Reconciling magic and science

Scholes Destry-Scholes describes both Linnaeus and Galton experiencing supernatural events in the excepts of each man’s biography. Destry-Scholes seems to see a strong connection between magic and science, as on page 53 he comments that “Magic is closely entwined with science; alchemy, the occult sciences, astrology, however strange or to modern man unacceptable their systems of belief or projects, resemble the true sciences in their preoccupation with techniques of studying, and changing, the physical world.” This is quite the statement, as it suggests that science is concerned with not only “studying” the physical world, but also with “changing” the physical world. In other words, science seeks to transform things and facts into something they are not. Magic too is performed with the purpose of transforming and bending reality. The question then arises of which act better portrays a greater meaning, which act is a closer representation of order. The most common response to such a question, if presented to the general population, would probably be that a greater sense of order is derived from science than from magic because science explains observations while magic appears to defy what we see. But it is possible that reality is not what the eye sees and that our observations of the world around us are in some way distorted. If this is in fact the case, it would be inaccurate to base our conceptions of order on simple observations. This would mean that science is a deception of order and that perhaps magic better represents the order that all humans crave to find.

Reading into Destry-Scholes’ remarks this far is possibly overstepping the bounds of what he desired to confer, but it is clear that he wanted his readers to consider the value of magic in gaining a greater understanding of a worldly order. This is further evidenced by the fact that Destry-Scholes embellished the supernatural experiences of Galton and Linnaeus. In both cases there was but a seed of these scientists experiencing something magical or supernatural and Destry-Scholes extended these pieces of information to make up the stories of Linnaeus’ spirit exiting his body in the Lapland and Galton looking into a fire and witnessing a lifelike vision of corpses on a beach. At the very least, this illustrates that Destry-Scholes was deeply interested in the connection between magic and science and that he wished to convey this connection to his readers. And perhaps he realized that a statistician and a taxonomist were ultimately pursuing the same goal as a magician; that is the portrayal of the relationship between a higher order and what we as humans observe in our surroundings.