Timeline for Would relatively primitive people really confuse technology with magic?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 7, 2024 at 9:40 | comment | added | Jay | ... Just asserting, "They'd think it was supernatural" doesn't answer the question. It's just stating one of the possibilities as if it was a proven fact, but with zero evidence. | |
| Dec 7, 2024 at 9:39 | comment | added | Jay | ... Rightly or wrongly, I am 100% convinced that he understands ghosts. So I don't understand how they work but some mortal man does. I would still call them "supernatural". And all of that totally begs the question of whether a primitive person would suppose that a man with an ear bud connected to a radio is supernatural. Maybe they'd say, "I don't see how this could be possible as I understand the universe. It must be supernatural." Or maybe they'd say, "I don't understand how this could be possible. But it must be some sort of mechanical device." That's the question: which would they say? | |
| Dec 7, 2024 at 9:37 | comment | added | Jay | @jbh You're assuming an answer to the question, and then using your assumption as "proof" that that answer is correct. Saying "the supernatural" is not at all a synonym for saying "things I don't understand". Suppose a ghost appeared to you and explained exactly how ghosts came to be and how they function. You could understand ghosts fully. But we would still call it "supernatural". Indeed, suppose I told you that, sure, I don't know how ghosts work, but my friend Dr Jones is an expert on the supernatural and he knows exactly how ghosts work. ... | |
| Dec 5, 2024 at 5:15 | comment | added | JBH | ... So the real difference is whether or not the person holding the cellphone believes it's magic. Nobody today would do so. We're too sophisticated, too filled with knowledge about what can be done. Just because we don't know how to do it doesn't mean we don't know that someone living and mortal knows how to do it. Compare that to my example of someone using an earpiece to act like a prophet. Nobody anciently would know how to explain it. In their experience, they'd believe it was magic, supernatural or not. So, no, I've redefined nothing. I've just taken the OP at their word. | |
| Dec 5, 2024 at 5:13 | comment | added | JBH | @Jay The supernatural is nothing more than something we don't understand. The moment we decide that "magic" is something that we can use but can never be understood, we've created a definition that's more suitable to Dungeons and Dragons than it is reflective of actual history - and it's actual history that we're talking about. People used to believe frogs didn't exist until they popped up out of the mud. Was their belief in magic false simply because it tuned out to not be supernatural? I can list a number of beliefs in magic historically that proved to be explicable today. ... (*Cont.*) | |
| Dec 4, 2024 at 12:58 | comment | added | Jay | Hmm. You redefine "magic" to mean, not anything supernatural, but more like "anything I don't understand". And then you assert that if a primitive person was presented with something he didn't understand, he would conclude that it was something he didn't understand. Well yes, by definition. But that's not what we normally mean by "magic". By that definition, cell phones are "magic" to most people in the world today. The behavior of your girlfriend or boyfriend is "magic" if you don't understand their motivations. Etc. You've redefined the question into a tautology. | |
| Nov 30, 2024 at 7:17 | comment | added | lidar | oh it definetly won't turn you into a prophet, but a small-scale folk magician that can sell wards against fouling teeth and gets hanged the first time a cow stops giving milk? I do think so and thats still magic. | |
| Nov 30, 2024 at 7:09 | comment | added | JBH | @lidar I have no doubt people would wonder at it and think it amazing... but they undestand the concept of a writing instrument. Compare that to setting up some seismic sensors, some weather equipment, etc., along with that ear piece and going into business predicting natural events. I don't believe there's a comparison. | |
| Nov 30, 2024 at 7:06 | comment | added | lidar | I don't think your pen example is a good one. A quill that does not use any ink sounds like a neat little enchantment. | |
| Nov 29, 2024 at 21:15 | history | answered | JBH | CC BY-SA 4.0 |