Phlogiston!

[pegkerr]

Another Ah ha! breakthrough today.

There I was at work today, mindlessly taking cases off the Westlaw printer today and stapling them. [boring!] It was taking a long time for the cases to print off, and so my mind was wandering. I started thinking about my meeting with Pat Wrede tonight, and how I would have to catch her up on what I was trying to do with this new book, and how was I going to explain my system of magic to her, since I hadn't entirely figured it out myself? I was mulling over what kijjohnson and I had talked about, that winter magic builds up in lakes when the ice freezes over, and that the expansion of water as it freezes has something to do with this. I had a quick mental flash of Jack and Solveig talking, something about the structure of the palace, and how they have to accommodate that property of water of expanding as it freezes. Solveig says something about it in passing, referring to the standard scientific explanation, and Jack says, smirking, "Sure, go ahead and believe that's the reason, if you want to." And she goes away wondering, "what the hell was that all about? It's physics! That's the way water acts when it freezes. What does he mean to hint that there's some other explanation?"

From there, my mind cycled back to something that's been niggling at me: winter magic has something to do with the expansion of water. What about summer magic, which is governed by fire and air? And right then, as I reached for another case and stapled it, a word popped into my brain: Phlogiston! As soon as I was free, I went back to my computer, and looked phlogiston up on the Internet. You can read about it here.

Phlogiston was the first comprehensive chemistry theory, which surfaced in the 17th century and lasted about 100 years. I hooted with delight when I saw how this theory tied into the Greek philosophers' construction of the universe by dividing it into earth, air, fire, and water. This works with my summer/winter magic hypothesis. I suddenly realized something else which had prompted this line of thought: I had just send David Lenander a copy of an essay that was seminal to my thinking about the Harry Potter books, "Harry Potter's Magic" by Alan Jacobs. Here's the key excerpt to what triggered my thoughts today:

The place to begin is to invoke one of the great achievements of twentieth century historical scholarship: the eight volumes Lynn Thorndike published between 1929 and 1941 under the collective title A History of Magic and Experimental Science . And it is primarily the title that I wish to reflect upon here. In the thinking of most modern people, there should be two histories here: after all, are not magic and experimental science opposites? Is not magic governed by superstition, ignorance, and wishful thinking, while experimental science is rigorous, self–critical, and methodological? While it may be true that the two paths have diverged to the point that they no longer have any point of contact, for much of their existence—and this is Lynn Thorndike’s chief point—they constituted a single path with a single history. For both magic and experimental science are means of controlling and directing our natural environment (and people insofar as they are part of that environment). C. S. Lewis has made the same assertion:

[Francis Bacon’s] endeavor is no doubt contrasted in our minds with that of the magicians: but contrasted only in the light of the event, only because we know that science succeeded and magic failed. That event was then still uncertain. Stripping off our knowledge of it, we see at once that Bacon and the magicians have the closest possible affinity. . . . Nor would Bacon himself deny the affinity: he thought the aim of the magicians was "noble."

It was not obvious in advance that science would succeed and magic fail: in fact, several centuries of dedicated scientific experiment would have to pass before it was clear to anyone that the "scientific" physician could do more to cure illness than the old woman of the village with her herbs and potions and muttered charms. In the Renaissance, alchemists were divided between those who sought to solve problems--the achievement of the philosopher’s stone, for example (or should I say the sorcerer’s stone?)--primarily through the use of what we would call mixtures of chemicals and those who relied more heavily on incantations, the drawing of mystical patterns, and the invocation of spirits.

At least, it seems to us that the alchemists can be so divided. But that’s because we know that one approach developed into chemistry, while the other became pure magic. The division may not have been nearly so evident at the time, when (to adapt Weber’s famous phrase) the world had not yet become disenchanted. As Keith Thomas has shown, it was "the triumph of the mechanical philosophy" of nature that "meant the end of the animistic conception of the universe which had constituted the basic rationale for magical thinking." Even after powerful work of the mechanistic scientists like Gassendi the change was not easily completed: Isaac Newton, whose name is associated more than any other with physical mechanics, dabbled frequently in alchemy.

This history provides a key to understanding the role of magic in Joanne Rowling’s books, for she begins by positing a counterfactual history, a history in which magic was not a false and incompetent discipline, but rather a means of controlling the physical world at least as potent as experimental science. In Harry Potter’s world, scientists think of magic in precisely the same way they do in our world, but they are wrong. The counterfactual "secondary world" that Rowling creates is one in which magic simply works, and works as reliably, in the hands of a trained wizard, as the technology that makes airplanes fly and refrigerators chill the air--those products of applied science being, by the way, sufficiently inscrutable to the people who use them that they might as well be the products of wizardry. As Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, "Any smoothly functioning technology gives the appearance of magic."

That's it! Summer magic is phlogiston! It can't be measured in the physical world--in fact, it doesn't even exist, according to our scientists--but it is the key to everything in the magical world, at least as far as summer magic goes.

So . . . winter magic builds up under the lakes under ice. Where/how could summer (fire/phlogiston) magic get trapped and build up? Could it cause the Northern Lights? Fireworks? The Aquatennial Torchlight parade? The problem is that nothing traps it so that you can use it, like ice traps winter magic. Maybe that always gives winter magic an advantage?

Also: One key thingummy is the custom of "storming the ice palace"--fireworks are shot off over the ice palace, I think ostensibly as a fight between the winter king and the vulcans. Could this be a battle of summer and winter magic?

Of course, if you try to do summer magic (with fire) in the winter . . . could that be saunas?

Hmm. (Goes off to think some more.) Well, wish me luck on my dinner with Pat, that we manage to puzzle this stuff out!

Cheers,
Peg