DOES SCIENCE HAVE LIMITS, LIKE J.K. ROWLING’S LIMITS OF MAGIC?

Nature is its own magic. In the Harry Potter Universe, magic is portrayed as a supernatural force that, when used skillfully, can supersede the normal laws of nature. But, as the laws of nature are pretty well thought out, having stewed and simmered over thirteen-odd billion years of evolution, it’s wise to wonder the way in which magic should be allowed to supersede, and in what situations. And, rumor has it, that’s exactly what J.K. Rowling wondered about before publishing the first novel. For five years, the story goes, she established the limits of magic for her fantasy—deciding what magic should, and should not, be allowed to do. “The most important thing to decide when you’re creating a fantasy world,” Rowling said in 2000, “is what the characters can’t do.”

Hence, the Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration. Gamp’s Law was a law governing the magical world. And food was the first of the five Principal Exceptions: witches or wizards could cook food with magic, but not conjure it out of nothing. When food did appear to have been conjured from nothing, such as McGonagall’s self-refilling plate of sandwiches or the hordes of food during banqueting at Hogwarts, it was either being multiplied or transported from elsewhere.

Neither was the magical world full of get-rich-quick wizards. Rowling is on record as suggesting that, though not explicitly stated in the series, wizards could not simply conjure money out of thin air. An economic system based on such a possibility would be grimly flawed and highly inflationary. Perhaps that’s also why a limit was placed on the use of the Sorcerer’s Stone for alchemy. The Stone’s abilities were described as extremely rare, possibly even unique, and possessed by an owner who did not exploit its powers.

Consider love and death. Some magical spells needed an emotional input while casting them. The Patronus charm needed the caster to focus on a happy memory. For example, Harry conjured a corporeal Patronus when Sirius was on the verge of receiving the Dementor’s Kiss. Harry’s force of will was an essential ingredient in the magic. Indeed, love is portrayed as a powerful form of magic. Love was, according to Dumbledore, a “force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature.” In the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore also says there is no spell that can bring people back from the dead. Sure, they can be re-animated into compliant Inferi on a living wizard’s command. But they are little more than soulless zombies, with no will of their own. The limit is much referenced in the series, and wizards try transcending it at their peril.

Nor is it possible for a wizard to achieve immortality. Not without the Sorcerer’s Stone or a horcrux—or seven. The three Deathly Hallows were fabled to bestow upon the owner the gift of being the master of death. But even then, it was hinted that a true master of death was really a wizard who was willing to bow to the inevitability of death.

And yet, death is still a fascination to wizard kind. In the Department of Mysteries sits a chamber containing an enigmatic veil. The veil is the divide between life and death. This manifestation of the barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead is no doubt studied by the Unspeakables—witches and wizards who work at the Department. But does science also have limits?

Science, Fantasy, and the “What If?” Question

Fantasy is the faculty of imagining improbable things. But, then again, so too is science. Sometimes. Fantasy is a literary device for exploring imagined worlds, and in that sense is a kind of theoretical science. Scientists also make models of imagined worlds. They just happen to be more mathematical. They construct idealized universes and set about tweaking the parameters to see what might happen. The “what if?” question is key to both science and fantasy.

What if magic was real? What if a wizard could conjure up a thousand things? What if witches could wave wands and make them work? Scientists try to answer “what if?” questions, too. But they are bound to stay within the confines of the known theories of science. Fantasy writers have far more scope. And the very best fantasy can be used to consider profound philosophical or moral issues: the metaphysics of soul-splitting; the driving force of revenge; or deep questions about love and death. Have the big mysteries all been solved, and all the big questions answered? Is the age of the truly great discoveries behind us? And will there be a final “theory of everything” that marks the limits of science?

As early as 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey portrayed a scientific culture winding down. In the movie, space travel is replete with corporate logos and trademarks, showing a world absolutely stage managed. The corporate logos that appeared throughout the movie seemed, at the time, very sinister—a patent circumvention of democracy. The irony of the picture’s portrayal of an insipid future dominated by corporations and technology was lost on some. Microsoft mogul Bill Gates suggested that 2001 inspired his vision of the potential of computers (though whether Gates was also inspired by the portrayal of sinister corporate domination is mere speculation). Nevertheless, such corporate control is symptomatic of the scientific crisis portrayed in the film.

Kubrick notwithstanding, there’s an unwritten assumption that science is infinite and endless. But there also exists the idea that, one day, scientists may find such truths that would mean no further science will be necessary. There are even those who feel that this situation may soon be upon us, that we are already approaching the very limits of scientific knowledge: physicists who advance upon a theory of everything; evolutionary biologists who draw near a determination of how life on Earth began; cosmologists homing in on a theory of the creation of the cosmos; and neuroscientists probing a final understanding of consciousness.

Science also places limits on itself. Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity places an upper limit on the speed of matter or information; quantum mechanics means that our investigation of the nanoscopic will remain indeterminate; chaos theory suggests many phenomena may be impossible to predict; and evolutionary biology reminds humans that they are mere animals, not relentless robots seeking the profound truths of nature.

Optimists may say these limits can be surmounted. And yet, many of the final questions may never be answered. We may never be able to probe the very beginning of the universe, if, indeed, there ever was one. We may never find if quarks and leptons are composed of smaller particles still. And we may never be able to fathom how inevitable life’s origin was on Earth, or if there is life elsewhere in the cosmos.

And yet, maybe the answer is in the machine. Maybe sometime soon humans will create artificially intelligent machines, capable of totally transforming our limited science. In the most ambitious version of this scenario, the intelligent machines will be able to transform the entire cosmos into a gargantuan, holistic, data-processing network. Maybe then, when all matter becomes mind, we would be able to answer the ultimate question of why there is something rather than nothing. Now that would be like magic.