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Neuroscience looks to
magicians for big reveal
Imagine Harry Potter as a science
journalist for the Daily Prophet and
Dumbledore as editor in chief. No
doubt there would be lots of stories
about the genetics of herbology, the
chemistry of potions, the physics of
invisibility cloaks. But surely there
would also be reports from the fron-
tiers of neuroscience, exploring how magical powers depend
on the inner workings of the brain and mind.
As it turns out, real-life muggle scientists are also interested in how magicians manipulate the brain. After all, ever
since the days of Godric Gryffindor, magicians have been
mastering methods for messing with human perception and
attention. On Page 22 of this issue, Science News staff writer
Laura Sanders explores the new partnership between the
practitioners of prestidigitation and the investigators of
cognitive neuroscience. It’s not about spoiling everybody’s
fun by explaining magic with science, but rather it’s a matter
of magic helping scientists explain more about the mysteries of the mind.
Discovering the neural details of magical illusions is not
only fascinating in itself. Knowledge of magic’s mental powers could boost scientists’ efforts to treat neural disorders
or improve educational methods.
Such work is significant in an even larger sense, though:
The magic–cognitive neuroscience connection illustrates
a deeper lesson about science’s importance and role in the
everyday world. Science is not a domain of knowledge separate from the rest of human experience; it is rather an ever-present partner in all human endeavors.
From the composition of symphonies to baking a cake,
from hitting a baseball to pulling a rabbit out of a hat,
human experience provides an incredible diversity of phenomena for science to illuminate. Everything about the process of life and the workings of nature is within the purview
of scientific scrutiny. But it’s a mutual process; practitioners
of such endeavors can learn from science, but science also
makes progress by learning from the practitioners — just
as Darwin consulted farmers about breeding and Einstein
learned much about time from inventors hoping to patent
new clockworks.
In the end, science doesn’t really spoil the fun, it
enhances the experiences. It’s like magic.
— Tom Siegfried, Editor in Chief
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