Magic and Logic Why They Can't Coexist(?)

John_Owl

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But why is the basic structure of the other world the same as ours?
you mean... Why is it a planet? Why is there a gravity? Why do humans exist? Why do they have ANY of our physical laws?

Because why not? It need not be completely different. Simply adding in one more energy would not completely eliminate the presence of others. It would merely change how those other energies and matters interact with it and others.
 

LilRora

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I'll be honest, this feels so wrong to me I'm not even sure how to refute it.

Magic cannot exist without logic. Without logic, you get chaos, absence of any order. There is nothing you can name that exists and that is not, in some way, logical.

If there is even one violation of logic, it means that magic by its very nature cannot be logical.
This is a logical fallacy if I've ever seen one.

Magic does not violate logic in general. Magic does not violate physical laws either. Magic exists in a framework separate from the one we know, which permits what seems illogical when we looks only through the lens of the rules we understand - primarily science.

Just like the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field are separate from each other, it is possible to add something magical when writing fiction, separate from every force we know, but able to interact with certain aspects of reality.
 

Chaos_Sinner777

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Counterpoint, it is the author that dictates what is or is not magic in their story. I could rebrand all science as magic, and thus it would be magic within a story.
 

FanficFrenzy

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I'll be honest, this feels so wrong to me I'm not even sure how to refute it.

Magic cannot exist without logic. Without logic, you get chaos, absence of any order. There is nothing you can name that exists and that is not, in some way, logical.


This is a logical fallacy if I've ever seen one.

Magic does not violate logic in general. Magic does not violate physical laws either. Magic exists in a framework separate from the one we know, which permits what seems illogical when we looks only through the lens of the rules we understand - primarily science.

Just like the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field are separate from each other, it is possible to add something magical when writing fiction, separate from every force we know, but able to interact with certain aspects of reality.
So we have four fundamental laws, on the basis of which the isekai world is also built, now add to these laws such an energy that can simply change or violate all the previous four, can it also be similar to our world?
 

owotrucked

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Quantum mechanics and Gravity join the chat:


science and logic don't even work together, wdym
 

TheBestofSome

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Eh, I'd say that it's best left to the author's discretion. Just because there's a new force that can break the rules doesn't mean it has to, or that it necessarily will on a large scale. I can think of at least as many reasons that the world would remain roughly similar as I can that it would be partially or entirely unrecognizable.

I mean, if you're going to change anything, then you have to ask why have humans at all? Or any sapient life? Simple, because it makes a better story. So long as the rules of the world remain internally consistent, you can do pretty much anything with the setting and the rules. Most writers will choose to keep things mostly recognizable because it requires less investment from the reader (not to mention the author themselves). A story that does fundamentally change things can be really interesting, but there's no doubt it'll take more brainpower to read, and a lot more to write.

Edit: Also, changing things just because when they don't actually add anything to the story you're trying to tell is generally bad practice.

Counterpoint, it is the author that dictates what is or is not magic in their story. I could rebrand all science as magic, and thus it would be magic within a story.
This reminds me of that one Dr. Who episode where he said that mathematics was just Earth's version of magic. (Paraphrasing, but it was something like that.)
 

LilRora

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So we have four fundamental laws, on the basis of which the isekai world is also built, now add to these laws such an energy that can simply change or violate all the previous four, can it also be similar to our world?
Magic does not change or violate physical laws, god damn it. I just wrote that. Magic is a separate framework.

Imagine it like currency. You have a certain amount of one currency - say, heat. You can convert it to another kind of energy, according to the Einstein's equation E=mc^2. You do that in some way, you get a certain amount of another currency - mass. Then, according to some other equation, whatever form it may have, you do an analogous thing, and convert that mass into a third currency - for example mana. All three of those are completely separate, but may interact in some ways.

How can a world with something like this be similar to ours? Maybe it requires an intelligent being to consciously convert mass into mana? Who the heck knows. There's a lot of ways to solve this.
 

owotrucked

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According to standard models of gravity, 85% of the mass of the universe is missing. For all we know, the fabric of the universe could be glued together by the will of a big tiddy goddess. You better start praying if you don't want the solar system to be yeeted from the galaxy tomorrow
 
D

Deleted member 84247

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A story's internal logic doesn't have to reflect reality at all. The only importance for logic in a story is internal consistency. If you said at the beginning of the novel "mages always lose to warriors," then you cannot break that convention (assuming a reliable narrator.) Once you've broken that convention, you have dissatisfied your readers. This is also barring any potential setup that the convention had to be broken.

You assume that magic necessitates the framework of everything to change, but that's based off of your life experience. So, this becomes a question of believability. People want magic and to be some logical scientific thing with mana particles and molecules where it's so consistent that it becomes boring. These people lack imagination, and their story would likely bore me to death anyway. If I wanted to be lectured about the science of mana for whole books, I would go to school to be a physicist.
 

TheKillingAlice

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But why is the basic structure of the other world the same as ours?
Let's go over this again: Logic does not equal Science. Logic means that, with given settings within the story, things that happen make sense. If I read a Thriller that is about a bunch of people being locked in a cabin and tortured to death by a normal human being, that in itself is not our world. It may look and work the same as ours, but those people haven't existed and if they did, they likely didn't suffer the same fate, thus this didn't happen in our world, which makes it a fake account of a world that looks like ours, but isn't really. That is F I C T I O N.
If I now write a story in which I go to the lengths of building up a society that, in itself, explains why people have not widely heard of magic, yet magic does exist, it still makes sense. That it L O G I C.
I agree on the fact that, if you went deeply enough into the system and explained it so far, you know the origin of it, which I do in more than one of my stories, it could become sort of Science Fiction, because it ripples the boundaries between what is Fantasy and what is technically the Science of the world displayed. But in this one, I go more with the way it is portrayed, where a story like Star Wars, with so popularly called "Space Magic" in it, is still Science Fiction, while a story with explained Magic (like my own, as I mentioned) is still Fantasy, as it's set in a High Fantasy setting.

To get to your apparent conundrum, as @TheBestofSome has gathered, which doesn't make sense to me at all, but we'll get to that: @John_Owl got ahead of me in saying it, while I was typing.
Because why not? It need not be completely different. Simply adding in one more energy would not completely eliminate the presence of others. It would merely change how those other energies and matters interact with it and others.
I'm sorry if I come off rather pissed, but that's what I am, because a lot of people with a lot of influence have lately come to the same conclusions, which are simply a telltale sign of them being creatively bankrupt. Why would one more thing in the world, which may not be accessible to everyone in the first place, change the entire system? If it's big enough, and known to all, it might change little things, but not the major ones. In one of my more recent stories, I have incorporated Gods being there to protect worlds and taking Acolytes within them, giving them powers and even granting Miracles. There's one God whose Acolytes aren't even human anymore, judging Acolytes of other Gods if they use their Divine Powers to harm humans. And now? Nothing now, people know Gods exist, but they still function the same way. The world looks the same, maybe a bit less Global Warming, but not even that really. Magic exists in the daily life of humanity to a small degree, but that doesn't change how people live their lives. For example, there is a church that can heal, but they don't have unlimited people with healing abilities. So the general populace still relies on hospitals. In a system with healers as a choice, rather than being chosen (which is the case in my story) and thus rare, they would then gather up in houses, taking the places of hospitals and doctor's practices.
Why would it change much? When we didn't have electricity, people still sought sources of light. People lived the same way, no matter what they had. In a world with magic, there might be more things run by magic, but they will do the same things, because people need the same things. When movies didn't exist, people gathered in front of a Laterna Magica, in order to get to see something to amaze them and listen to stories. When we couldn't write, we drew on cave walls. Logic in stories largely depends on common sense, which we know from daily life. That is also why clichés work, becasue we know them and rely on them to understand things we aren't yet told, as they are mostly based in patterns we have seen before, and a lot of them are grounded in reality, polished and put into stories so many times we might have seen them ad nauseum. And if people don't widely know about magic, there won't be anything different at all, because, if not used, the energy used to actually DO magic isn't obvious to anyone, unless you write a story in which it takes a different form, then you will have to adjust the world slightly, so it makes sense again.
Again, Science is logical, but logic isn't Science. You don't need Science for things to make sense; you need RULES for things to make sense and as I said before, those don't even need to be figured out by a genius. People knew water was wet before they knew the word "Science". As to the the basic powers regulating the world: Just because magic exists that can make something float, it doesn't mean that everything floats at any given moment.
The world itself will work just the same, which is also why is makes "sense" for a story to incorporate the risks of using magic on a scale too large for the planet to handle without consequences. They usually can't even do that much, but in case there was a God, for example, or some super overpowered human / demonic / whatever character. Nothing just magics away the common elements of the world, unless the story states it. Grass is green, and unless the author describes it otherwise, we will assume the grass is still green, even when a character travels to another world. Someone using an additional energy that can be canalized into, for example, taking away gravity from a certain area or object for a certain amount of time, doesn't mean there is no more gravity.
Unless you somehow believe that "magic existing" means that every possible magic happens at any given moment, everywhere around the world, which would not only mean the worlds rules differ, but also every human is likely to be dead, I don't see why it would mean anything. If anything, it's what truly sets apart Fantasy from Sci-Fi, which creates a perfect arch back to my point earlier, because Fantasy and Science would hereby coexist, yet not go hand in hand.
Know the difference.

Also, I was rage typing here, so if you find unfinished sentences or a gazillion typos, you can keep them.
 

FanficFrenzy

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Let's go over this again: Logic does not equal Science. Logic means that, with given settings within the story, things that happen make sense. If I read a Thriller that is about a bunch of people being locked in a cabin and tortured to death by a normal human being, that in itself is not our world. It may look and work the same as ours, but those people haven't existed and if they did, they likely didn't suffer the same fate, thus this didn't happen in our world, which makes it a fake account of a world that looks like ours, but isn't really. That is F I C T I O N.
If I now write a story in which I go to the lengths of building up a society that, in itself, explains why people have not widely heard of magic, yet magic does exist, it still makes sense. That it L O G I C.
I agree on the fact that, if you went deeply enough into the system and explained it so far, you know the origin of it, which I do in more than one of my stories, it could become sort of Science Fiction, because it ripples the boundaries between what is Fantasy and what is technically the Science of the world displayed. But in this one, I go more with the way it is portrayed, where a story like Star Wars, with so popularly called "Space Magic" in it, is still Science Fiction, while a story with explained Magic (like my own, as I mentioned) is still Fantasy, as it's set in a High Fantasy setting.

To get to your apparent conundrum, as @TheBestofSome has gathered, which doesn't make sense to me at all, but we'll get to that: @John_Owl got ahead of me in saying it, while I was typing.

I'm sorry if I come off rather pissed, but that's what I am, because a lot of people with a lot of influence have lately come to the same conclusions, which are simply a telltale sign of them being creatively bankrupt. Why would one more thing in the world, which may not be accessible to everyone in the first place, change the entire system? If it's big enough, and known to all, it might change little things, but not the major ones. In one of my more recent stories, I have incorporated Gods being there to protect worlds and taking Acolytes within them, giving them powers and even granting Miracles. There's one God whose Acolytes aren't even human anymore, judging Acolytes of other Gods if they use their Divine Powers to harm humans. And now? Nothing now, people know Gods exist, but they still function the same way. The world looks the same, maybe a bit less Global Warming, but not even that really. Magic exists in the daily life of humanity to a small degree, but that doesn't change how people live their lives. For example, there is a church that can heal, but they don't have unlimited people with healing abilities. So the general populace still relies on hospitals. In a system with healers as a choice, rather than being chosen (which is the case in my story) and thus rare, they would then gather up in houses, taking the places of hospitals and doctor's practices.
Why would it change much? When we didn't have electricity, people still sought sources of light. People lived the same way, no matter what they had. In a world with magic, there might be more things run by magic, but they will do the same things, because people need the same things. When movies didn't exist, people gathered in front of a Laterna Magica, in order to get to see something to amaze them and listen to stories. When we couldn't write, we drew on cave walls. Logic in stories largely depends on common sense, which we know from daily life. That is also why clichés work, becasue we know them and rely on them to understand things we aren't yet told, as they are mostly based in patterns we have seen before, and a lot of them are grounded in reality, polished and put into stories so many times we might have seen them ad nauseum. And if people don't widely know about magic, there won't be anything different at all, because, if not used, the energy used to actually DO magic isn't obvious to anyone, unless you write a story in which it takes a different form, then you will have to adjust the world slightly, so it makes sense again.
Again, Science is logical, but logic isn't Science. You don't need Science for things to make sense; you need RULES for things to make sense and as I said before, those don't even need to be figured out by a genius. People knew water was wet before they knew the word "Science". As to the the basic powers regulating the world: Just because magic exists that can make something float, it doesn't mean that everything floats at any given moment.
The world itself will work just the same, which is also why is makes "sense" for a story to incorporate the risks of using magic on a scale too large for the planet to handle without consequences. They usually can't even do that much, but in case there was a God, for example, or some super overpowered human / demonic / whatever character. Nothing just magics away the common elements of the world, unless the story states it. Grass is green, and unless the author describes it otherwise, we will assume the grass is still green, even when a character travels to another world. Someone using an additional energy that can be canalized into, for example, taking away gravity from a certain area or object for a certain amount of time, doesn't mean there is no more gravity.
Unless you somehow believe that "magic existing" means that every possible magic happens at any given moment, everywhere around the world, which would not only mean the worlds rules differ, but also every human is likely to be dead, I don't see why it would mean anything. If anything, it's what truly sets apart Fantasy from Sci-Fi, which creates a perfect arch back to my point earlier, because Fantasy and Science would hereby coexist, yet not go hand in hand.
Know the difference.

Also, I was rage typing here, so if you find unfinished sentences or a gazillion typos, you can keep them.
Thank you for your reply, I'm sorry that you had to write so much.
 

John_Owl

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At least it's getting a lot of Enteresting answers.
Well, it's certainly kicking a hornets nest of people passionate about such things. that said, It is certainly making us think on how to justify it. These sorts of questions are usually what push the boundaries and allow the lines of thought that produce the next big thing. Whether or not anyone here finds that "thing" and has the luck for it to go "big" is another matter all together.
 
D

Deleted member 84247

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Well, it's certainly kicking a hornets nest of people passionate about such things. that said, It is certainly making us think on how to justify it. These sorts of questions are usually what push the boundaries and allow the lines of thought that produce the next big thing. Whether or not anyone here finds that "thing" and has the luck for it to go "big" is another matter all together.
Some stories do try and be magic science. I feel like it would be too much work for a really low potential payoff. In that sense, it would be similar to writing traditional fantasy on Scribble Hub. It requires way more thought and work, and on top of that, the payoff is low. It's basically taking a high risk and low return investment.
 

John_Owl

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Some stories do try and be magic science. I feel like it would be too much work for a really low potential payoff. In that sense, it would be similar to writing traditional fantasy on Scribble Hub. It requires way more thought and work, and on top of that, the payoff is low. It's basically taking a high risk and low return investment.
Some webnovels do magic science well. My favorite is "The Wiseman's Grandson".
 
D

Deleted member 84247

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Some webnovels do magic science well. My favorite is "The Wiseman's Grandson".
People can do as they please, but it's a hard path to tread. And being unique doesn't make you unique. I see it all of the time. By trying to be different, people end up the same as everyone who tries to be different. The way to be unique is much simpler than this. All you have to do is tell a story you want to tell, regardless of if it fulfills tropes or not.

My OP Witch story follows the standard template of OP MC plus it fulfills all of the tropes, yet there are still things in there I've not seen authors do. There are things like candle monsters and a martial arts style adapted from the use of candles. Even the golems of that kingdom are candle golems. I veered off topic, but creativity is more than being completely unique. It's not about trying to dissect magic structures and logic to find the next hidden gems. Creativity is when you take your imagination and create something you are passionate about.
 

Dieter

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I was gonna answer how you're muddle abt both concepts but seeing the amount of answers I feel discouraged. FYI, logic is basically if all circles are red, and there's a circle here, then the color of this circle must also be red. What you probably mean to say is 'reason', but even that would also be wrong. Schizophrenics, for eg, which is a mental condition where people believe in things that are by convention false, have lost all their mental faculties except their reasoning. Without touch of reality, they tend to confabulate. On other note, if we find signs that magic exists in our world, then if you're a naturalist and not a staunch dogmatist in the belief of conventional science, then you'll just accept "it is what it is" and observe it.
 

John_Owl

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People can do as they please, but it's a hard path to tread. And being unique doesn't make you unique. I see it all of the time. By trying to be different, people end up the same as everyone who tries to be different. The way to be unique is much simpler than this. All you have to do is tell a story you want to tell, regardless of if it fulfills tropes or not.

My OP Witch story follows the standard template of OP MC plus it fulfills all of the tropes, yet there are still things in there I've not seen authors do. There are things like candle monsters and a martial arts style adapted from the use of candles. Even the golems of that kingdom are candle golems. I veered off topic, but creativity is more than being completely unique. It's not about trying to dissect magic structures and logic to find the next hidden gems. Creativity is when you take your imagination and create something you are passionate about.
Oh, I didn't mean that creativity was being entirely different and unique. There's a reason the most popular stories are just rehashes of prior stories. People like what they know. Anything TOO different is too risky. such is the penance of a mortal life. We have limited time, so why waste it on things we don't like? But my personal preference is when they at least try to explain how it makes sense, even if you have to view it through the lens of being in-universe. In Wiseman's Grandchild, MC uses knowledge of basic chemistry from our world to enhance the magic his grandpa taught him to all new heights that hadn't even ever been dreamt of. Like concentrating oxygen and adding nitrous to get a hotter, faster, more devastating explosion rather than the pitiful "poof" of existing magic.

It makes sense. If the world has the same elements, why wouldn't they behave the same way there, even if there was a magical force manipulating the elements themselves.
 
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