By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of development of the inherent inner powers or talents -- or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognised. . . . The Enemy in successive forms is always naturally concerned with sheer Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines. The idea that technology (the Machine) is a kind of magic, or at least deeply related to magic, is one that Tolkien shared with his close friend C. S. Lewis, who argued that, in the early modern period, The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. Science, Lewis continued, 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 [Sir Francis Bacon, one of the founders of experimental science] and the magicians have the closest possible affinity. . . . Nor would Bacon himself deny the affinity: he thought the aim of the magicians was noble.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 05:32:19 +0000
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