Okay, 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:56.399 so if I walk up to you and stab you 0:18:56.480 --> 0:18:59.560 with a bowie knife and then later I feel bad 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:01.879 about and I want to heal you, but I can't 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:05.960 find you. I could just what rap bandages around the knife. Yeah, 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:08.399 it's kind of like like he's been stabbed. Get this 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:12.560 knife to a hospital. A certain extent um, This was 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:15.320 a real idea that was that was that was rather 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:18.800 popular in the seventeenth century because it all entails this 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:21.840 thing that was called the powder of sympathy. Oh boy, 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:25.199 that sounds great already. Yeah, this was the idea. Here 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:28.120 was simply dust the weapon and the special powder, and 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:30.840 you in turn treat the wound it created. It's a 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:33.439 it's you know, it's kind of a spooky action at 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:37.240 a distance kind of scenario. This particular notion was concocted 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:43.400 by natural philosopher uh Sir Kenelman Digby, who through sixteen 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:48.400 sixty five distant relative of Arthur Digby Sellers. He wrote 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:51.240 a book on this subject, Discourse on the Powder of Sympathy, 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:54.760 and it went through like twenty nine different editions and 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:58.240 so popular stuff. I guess, yeah, it it made the 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:00.680 rounds uh. And he would in this book he would 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.040 describe how he could he could make a patient jump 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:08.080 by putting addressing from the patient's wounds into a basin 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:13.320 full of this special powder. So it is sort of like, 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:20.280 h It's like a remote acting sympathetic magic catalyst essentially. Yeah, 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:23.119 and I actually have have some instructions on how to 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:25.520 make it, uh that I'm gonna read. You're gonna jump 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:29.000 in with some some explanations here as needed, But this 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:33.520 is Digby's own words. Okay, take good English vitriol, which 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.960 you may buy for twopence a pound, And of course 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:41.560 vitriol means sulfate, usually sulfuric acid. Dissolve it in warm 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:45.760 water using no more water than we'll dissolve it, leaving 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:50.280 some of the impurest part at the bottom undissolved. Then 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:53.120 pour it off and filter it, which you may do 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:58.880 by a coffin of fine gray paper. The coffin that's 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:02.640 what I have here, Uh, put put into a funnel, 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:05.480 or by laying a sheet of gray paper and a 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:09.879 sieve and pouring or water or dissolution of vitriol into 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.040 it by degrees, setting the sieve upon a large pan 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:17.040 to receive the filtered liquor. When all your liquor is filtered, 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:20.240 boil it in an earthen vessel glazed till you see 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.440 a thin scum upon it. Then set it in a 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:26.920 cellar to cool, covering it loosely so that nothing may 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:31.560 fall in. After two or three days standing, pour off 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:34.159 the liquor and you will find at the bottom and 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:38.119 on the sides large and fair green crystals like emeralds. 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.600 Drain off all the water clean from them and dry them. 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:44.919 Then spread them abroad and a large flat earthen dish 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.879 and expose them to the hot sun in the dog days, 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:53.199 taking them in at night and setting them out in 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:56.399 the morning, securing them from the rain. And when the 0:21:56.480 --> 0:22:00.760 sun hath calcimed them to whiteness, beat them to powder. 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:04.600 And set this powder again in the sun, stirring it sometimes, 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:08.400 and when you see it perfectly white, powder it and 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:11.399 sift it finally, and set it again in the sun 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:14.080 for a day, and you will have a pure white powder, 0:22:14.119 --> 0:22:17.720 which is the powder of sympathy. I like how there 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.320 is almost the You get the feeling that he's inserting 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:24.920 unnecessary steps to make it more work, to make it 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:29.000 seem more likely to have a real efficacy. Yeah, and 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:32.480 this this reminds me of other recipes that I've read 0:22:32.600 --> 0:22:36.520 from particularly books on alchemy, whether it'll be this kind 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:40.760 of convoluted recipe, instructions that entail moving it in and 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.880 out of the sun, hiding it in a basement, and 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:47.400 in the more magical examples like making sure that it's 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:51.480 exposed uh to sunlight at the right degrees and through 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:54.600 the you know, like a westward facing window, etcetera. I've 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:56.520 got a theory about this, let me know what you think. 0:22:57.160 --> 0:22:59.760 Probably not a very well developed theory, more of a hypothesis. 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:04.720 My idea is that spells and instructions like this, for 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:07.120 for all these potions and things have all of these 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:11.920 complicated steps, maybe not consciously, but they often do because 0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:16.119 they're exploiting the sunk costs fallacy. I think about the 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:18.800 sunk costs fallacy a lot. I think it determines a 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:21.800 lot of our decisions. The sunk costs fallacy is that 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:26.600 you are more likely to continue investing in something, or 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:29.439 more likely to continue believing it or to think it 0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:33.080 was a good idea. If you've already expended a lot 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:37.040 of personal time, money, or energy on it, You're you're 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.919