Chapter 16: Why Do Wizards Reject Science?

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After noticing the matter, Roger did not continue to devote much attention to it.

Because the confrontation between Harry and Draco before Professor McGonagall had failed to occur as it had in the original course of fate, Roger was somewhat worried that his own little flap of butterfly wings might cause Voldemort to do something truly catastrophic.

If things really had changed in that direction, he would still have to give Dumbledore a heads-up.

But now, that was no longer necessary.

Since Dumbledore had already noticed Quirrell’s abnormality, there was no need for Roger to meddle and make things more complicated.

A bodiless remnant of a soul, facing an enemy whose identity was known to both sides, could never turn the world upside down in Dumbledore’s own stronghold.

All Roger had to do this year was eat well and study in peace.

With his mind finally at ease, Roger followed the older students to the Gryffindor common room after the feast.

There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the journey: magical staircases that were easy to get lost on, talking portraits, a shared dormitory, and unfamiliar roommates he had never met before.

Carrying with him the question of whether portraits and ghosts represented a continuation of life or merely an echo of death, along with anticipation for the next day’s classes, Roger drifted into a deep sleep.

.

.

.

Apart from the question of why wizards, whose magic was almost like a wishing machine, had never developed in the direction of immortals and divine beings, Roger had long harbored another doubt.

Potions class.

“Potter!” Snape said suddenly. “What would I get if I added powdered asphodel root to an infusion of wormwood?”

What root powder in what liquid? Harry glanced at his friend Ron, and the hopeless student was just as stunned as he was.

“I don’t know, sir,” Harry said.

Snape curled his lips in contempt.

“Tut, tut… It seems fame is not everything.”

Professor Snape ignored Hermione, whose hand was raised so high she seemed eager to touch the ceiling, as well as Roger, who already enjoyed considerable fame among the wizarding community. His grand performance of bombarding Harry Potter with questions and mocking his undeserved reputation had only just come to an end.

The students were now, under Snape’s guidance, preparing the simple healing potion described in the first chapter of their textbooks.

Slice the ingredients with a blade, crush them with a pestle, weigh them on a balance, pour water into the cauldron and boil it…

Roger handled the entire process with effortless fluency.

Yet it was precisely in these procedures that his old question had arisen.

In wizarding society, so many steps could clearly be made more convenient, with a lower chance of error, by incorporating certain Muggle tools and techniques. So why did wizards not use them?

Judging from the Hogwarts Express and the enchanted flying automobiles, wizarding civilization was clearly not opposed to borrowing whatever it found interesting from Muggle society.

Perhaps combining magic with science might even be a way to break through the limits of wizarding power.

That question was naturally answered once Roger ended his self-taught, closed-door magical studies, truly began attending classes at Hogwarts, and observed the details of other wizards’ spellcasting during lessons.

He had overlooked one crucial matter!

Magic was a miracle created jointly by the mind and magical power.

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To describe the general process of casting a wizarding spell, it was roughly this:

I want to cast a spell → I want it very, very badly → my intent connects with magic → magic senses the caster’s conception and leaves the universe to handle the details → a wondrous phenomenon occurs, and the spell succeeds.

For many spells, if the process was not sufficiently precise, even the wizard casting it had no idea what the result would be.

It might seem as though a wizard only needed to think, “I reckon this should work,” while magic had to take care of everything else.

But in truth, the result was still determined by the wizard himself. Magic possessed no independent consciousness. Any deviation in a spell was shaped by distracting thoughts of which even the wizard remained unaware.

Human beings found it extraordinarily difficult to control their stray thoughts. Take the challenge of thinking of nothing at all for three minutes: out of seven billion people worldwide, there might not even be seven who could manage it.

Even in sleep or unconsciousness, the human mind did not truly stop thinking.

And if a person’s will was so important during spellcasting, then would a wizard’s understanding of how the world worked also have a tremendous influence on magic?

The answer was yes.

Through observing and questioning his classmates and professors, Roger had reached a conclusion.

Up to a certain limit, the more clearly a wizard understood the fundamental laws governing the world, the more constrained the power of his spells would become.

The reason was simple: his understanding left magic less room to act freely.

Take, for example, a spell that produced intensely hot flames.

If a young wizard had received a Muggle education and understood the properties of fire, but did not know how to produce such extreme temperatures, he would subconsciously develop the thought, “I can’t do this,” thereby limiting the spell’s power himself.

If he could bring out three parts of his full strength, that would already be impressive.

By contrast, a young wizard who knew nothing about the principles of fire and simply believed, “My flames can devour and sweep away everything,” left magic far more room to act. His spell might not only reach the upper limit of the temperature his mental power could support, but might even acquire the magical effect of devouring its target.

Of course, if someone understood every fundamental principle governing fire, he would no longer be restricted in that way.

Indeed, because his will during spellcasting would be incomparably precise and every detail crystal clear, the mental strength consumed by casting might be drastically lower than that required by other wizards.

So the problem of magical power was only a minor one. It was not as though there were no way to make up for it. Once one crossed that threshold, one might even become stronger.

The true reason wizards rejected science lay elsewhere.

Science had never been a specific technology. It was a way of thinking.

A way of thinking that used assumptions, proofs, and experimentation to gradually analyze the fundamental principles governing all things.

One could even say that, in a world of immortal cultivation, comprehending the Dao was itself a form of science.

Cultivation techniques were the formulas and theorems accumulated by generations of practitioners. Artifact refinement was materials science. Refining corpses and crafting banners of myriad souls could even be considered applications of the life sciences.

Yet the same theories could not simply be applied to wizards.

The nature of magic was the obstacle no wizard could avoid if he wished to embrace science.

In the Muggle scientific community, one could pretend not to see the clouds hanging over physics and mathematics—the unsolved problems that loomed above them.

Even if mathematics as a system was incomplete, so what? As long as the ordinary mathematics used in practice, such as Euclidean geometry, was complete, that was enough.

But in the wizarding world, if one wished to pursue science while being unable to explain what magic actually was, the consequences could be terrifying.

Some wizards, mentally fragile, mildly obsessive, and fond of pursuing every thought into a dead end, would begin to question magic itself.

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Once a wizard began to doubt magic, magic would gradually drift away from him.

Magic was a miracle born of belief. If you no longer believed in your own magic, then you would lose it.

Once such a line of thought emerged and began to spread, what happened afterward was self-evident.

Roger now understood why wizards had not embraced the seemingly more advanced scientific way of thinking. Instead, they remained half-isolated from Muggles, clinging to the foundations of their old civilization and seeking breakthroughs through three paths: self-transformation, rituals, and external objects.

Before wizards became powerful enough to understand magic, studying magic itself would lead nowhere good.

Magic possessed no mind, but a wizard’s own inner demon could destroy him from within.

A paper proposing a new theory of magic causing its researcher’s brain to explode might be an exaggeration, but temporarily crippling someone’s magical ability was not impossible.

Then… were those who loved pursuing truth truly left with no path forward within the current wizarding system?

No!

Just like the book Ritual Magic Is Far More Than Blood Sacrifice, the ancient wizarding masters of extraordinary wisdom had already provided both the answer and the road to the future.

“Stop!”

While pondering the problem and working on his potion, Roger suddenly sensed danger.

Following the instincts he had honed on the battlefield, he swept out one hand and cast a spell.

On the desk beside him, Neville—who was partnered with Seamus—was just about to place a porcupine quill into his cauldron. Roger transformed it into a lid.

If the cauldron was not removed from the fire before the porcupine quill was added, the potion for curing boils would become an intensely corrosive poison. It could burn through the cauldron and cause boils to erupt all over anyone it touched.

The potion would end up flooding across the floor. Roger would be splashed from head to toe, and the lesson would almost certainly have to be halted halfway through.

The students nearby stared at Roger’s sudden spellcasting in bewilderment.

Snape drew his attention away from Harry and turned to look.

He glanced at Roger and gave an irritable snort.

“Sharp observation, one point to Gryffindor.”

Then he looked at Neville.

“And you—idiotic handling! Remove that cauldron from the fire at once. One point from Gryffindor!”

One point added and one point deducted, leaving no change overall. If Roger had been a Slytherin, the result would probably have been very different.

After Neville hurriedly did as instructed, Roger also lifted the transformation from the porcupine quill.

Yes. Transfiguration.

This was the path belonging to those who pursued truth—the magic of rational minds.

Through his studies, Roger had discovered that Transfiguration, which appeared so unremarkable, possessed truly terrifying potential.

As the greatest wizard in Britain this century and the president of the International Confederation of Wizards, Headmaster Dumbledore’s greatest expertise lay in Transfiguration. He had also once served as a professor of the subject.

The current deputy headmistress, and future headmistress, Professor McGonagall, was likewise a professor of Transfiguration.

This…

Was it really a coincidence?