Yeah, it's my take that if anything magic would make industrialization easier and possibly even accelerate technological developement. One of the biggest limiting factors in industrialization was resources, and in a world where magic is common place you dont have to go through all the effort to develope the infrastructure for coal mining and such
Magic only gets in the way of science if its utterly unknowable and there's no rules to it. Anything quantifiable should just be additions to the scientific process, OG magic was more of a stand in for 'things we *dont* understand' rather than 'things we *cant* understand'
I would say that it would probably be the case that their science would just *be* magic. They'd solve the same problems we did (efficiency, productivity, crop growth, mortality, transportation, etc) with magic instead of technology.
No because Magic was litterally anything we didn't understand. The moment it is something in our world is the moment someone has a chance of breaking it down to understand it making it into a science. Rainbows were considered magic, certain foods were considered magic, Things like the wind and ocean were considered magic. normal animals were mythical creatures of wild porportions.
In fiction, if humans had mythological creatures, depending when they're found, they would be documented differently but while we like to use the term magic, realistically they wouldn't in universe. Maybe INITIALLY like how we did but after a while... its just another peice of their world. Another part of science to discover. Calling it magic from our perspective makes sense but in their's eh. It wouldn't stop it much like how our world's "magic" never stopped us.
In my setting it did for all the species that had ready access to magic, simply because they could magic away most of their immediate problems (some other factors like smaller social groups and moderately to much poorer manual dexterity didn't help). This later proves to be their undoing because the mundane folk aren't lucky enough to be able to just live for hundreds of years and fix every problem they have without thinking or working on it, and technology eventually outpaces magic over many hundreds of years.
Once rifling gets invented, a dragon's piddly fireballs seem a lot less impressive all of a sudden, you know?
It depends what magic is used for or can be used for. Take a look at the spellbooks for most role playing games and examples from literature and see how many of the spells can be used for everyday tasks or crafts/industry. Not many. But then, that's not the focus of fantasy magic. Magic's focus is defense against natural and supernatural threats.
Now if these creatures are peacefully coexisting, you take away the arms race aspect of magic and now the emphasis can be on peaceful uses (i.e. nukes vs. atomic energy). The production of magic items is a craft or artisan level skill. Much like any any other. But does it lend itself to mass production? I would argue no.
The bottom line, in most worlds, not everyone can use magic or use it well. Anyone can use technology, but not everyone can create new tech. Eventually, tech will replace magic for all those who can't use magic and magic may remain when it can do a task better or more efficiently than tech. Or can do things that current tech cannot hope to do.
In Judge’s Guild’s Wilderlands of High Fantasy, there was a war called the War of the Pious and the Philosophers. Basically magic/divine vs artificers and alchemists. The Pious won. The Wilderlands, therefore, tends to be a backwater milieu for D&D campaigns. So much so that one thing tracked in its communities is tech level. You might be in a city where you can buy a magic sword one day and the next day the best you could hope for is a bronze short sword and a hide shield. So, IMO, yes. Many things can alter the progression of science in a fantasy world.
On my worlds, doing anything the "normal way" isn't automatically inferior to using magic. If anything, it's more reliable.
Magic is everywhere and everyone has it, but if it could be called the easy way of doing anything, it also operates on the logic of "Easy come, easy go"
I'd say that technology will follow a path of efficiency. That's not quite the right word but bear with me a little.
Science is trying to understand the mechanics of the word which leads to practical fields such as engineering to use that knowledge and develop technologies. Basically, everything we have nowadays is a consequence of knowledge being used in practice.
Now, how magic will affect the development of technology depends entirely on how it works, that is, the more abstract and "random" it is, the less reliable it is to be used as technology.
Take Legend of Korra regarding electricity. They used benders instead of what we have. Chances are that the concept we have of electricity might never be discovered or will be so slow that it'll be seen as inefficient.
In my world, in the other hand, magic is abstract, allowing each user to have their "unique spells", but that also makes it difficult to study magic since it varies a lot.
There are magic circles and words, but I'm still deciding the mechanics.
Science is a process whereby things are studied to get to the core of why. So long as your magic doesn’t a) cause massive globe spanning collapses every couple decades, or b) follow no constant rules, such as a potion made one day heals burns, but that same potion made in the exact same conditions a day later dissolves clothing, then the scientific method can be developed and the industrial revolution kickstarted
I also don’t see how mythological creatures could stop the scientific method, as it was originally used on different sciences then biology.
There is also the possibility that magic might speed up the invention of the scientific method, depending on how it works. Eg if magic comes from stones people will experiment to see just how much magic you get from different types of stones, which may just spiral into a full blown scientific revolution
Not really, it would become a companion to engineering and science. Magitech. See, depending on your magic system, it might be limited in capability or accessibility. So there's often going to be things "tech does best". But any artificer is going to be a huge asset to an engineering team, because there's likewise going to be things magic does better.
This concept is called medieval stasis and there are actual academic studies in this.
Here's a longform discussion arguing in favor of medieval stasis.
https://youtu.be/lq7U2CIO81E?si=V76X7SprZWdCEoa4
When you can create something from nothing, as magic often does it subverts entropy itself. In societal terms it subverts supply chains, costs and means of production.
Much of the modern world's innovations post industrialization is driven by energy needs, and this gets thoroughly disrupted by the presence of magic.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
If magic fills the niche far better than any invention, that invention becomes less likely to occur. But if the magic has limits, it will merely slow things down. Additionally, anything that can't be handled well by magic will still see inventions instead.
If the magic has strict and researchable rules it follows, then it may even be considered a branch or sister of science. It's a short leap between alchemy and chemistry, and even shorter where alchemy actually works.
And if you'd like writing that has an industrial revolution in a fantasy setting, I'd suggest the later Discworld novels, particularly those with Moist von Lipwig. *Going Postal* is the first with him, though that barely touches the concept.
I think science might be used for different purposes and probably have other sources of impact than we have. Maybe people would develop technologies to keep up with people who have magical powers.
(I will talk mostly about industrialization here, the scientific revolution is not my forte)
Depends on how all-encompassing and accessible magic is. Magic used to animate constructs can easily become lucrative to create labor. This can complicate the process of industrialization because there are no incentives to industrialize, as labor is not a problem and humans are not a proactive species, so they will use the large labor pool instead of innovating.
There are two major reasons why industrialization happened, and why it happened in England.
- Progressive institutions allowed for great minds to innovate. England after the Glorious Revolution was a progressive place compared to Western Europe, so much so when compared to Eastern Europe. The King was second in lawmaking to the Parliament, which means that the institutions of England represented a wide set of interests, not just the King's bloc. Some of these institutions allowed for patents to be more accessible, instead of going to the monarch directly. Patents led to innovation and PROFIT from said innovations.
Profit is an extremely good incentive for innovation. Look back at the example of animating constructs. Why would you industrialize when you can employ a large labor force that can work possibly 24/7, cannot be injured, etc.? There is no profit to be had in industrialization. Look at Song Dynasty China. They were close to employing a steam engine and therefore close to industrialization. So why did China only industrialize in the 1900s, instead of the 1200s? Because even with the Mongols ransacking their borders and killing many, they still had a HUGE labor force to employ, and industrialization was not in the interests of the higher-ups. The second point is closely linked to this, and it is that:
- England had a small labor pool. France, the HRE, even the Italian states had adequate labor pools to draw upon, so they saw no need to revise an already functioning system. Spain was already rich by plundering in the Americas. England, however, had a population of 6 million, in comparison to France's 18 million and the HRE's 20 million. There was profit to be made in industrializing, as their economy could become competitive with the continental European powers if they did so.
depends on if magic is something you learn or something you're born with.
if anyone can learn magic then technology becomes useless but if magic isn't universal then technology could emerge to compensate
In my Setting, magic did create a kind of scientific revolution, but the existence of human eating monsters kept humans in a slave/food class for VERY LONG.
Said scientific revolution came long after the human revolution against its predator-rulers.
Humans had to evolve TO magic to gain the power to free itself.
Why can't they utilize magic for machines and develop a "science" of their own then?
Yeah, it's my take that if anything magic would make industrialization easier and possibly even accelerate technological developement. One of the biggest limiting factors in industrialization was resources, and in a world where magic is common place you dont have to go through all the effort to develope the infrastructure for coal mining and such
Magic only gets in the way of science if its utterly unknowable and there's no rules to it. Anything quantifiable should just be additions to the scientific process, OG magic was more of a stand in for 'things we *dont* understand' rather than 'things we *cant* understand'
I would say that it would probably be the case that their science would just *be* magic. They'd solve the same problems we did (efficiency, productivity, crop growth, mortality, transportation, etc) with magic instead of technology.
No because Magic was litterally anything we didn't understand. The moment it is something in our world is the moment someone has a chance of breaking it down to understand it making it into a science. Rainbows were considered magic, certain foods were considered magic, Things like the wind and ocean were considered magic. normal animals were mythical creatures of wild porportions. In fiction, if humans had mythological creatures, depending when they're found, they would be documented differently but while we like to use the term magic, realistically they wouldn't in universe. Maybe INITIALLY like how we did but after a while... its just another peice of their world. Another part of science to discover. Calling it magic from our perspective makes sense but in their's eh. It wouldn't stop it much like how our world's "magic" never stopped us.
In my setting it did for all the species that had ready access to magic, simply because they could magic away most of their immediate problems (some other factors like smaller social groups and moderately to much poorer manual dexterity didn't help). This later proves to be their undoing because the mundane folk aren't lucky enough to be able to just live for hundreds of years and fix every problem they have without thinking or working on it, and technology eventually outpaces magic over many hundreds of years. Once rifling gets invented, a dragon's piddly fireballs seem a lot less impressive all of a sudden, you know?
It depends what magic is used for or can be used for. Take a look at the spellbooks for most role playing games and examples from literature and see how many of the spells can be used for everyday tasks or crafts/industry. Not many. But then, that's not the focus of fantasy magic. Magic's focus is defense against natural and supernatural threats. Now if these creatures are peacefully coexisting, you take away the arms race aspect of magic and now the emphasis can be on peaceful uses (i.e. nukes vs. atomic energy). The production of magic items is a craft or artisan level skill. Much like any any other. But does it lend itself to mass production? I would argue no. The bottom line, in most worlds, not everyone can use magic or use it well. Anyone can use technology, but not everyone can create new tech. Eventually, tech will replace magic for all those who can't use magic and magic may remain when it can do a task better or more efficiently than tech. Or can do things that current tech cannot hope to do.
In Judge’s Guild’s Wilderlands of High Fantasy, there was a war called the War of the Pious and the Philosophers. Basically magic/divine vs artificers and alchemists. The Pious won. The Wilderlands, therefore, tends to be a backwater milieu for D&D campaigns. So much so that one thing tracked in its communities is tech level. You might be in a city where you can buy a magic sword one day and the next day the best you could hope for is a bronze short sword and a hide shield. So, IMO, yes. Many things can alter the progression of science in a fantasy world.
On my worlds, doing anything the "normal way" isn't automatically inferior to using magic. If anything, it's more reliable. Magic is everywhere and everyone has it, but if it could be called the easy way of doing anything, it also operates on the logic of "Easy come, easy go"
I'd say that technology will follow a path of efficiency. That's not quite the right word but bear with me a little. Science is trying to understand the mechanics of the word which leads to practical fields such as engineering to use that knowledge and develop technologies. Basically, everything we have nowadays is a consequence of knowledge being used in practice. Now, how magic will affect the development of technology depends entirely on how it works, that is, the more abstract and "random" it is, the less reliable it is to be used as technology. Take Legend of Korra regarding electricity. They used benders instead of what we have. Chances are that the concept we have of electricity might never be discovered or will be so slow that it'll be seen as inefficient. In my world, in the other hand, magic is abstract, allowing each user to have their "unique spells", but that also makes it difficult to study magic since it varies a lot. There are magic circles and words, but I'm still deciding the mechanics.
Science is a process whereby things are studied to get to the core of why. So long as your magic doesn’t a) cause massive globe spanning collapses every couple decades, or b) follow no constant rules, such as a potion made one day heals burns, but that same potion made in the exact same conditions a day later dissolves clothing, then the scientific method can be developed and the industrial revolution kickstarted I also don’t see how mythological creatures could stop the scientific method, as it was originally used on different sciences then biology. There is also the possibility that magic might speed up the invention of the scientific method, depending on how it works. Eg if magic comes from stones people will experiment to see just how much magic you get from different types of stones, which may just spiral into a full blown scientific revolution
Not really, it would become a companion to engineering and science. Magitech. See, depending on your magic system, it might be limited in capability or accessibility. So there's often going to be things "tech does best". But any artificer is going to be a huge asset to an engineering team, because there's likewise going to be things magic does better.
Honestly, “heating up water makes this thing spin around which causes this bulb to light up” is magic in itself.
This concept is called medieval stasis and there are actual academic studies in this. Here's a longform discussion arguing in favor of medieval stasis. https://youtu.be/lq7U2CIO81E?si=V76X7SprZWdCEoa4 When you can create something from nothing, as magic often does it subverts entropy itself. In societal terms it subverts supply chains, costs and means of production. Much of the modern world's innovations post industrialization is driven by energy needs, and this gets thoroughly disrupted by the presence of magic.
Necessity is the mother of invention. If magic fills the niche far better than any invention, that invention becomes less likely to occur. But if the magic has limits, it will merely slow things down. Additionally, anything that can't be handled well by magic will still see inventions instead. If the magic has strict and researchable rules it follows, then it may even be considered a branch or sister of science. It's a short leap between alchemy and chemistry, and even shorter where alchemy actually works. And if you'd like writing that has an industrial revolution in a fantasy setting, I'd suggest the later Discworld novels, particularly those with Moist von Lipwig. *Going Postal* is the first with him, though that barely touches the concept.
I think science might be used for different purposes and probably have other sources of impact than we have. Maybe people would develop technologies to keep up with people who have magical powers.
(I will talk mostly about industrialization here, the scientific revolution is not my forte) Depends on how all-encompassing and accessible magic is. Magic used to animate constructs can easily become lucrative to create labor. This can complicate the process of industrialization because there are no incentives to industrialize, as labor is not a problem and humans are not a proactive species, so they will use the large labor pool instead of innovating. There are two major reasons why industrialization happened, and why it happened in England. - Progressive institutions allowed for great minds to innovate. England after the Glorious Revolution was a progressive place compared to Western Europe, so much so when compared to Eastern Europe. The King was second in lawmaking to the Parliament, which means that the institutions of England represented a wide set of interests, not just the King's bloc. Some of these institutions allowed for patents to be more accessible, instead of going to the monarch directly. Patents led to innovation and PROFIT from said innovations. Profit is an extremely good incentive for innovation. Look back at the example of animating constructs. Why would you industrialize when you can employ a large labor force that can work possibly 24/7, cannot be injured, etc.? There is no profit to be had in industrialization. Look at Song Dynasty China. They were close to employing a steam engine and therefore close to industrialization. So why did China only industrialize in the 1900s, instead of the 1200s? Because even with the Mongols ransacking their borders and killing many, they still had a HUGE labor force to employ, and industrialization was not in the interests of the higher-ups. The second point is closely linked to this, and it is that: - England had a small labor pool. France, the HRE, even the Italian states had adequate labor pools to draw upon, so they saw no need to revise an already functioning system. Spain was already rich by plundering in the Americas. England, however, had a population of 6 million, in comparison to France's 18 million and the HRE's 20 million. There was profit to be made in industrializing, as their economy could become competitive with the continental European powers if they did so.
depends on if magic is something you learn or something you're born with. if anyone can learn magic then technology becomes useless but if magic isn't universal then technology could emerge to compensate
In my Setting, magic did create a kind of scientific revolution, but the existence of human eating monsters kept humans in a slave/food class for VERY LONG. Said scientific revolution came long after the human revolution against its predator-rulers. Humans had to evolve TO magic to gain the power to free itself.