Talk:Magic (paranormal)

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Archives

Archive 1

[edit] Archived Discussion

Discussions prior to the following have been archived. These discussions can be accessed via the archive box. GooferMan 23:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing a view point in this?

To wit, where is the sceptical view of magic in this article?

I'm reposting Fuzzypeg's link for adequate framing here : Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Paranormal#Principles

I did an unscientific sampling of other wiki articles (ghosts, god, telekinesis, and a sample religion (Christian Science), and I found the following.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosts#Skeptical_analysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God#Existence_of_God

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekinesis#Skepticism_and_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science#Medical_Controversies

In short, all four of them gave a voice to the critics of the paranormal. Shouldn't there be something similar here? Tall Dan 03:05, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

This article is full of skeptical viewpoint, after all, a lot of the article is about Frazer's view, and if you've read frazer's view, it was basically written from the viewpoint that magick is not real, and people that believe in it are delusional because they can't see reality logically. I'd say there's plenty of skepticism here.

--Arkayne Magii 16:18, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I have read Frazer's view, or at least sentences we have on him there. But... he said that in 1911, and we don't seem to have anyone from the scientific or skeptical community in there. Further, that whole section is "Anthropological and psychological origins" not "Skepticism and controversy". As far as I can tell from our Framing advice, we aren't supposed to have skepticism through out the entire article. The article is about magic, let it be about magic. But let there be a sub-heading somewhere that states outright there is controversy, and goes over what the controversy is. Tall Dan 17:59, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Tall Dan, if you would like to add in appropriate material along these lines, go for it. I suspect the main reason there isn't more material along these lines is that serious scientific rebuttals of magical theory are very rare. Specific paranormal effects such as telekinesis, telepathy, or homeopathic treatment are obvious contenders for scientific testing, since they predict a very specific physical or biological effect that should be measurable and repeatable. However magic in the broad sense doesn't lend itself very well to scientific testing, since results can occur in such a wide variety of ways, and normally take the easiest, least miraculous route to manifestation. If, for instance, a magician performs magic to receive money, banknotes don't (normally) materialise out of thin air. Rather, say, an old long-forgotten loan is repaid, or something like that. And many magical effects could be explained psychologically as extreme cases of placebo effect or auto-suggestion. Also, designing any decent experiment would require the scientist to steep themselves in magical theory, something most scientists are both unwilling and unequipped to do.

For instance a long term experiment regarding Astrology finished a couple of years ago. It had thousands of subjects, and was run for several years, and showed no significant correlation between supposed astrological predictors and life events. The conclusion was that Astrology doesn't work. However within the magical community this came as no surprise: of course the experiment would fail, since it effectively removed any opportunity for any synchronicity to occur: astrology requires the alignment not only of the planets and the moment of a person's birth, but also of the moment that the person consults their astrologer and the events surrounding their decision to do so. By removing the opportunity for personal fate to play a role in determining how and when and from whom the test subjects had their fates foretold, synchronicity was simultaneously removed. Or rather, any synchronicity in action was more tied to the fates of the scientists conducting the experiment. Without getting too technical, suffice it to say that that experiment was designed based on a very naive model of what astrology is and how it works; unsurprising considering the designers were expert scientists but not expert astrologers or expert magicians.

I haven't actively searched for scientific treatments of magic, but in the hundreds of New Scientist issues I've skimmed through I've never come across such a thing. I know there are certain findings in the field of cognition that suggest mechanisms for superstition to arise, but these would be best presented in the Superstition article (of course). If you find anything suitable for this article you are very welcome to add it. Fuzzypeg☻ 01:47, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I agree that most things should be approached with a healthy degree of skepticism, but the majority of people that edit this article with a "scientific" scepticism end up vandalizing the article, filling it full of harmful negative POV, changing the entire article to say "Magic is not real, and those who practice it are delusional, deranged, or con artists." I put that in quotes because it is almost word for word the various changes towards this POV within this article that I have seen in the past. This is why I defend so heartily the NPOV within the articles dealing with magic(k), and seriously question people who want to add the terms "supposed", "alleged", etc. into the article.

I think that adding a "skeptical and controversial" section is fine, so long as it is balanced. Remember, doing this could easily end up being the same as adding a "Magick is Real" section, but under the guise of skepticism and doubt. So anything that goes into such a section must add something to the article itself, rather than simply being a POV. In other words, the NPOV of such a section would have to be very closely monitored because of the ease of which POV could be implied.

A great example of POV being quietly brought into this article is under the external links section, wherein each link leads to a page about magick by an obviously biased source, and there are absolutely no links to pages or groups that support magick in a positive way. (a point I have brought up before.)

I agree that external links should add to the article and be encyclopedic in nature, but there are plenty of resources out there of an encyclopedic nature that show magick in a neutral and/or positive light without implied bias against it, and some of these links have been on the page in the past, but slowly, all of these links have dissapeared, leaving only those that link to biased groups and information.

This is exactly the sort of thing I worry about when someone suggests "adding skepticism" to the article. The question really is, does this information I have found reflect a healthy skepticism of Magic, or does it instead imply bias and negative POV?

Just a few things to think about.

--Arkayne Magii 02:08, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I can see how a flat statement of "Magic isn't real" would be hopelessly POV, and also impossible to prove. That comment about needing to understand Magic in order to test it isn't true however. Testing and evaluation normally come long before understanding. I don't need to understand electricity to put a key in a light socket. If someone comes up with a key-socket test for magic then there will be a dozen conflicting theories about it in a week and dozens of scientists fighting over a Noble prize in 10 years.

Would it be relevent to bring up the Randi challenge? 1 Million dollars is a lot of money, but no one is rushing forward to claim it. http://www.randi.org/research/index.html Tall Dan 02:47, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, an article came out last month showing that the "Randi Challenge" was biased in that in most cases, the applicants for this "challenge" were being judged in the negative, saying that their claims were false while at the same time, none of their evedence was ever even looked at. Someone actually caught him doing this; claiming illigitimacy of paranormal claims without even looking at the evidence. It seems that "The Amazing Randi" of the Randi challenge is so completely biased that the Randi challenge is not in any way a good measure of the legitimacy of a paranormal event. This actually made headline news. It's no wonder no one has ever won. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arkayne Magii (talk • contribs) 17:37, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know the details of the Randi challenge, but I don't recall it being specifically aimed at "magic"... Whatever. And perhaps my point above got lost in my extended waffle, but the main point was that such studies are very rare. I was just surmising why that might be... But go ahead, find the studies, add them to the article, and we'll figure out how to arrange them. Fuzzypeg☻ 07:01, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I would like to suggest that the issue here has nothing to do with skepticism regarding the topic. As an encyclopedic entry, the goal is to offer a description of the phenomenon using methodological distance. Thus, the relevant questions are: what is it? who practices it? what is its history? what are the socio-cultural contexts in which it exists? etc. etc. Therefore, it is neither about proving, nor disproving that magic exists. This is basic historical/anthropological method.

We know that certain things do exist though: we know that people across the globe practice magic (these people exist), we know that this practice has a long history (this practice exists), we know that in Europe and the Middle East, magical systems had a great influence on the development of scientific thought (this influence exists). An encyclopedic entry should make the best effort to describe these things as accurately as possible. Because it is an encyclopedia, and not a how-to book on magic, I don't think it is not necessary for the editors to ensure that "both sides" are fairly represented regarding whether or not magical practices actually work. Why? Because that is not the point of the article, it is not about the efficacy of magic, it is about an encylcopedic description of the phenomenon. Thus, the question of efficacy is not relevant in this context.

As an example of the style of writing refered to when I say "methodological distance," here are two books that deal with the European Witchcraft trials:

• Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century ISBN 0801843863
• Briggs, Robin, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft ISBN 0140144382

In both of these texts, the authors never had to tell the reader that either they did or did not believe in magic, nor did they have to include sceptical discussions about its efficacy. If they had it would have been laughable. Instead, there job as scholars was to report on what the beliefs were, and in these contexts, offer explanations as to why the trials were so severe in some areas as opposed to others. These are two highly regarded books on the subject and the quality of their work is why these books are used in graduate seminars on the subject of Medieval European witchcraft and the resulting trials. They are also representative of the approach we should take while writing a wikipedia article.

Please let's keep the content and discussion of magic related to these issues. {deleted irrelevant comment} And on a side note, can we start focusing on cleaning up the organization and adding some citations and references. Looking forward to working with you. GooferMan 23:45, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Section on Islamic Magic

I expanded the section on Islamic magic. One of the things that I know will come up is the difference between magic and sorcery. That's something that I think we need more discussion on. I noticed that magic and sorcery are treated as the same in this article. However, most anthropological language reserves the term sorcery for negative forms of magic. That's the way my sources used it and I've replicated that here. However, this makes the terms a bit ambiguous in how we are using them in the article. Any thoughts on where to go with this? The reason I ask is that many cultures have a distinction between negative and positive forms of magic. Anthropologists usually keep that distinction by using sorcery or witchcraft as negative forms. At the very least I think there needs to be a discussion in the early stages of the article relating to the various ways these terms are applied culturally. At least acknowledging the negative connotation for some uses.GooferMan 00:55, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone inserted the following into the article which I deleted:

(This part of the article is full of wrong informations.for example-in this article ,Fatima(R), the daughter of Prophet Mohammad(SM)is mentioned as his wife!!,(Nauzubillah!).So You can understand how reliable this writing is!!Whoever wrote this article did not know what he was writing or he was misleading people by providing misinterpreted, distorted informations with a bad intention.This type of activity is a direct attempt to cover the truth with the lies,and preaching lies to create misunderstanding about Islam among people.People must be careful about the information pollution and anybody who is seeking true knowldge should find a pure source, If you want to know what Islam say about what, you must nread Holy Quran.Browsing internet,wikipedia or any other thing is no option,Because finding truth is serious business.Thank you)

Yes, I made an error by calling Fatima, Muhammad's wife. That error was corrected. However, making this error, which was an oversight and not a lack of knowledge of Islam on my part, does not constitute calling the facts of the entire section into question. To do that, we must discuss or challenge the sources that I have used. It is a fact that magic exists in Islamic society, just as it has in Judaism and Christianity. It is a fact, that Muslim practitioners of magic have sought to justify their practices as "approved" and morally right. Does this mean that orthdox legal opinions agree? No, it does not, and I think that I made that clear in the section. If I did not, please continue this discussion on the talk pages.GooferMan 19:17, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I would add to Goofer's comments by reminding our editors to assume good faith. If his edits can be put down to a simple error rather than an anti-Muslim conspiracy, then surely that's a more obvious conclusion. This encyclopedia is a work in progress, and at any point in time it will contain many thousands of errors. If you spot one, then help us clean it up, rather than accuse us of having the morals of George Bush. :) Fuzzypeg☻ 00:49, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Developed Introductory Paragraph

I deleted the following sentence: "Magic and sorcery are the influencing of events, objects, people, and physical phenomena by mystical, paranormal or supernatural means."

And developed the introduction more fully. I also deleted the first citation, regarding Gardner's statement: "Belief in magic and the efficacy of various magical practices is under pressure from either organised monotheistic religions or from scepticism about the reality of magic, and the ascendancy of scientism" . This is an obvious observation and doesn't need attribution. To clarify the issue though, I added some explanatory material to the footnotes. GooferMan 19:14, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requests for clarification section "middle ages"

This sentence: "Medieval authors, under the control of the Church, confined their magic to compilations of wonderlore and collections of spells" needs citation and clarification. What is this "wonderlore" and was this time frame exactly limited to just this and collecting spells? Did this period not have any development of thought? We need to back this up with a solid reference.

The sentence: "There were other, officially proscribed varieties of Christianized magic" needs clarification and citation. In what ways were these varieties of magic "proscribed?" Who engaged in them and who proscribed them, etc? The sentence begs more questions than the section provides answers for.

The sentence: "In the 13th century, astrology had some great names: in England Johannes de Sacrobosco, in Europe the Italian Guido Bonatti from Forlì" needs more discussing these individuals. Otherwise, it's just a dangling sentence, just teasing the reader with ever so slightly revealing the information. GooferMan 21:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] THE simble of the gosts

the simble is when youspeak with the gosts —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.19.190.93 (talk) 20:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Now why didn't I think of that? Fuzzypeg☻ 21:55, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] White/black magic and elements/chaos

I just removed a brief section that had been added about white and black magic. I believe these have already been covered in this article, and the new section read like an essay containing original research. In particular it characterised magic utilising the elements as white (good), and chaos magic as black. This is a very odd distinction to make, and one which in my experience doesn't correspond with reality. Fuzzypeg☻ 22:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

I will keep this short so as not to annoy anyone. I would personally like to thank all of the editors who have contributed to the Magic (Paranormal) article recently, and I must say that you have all done a fine job and produced a very good encyclopedic article on the subject - One that I very much enjoyed reading. I applaud your hard work and dilligence! Arkayne Magii (talk) 08:48, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I must agree it looks much better than it used to. It's still not great though, and may need further ToC tweaks to avoid redundancies. But it certainly fulfills its function of giving a decent overview of the topic. dab (𒁳) 08:09, 19 March 2008 (UTC)