Magic vs. Technology

I enjoy fantasy fiction, always have. However, I've recently noticed a fantasy trope which bothers me, I think because it reflects the way some people talk about the world.

I am talking about the great conflict between magic and technology. Sometimes this takes the form of an actual war, one army dressed like Storm Troopers, the other like warlocks. In other stories, we have the magical land or zone where technology ceases to work. This first started to bother me when I was twelve or thirteen and reading one of the Harry Potter books.

No technology works at Hogwarts, Hermione explains to Harry, Ron, and the audience, because there's too much magic in the air. What? What counts as "technology"? A computer, obviously. But what about a clockwork watch? Or the wheel? As long as the laws of physics still hold, all of these should work. The same principle governs the electricity in your home and the human nervous system. The kids at Hogwarts can still feel pain and think, right?

In a world where magic actually existed, it would not be antithetical to science. Since science is the process of figuring out how things work, if magic is part of how things work, then magic is part of science. I imagine it as a discipline of science, like biology and physics. And, like biology and physics, it would bleed into the other disciplines.

I think the theme of technology or science vs. magic crops up in books because people see technology as something, for lack of a better word, magical. Or perhaps "unnatural" is a better word. Hmm... I'd better stop myself before I get into one of my rants about "unnatural."

So I'll be brief. I don't see anything as unnatural. It's just not part of my worldview. When, in chemistry class, I mix starting materials together to synthesize something new, the result doesn't seem unnatural to me, synthetic though it may be. It is what naturally occurs when those reactants are mixed together and follow the laws of physics.

I might not really understand how a computer works, but I know that it is an extension of that same principle. A computer works because it's components, specifically arranged, behave naturally. Rain falls, the sun burns, my iPod plays "Hesitating Beauty," and matter holds together. It is all part of the same whole.