It’s often said that what once was magic is now technology—or as Arthur C Clarke put it, advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But we rarely appreciate what that truly means, encumbered as we are with the simplistic idea that magic is and was superstition while technology is the application of science. In fact magic—of the sort practiced by Trithemius—was a rational system for achieving wonderful effects by manipulating the occult which is to say, hidden or invisible forces of nature. That’s also a fair description of science, which didn’t replace magic so much as grew from it. Several of the forces once deemed occult, such as magnetism and gravity, are now uncontroversially a part of science.

read more Science gives power to the supernatural | Prospect Magazine.