Essay 15
Essay 15: The Gift of the Magi
This is not an essay about O’Henry’s most famous short story The Gift of the Magi, although that is one of his best and most famous stories. It is a lovely short story, and you should read it if you haven’t already. O’Henry’s story was about a couple exchanging Christmas gifts for which they sacrificed greatly. The reference is to the three wise men (Magi) that brought gifts to baby Jesus. However, Magi have significance far beyond that which I would like to explore in this essay which is a meditation on the Magi and what we may have gained from them, for better or for worse. Magi comes from the same root as Magician, Magic, and Magister. The first two are familiar terms. A Magister is one who is qualified in a Medieval University. It is also German for Master which can be found in modern Universities in a Master’s degree.
At some point in the evolution of modern humans they began to realize that something was going on in their world that was not obvious to their senses and that this thing that was going on could be used to their advantage. It may have begun with modern humans (200,000 – 300,000 years ago). It may have begun with the exodus from Africa (70,000 – 100,000 years ago). It may have begun with the development of the neocortex. But I am speculating. So, let’s leap over an expanse of time too long to comprehend.
The first Shamanic practices date back to 3000 years ago or roughly 1000 BCE. These practices were based on the premise that the visible world is pervaded by invisible forces or spirits which affect the lives of the living and that these forces could be influenced to affect the living in positive or negative ways. If your modern sensibilities do not allow you to accept the existence of invisible forces, just consider gravity, motivation, supply and demand, peer pressure or any number of other realities that we deal with on a daily basis. Over time this knowledge became more formalized as did the social role of those who had acquired this knowledge.
Jumping ahead in time to around the 5th Century BCE, we find Zoroastrian priests known as the Magi. The Magi had knowledge of these invisible forces refined over vast amounts of time by practice. These forces were considered supernatural as their source was clearly outside of nature. However, around the same time, investigations into the laws of nature were revealing that things previously thought to be supernatural actually did have explanations within the laws of nature. This began with the pre-Socratic philosophers and came into full bloom with the works of Plato and Aristotle. The work of Plato and Aristotle was known at the time as Natural Philosophy but was eventually known as Science.
Both Magic and Science can produce reliable results. The difference is that in the case of science the mechanisms are fairly well understood whereas in Magic they are not. As Magic and Science opposed and complimented each other the lines between the two were often very blurry. Pythagoras, who is best known for the Pythagorean Theorem combined rational mathematics with the magical. Some would say, he was more of a magician than a scientist. Some refer to him as a mystic taking away some of the sting of the word magician but not changing much other than the semantics. John Maynard Keynes said that Isaac Newton “…was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians”. But did magic die with Newton? Perhaps not.
Let’s go back to the definition of Magic as “the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.” I will simplify this to the power of influencing the course of events by mechanisms that are not well understood. The science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke observed, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So, science, technology and magic are more intertwined that we might think.
For millennia, as natural philosophy morphed into science, the idea of acquiring knowledge of the mechanisms was central to the pursuit. But, not as much these days. We see medical research discovering drugs for which the mechanism is not well understood. This happens more often as drugs are used for off-label uses. There isn’t really anything new about this. I’m sure that early doctors did not understand how oil of wintergreen cured headaches. They just knew that it worked. Today, tests and studies are done to ensure that drugs work and don’t have undesirable side effects even if the mechanisms are not well understood. But isn’t this starting to sound a lot like magic? Perhaps so, but wait, there is more.
Machine learning sifts through large volumes of big data that was not designed for the purposes for which it is being used. Decisions are made based on the results of those algorithms and I doubt that anyone is concerned with underlying mechanisms. Maybe someday we will understand all this. But that day lies far in the future. And the Gift of the Magi is the belief that knowledge is power which fuels our relentless pursuit of knowledge even if we don’t fully understand it. After all, it got us this far and will continue to take us further. Every time we use a drug for which the results are understood far better than the mechanisms, we are enjoying the Gift of the Magi. Every time a reliable machine learning result is used even though we don’t know why it works, we are enjoying the Gift of the Magi. Every time we implement a social policy that works well even though we do not know why, we are enjoying the Gift of the Magi.
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