Thursday 5 July 2018

J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" review: the novels are excellent proponents of science


It might seem that the world of magic J.K. Rowling paints is one which defies logic. There are strange spells and curses, enchanted lifeforms and potentially magical chemical elements and states of matter. Certainly, the books leave many logistical questions unanswered (see my previous Westworld review) and it fails what I call the Stargate Atlantis test:

In Stargate, humans have just built their first dainty interstellar ship with a great deal of help from advanced benevolent aliens. To fight off an entire armada of evil aliens, humans use advanced teleportation technology to instantly teleport nuclear warheads (mid-1940s technology) to their adversaries' spaceships.
Therefore, any science fiction or fantasy work where teleportation is possible must first answer the questions: why don't the protagonists teleport a nuclear bomb to the spaceship/evil lair/haunted mansion of the villain? Why use wands or laser guns instead of teleporting sharp bits of metal into the skulls of the evil henchmen or garlic-encrusted wooden stakes into the hearts of vampires? Then, answer similar questions for all the other fantastical concepts.

Where I think the Harry Potter franchise shines, however, is in its portrayal of the scientific method and, to some extent, modern government. Because, when faced with all their weird magical challenges, the witches and wizards of J.K. Rowling's imagined universe act as calmly and rationally as we do in our muggle world.

Each magical aspect of their world is analyzed by an appropriate academic discipline: with a corresponding subject studied by the protagonists at the Hogwarts School of Wizardry. Each of the disciplines has falsifiable hypotheses and an established professionalism - wizards are not "tired of experts". And as with us muggles, academic and theoretical disciplines are leveraged into practical real-world benefits, though there is less emphasis on private enterprise than on centralized institutions. This may be because of the above-mentioned lack of logistical description, or because in many ways the wizards are close to a post-scarcity economy: who would start a cleaning company when self-driving brooms are available?

Harry Potter gives a great example of why spirituality and "the supernatural" is such rubbish: the scientific method, intellectual debate and cataloguing of the observable world is just as valid for dragons as it is for General Relativity. To be taken seriously: make falsifiable predictions, follow up threads of enquiry and establish rigorously reviewed expertise.

To be honest, the manifesto for the scientific method is all I got from reading the books. My mind glazed over when trying to understand the plot, even after having my friends explain it half a dozen times. I think it centers around a villain whose name most characters don't want to say. Given how rational the rest of the magic-users' behaviour is and how powerful magic spells can be cast with a single word, is it so crazy to err away from vocalizing the name Voldermort?