In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Technologies, Arts, Magics, Experience:Troubling the Boundaries
  • Michael Ostling
Keywords

magic, science, technology, art, natural magic, liminal experience, Francesco Maria Guazzo, Alfred Gell

INTRODUCTION

At the beginning of his encyclopaedic Compendium Maleficarum, Francesco Maria Guazzo outlined three kinds of magic. Natural magic consists in "a more exact knowledge of the secrets of Nature" and of the ability, by skilfully harnessing this knowledge, to "effect marvels which to the ignorant seem to be miracles and illusions." Mathematical magic makes use of the principles of "Geometry, Arithmetic, and Astronomy" to a similar purpose; Guazzo gives the example of Archimedes's fabled defence of Syracuse by means of carefully placed mirrors that, concentrating the sun's light, set the invading Roman galleys aflame. Finally, prestidigital magic produces illusory wonders through sleight of hand, misdirection, acrobatic skill.1 Thus Guazzo would disagree with Arthur C. Clarke's (in)famous declaration that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,"2 but his disagreement trends in the opposite direction from what one might initially suppose. For Guazzo, magic isn't just "indistinguishable" from advanced technology or [End Page 169] skilful art, it is nothing but advanced technology and skilful art, without remainder—the natural magic of the medical doctor using the virtues of herbs to cure a lethal disease, the mathematical magic of the telescope-maker rendering distant objects sharp and near, the prestidigital magic of the juggler drawing gasps of wonder from an onlooking crowd.

Four hundred years after Guazzo, the great anthropologist Alfred Gell similarly claimed that magic and technology are identical, at least in our contemporary world.3 For Gell, magic in traditional or premodern societies differed from technology in that magical discourse described an ideal type, a model of which actually practiced techniques of hunting, gardening, healing, and so on remained imperfect, incomplete imitations. Today, however, as scientific and technological innovation serves less to meet physical needs than to render real the promises of modern "magics"—advertising, marketing—magic and technology have converged to the point of identity.

Thus the present Forum on Vexed Issues might seem to lack a subject—there is no vexed issue to explore. Seventeenth-century demonologists and twentieth-century anthropologists agree that magic and technology are both forms (or the same form) of artful skill. There is no distinction between them, no puzzle to be solved. And yet: after his definitional discussion, Guazzo spends an additional thirty-two chapters outlining how most magic is the work of demons intent on the damnation of human souls; while Gell's much briefer treatment derives its piquancy from the unexpectedness of its conclusion—after all as we use both words in ordinary language, "magic" and "technology" are not just non-synonymous; they are very nearly antonyms. In such everyday perspectives (contemporary American or early modern European) technology works via natural or practical means, achieving its admittedly sometimes extraordinary goals via entirely mundane and ordinary methods; in contrast, magic either doesn't (really) work at all or it works through supernatural, or preternatural, or enchanted, or, well, magical means. Magic is different, even if we can't confidently explicate just where that difference lies.

The brief essays in the present Forum aim to trouble the boundaries between magic, technology, and art (and between both and some other bounded categories, such as science and religion). James Bielo explores two case studies of magic-scientific religious affect, Sermons from Science and the Hebrew Bible Experience. Both make use of technology that is cutting edge for their time, combined with techniques of stage magic (and the magic of stagecraft more generally) to strike wonder into audiences in the service [End Page 170] of Evangelical forms of Christianity usually perceived as anti-science (and explicitly self-presenting as anti-magic). Scientific wonders staged as magic tricks in the name of biblical literalism, technological illusion "imagineered" to call forth religious emotion—both case studies call into question the etic utility of these categories, even as the creators (and audiences) of Sermons from Science and the Hebrew Bible Experience play emically along their borders.

Seth Riskin and Graham Jones take their study in a different direction. Less interested in questioning "the conceptual distinction between magic and...

pdf

Share