Mechanism or magic
When David Copperfield “vanishes” the Statue of Liberty, or David Blaine finds the card you chose inside an orange, we know that nothing magical is going on. We know that these illusionists use hidden mechanisms to fool us. With their cooperation or with enough of our own ingenuity, we know that we could understand these mechanisms in as much detail as we like.
By contrast, in storybook depictions of magic, things may start off mechanistically: a wizard’s larynx emits some sounds, and his muscles move a wand. But whether the wizard’s spell ultimately works doesn’t depend on mechanisms that we could probe as deeply as we want. That’s the difference between mechanism and magic. With magic, eventually something happens without there being a fully specific way in which it happens.
Consider Catholic exorcisms, a form of purported magic that some people take seriously. In order for an exorcism to succeed, exactly how loud, in decibels, must the priest’s words be when they reach the ears of the possessed person? Why must the priest speak at all, since the demons he’s ordering to leave can read his mind anyway? If the priest stutters, or he mispronounces a word, exactly how does that affect the power of the spell? If exorcism worked mechanistically, there would be a fully specific way it worked, and all these questions would have answers. But I presume nobody thinks they do.
Mechanism, which operates in fully specific ways, is the only alternative to magic, which doesn’t. In later posts, I’ll explore some consequences of this fact.
