Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clark Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Or, intimations of magic may be generated by a sufficiently advanced technology. The current (over the last say 100 years) experiences of UFOs, alien encounters, etc., may be manifestations of an inate attempt to interpret experiences which we, at our level of technology, are incapable of digesting whole, and which we must reformulate into images and conceptions which fit our continuum. even if they then appear magical. I suggest evolution is a universal phenomenon, occurring throughout the universe, emerging everywhere. Given the observable universe, unlimited space and time, vast manufacture of the elements and compounds needed for the emergence and development of life, almost from the beginnings of time, the likelyhood of a near infinite number of lifeforms with technologies beyond our ken is absolute. The distances between ourselves and others are a protective buffer, allowing near infinite varieties freedom to develop individually. Some of these will have developed capability to harness quantum non-locality into an information rich broadcast and reception/interpretation technology (or evolved biological equivalents) which would make them a presence in our local space and time (everywhere and everywhen, thus, here). Our own electrochemical senses, encountering probably incomplete or garbled or merely infant experience of this rich quantum soup of communal libraries , will interpret or deny, see as magic, or explore according to our own lights, until our capabilities rise to the occassion. We are on the virge, near the shore of a cosmic ocean, having lived thousands of our years preparation for the swim. It is clearly a risky encounter, fraught with the possibility of failure, madness, cultural collapse, or extinction. Thus magical thinking may be an appropriate buffer, a beginners containment, capable of evolving into a more transparent and functional conceptual tool, as astrology became astronomy, or alchemy became chemistry.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 18:50:33 +0000