Hyougetsu Asks: In a World With Magic, Would Science Be More Advanced or More Backward?
If you’re writing a fantasy story with magic, there’s a seemingly simple question that could completely mess with your worldbuilding: how would magic affect the development of science?
Would a world with magic have more advanced science than ours, or could it actually be thousands of years behind because it relies on supernatural powers?
That’s the question raised by Japanese light novel author Hyougetsu, who talked on X about a rather interesting problem he runs into when creating an isekai world. After all, when magic doesn’t exist, you can simply look at the history of science to get a good idea of what a society from a certain era would look like. But add magic to the equation and… GOOD LUCK!
Would Science Be More Advanced in a World With Magic?
The problem starts when magic can reproduce phenomena that, in our world, took centuries of scientific investigation to understand.
Imagine, for example, a world where thousands of people can cast electric magic. It would be pretty strange if nobody ever tried to figure out why certain materials conduct electricity better, how powerful an electrical discharge is, or how to increase its strength.
In other words, concepts similar to electric current, voltage, and resistance could appear much earlier than they did in our own history.
Hyougetsu joked about exactly this idea by imagining a lesson on electric magic:
Teacher: “Since ancient times, it has been known that electric magic is particularly effective against wet enemies. In the third century, court mage Nurete de Consente conducted repeated experiments with various liquids and discovered the conductivity of electricity… that is, resistance.”
Student: “It took THAT long? LMAO”
Teacher: “If electric magic didn’t exist, perhaps we would have discovered it even later.”
But Magic Could Also DELAY Science
But there’s another side to the coin.
Having access to supernatural technology doesn’t necessarily mean a civilization would understand how it works.
Imagine someone capable of producing fire simply by saying a word.
Would that person really need to discover chemistry, combustion, heat transfer, and the composition of gases?
Probably not.
They would only need to know:
“If I say this word this way, fire appears.”
And that’s it.
This could create a society that’s extremely advanced in the practical use of magic, while remaining surprisingly behind when it comes to scientifically understanding the phenomena involved.
That’s exactly the possibility several readers discussed.
What If Magic Were Considered Separate From Physics?
Another point raised in the discussion is that the people living in this world might not even consider magical electricity to be a physical phenomenon.
To them, it would simply be… magic.
If someone fires a lightning bolt and causes a burn, perhaps nobody would think about electricity at all. The phenomenon might instead be classified as a variation of fire magic, for example.
This creates a huge difference between observing a phenomenon and understanding the phenomenon.
In our world, electricity, magnetism, and other phenomena were studied and connected over the course of centuries. In a magical society, different effects could remain separated by magical traditions and classifications for a very long time.
And this could happen even if, from our perspective, everything still followed some kind of physics.
Leia mais: Giving my opinion here, I think science would be pretty far behind in a magical world. A professor of mine once told our class that humans are naturally lazy, and pretty much everything we create is meant to make our lives easier.
That’s why we have cars, the internet, smartphones, and all sorts of things designed to make life more convenient. So in a world with magic, magic would already be there to make people’s lives easier.
As a result, magic would probably delay a LOT of technological development. At least, that’s what I think.
Hyougetsu is a light novel author, and one of the novels he has published is Musket Girls! ~ Tensei Sanbou to Senretsu Otome-tachi, about a young man who reincarnates into a world at war.
He becomes involved in the war and, known as the “Shinigami” (“God of Death”), is appointed as the new strategist for the 6th Special Brigade.
But here’s the catch: this brigade is made up entirely of women.