The Magic

Think back to the first time you saw a puppet show. You were probably young but it felt magical. Strange, fuzzy creatures are putting on a wacky performance for you, and they’re usually hilarious.

If you dared venture away from the audience and take a peek behind the stage, you might be surprised to find that you were only seeing part of the truth. When you return to the audience, it seems as though you are watching something completely different than everyone around you. The magic is gone, and you can’t get it back.

Knowledge is a one way street; once you learn something you cannot unlearn it. Unfortunately, it can take a long time to reach the end of the road. Among the first things you discover when learning something new is how much you have yet to learn. They say “ignorance is bliss” because you never have to give up the magic that comes with not knowing.

The mistake is thinking that the magic only exists before knowledge. Our puppeteer knows the puppets don’t move or think on their own, yet they still feel the magic. How? They’ve studied and practiced long enough to discover the magic on the other side.

Our puppeteer has practiced making subtle movements with the puppets to suggest deeper emotion. Adding different voices to the show has translated the efforts of one puppeteer into a cast of characters. While the grind may seem tedious, the magic on the other side is worth the work.

In reality, our puppeteer is simply waving around pieces of fabric but to the audience, a story beyond this world is unfolding. The audience has access to a world created entirely by the puppeteer, and all it takes is a bit of cloth and some imagination. This is the magic.

Of course, puppet shows aren’t the only things with magic surrounding them. Consider a much more complex example: a videogame. To the untrained eye, a videogame is an interactive portal into another dimension. With a little bit of knowledge, a videogame is a massive amount of code which allows for basic processing, artwork, 3D rendering, gameplay, artificial intelligence and much more.

It takes years of study and experience to learn a fraction of what is actually going on in any given moment of a videogame. This is a much longer road to take than working with puppets but the magic is still there. Once you understand the amount of work and effort that has been put into a game, you see the magic once again.

A videogame, like the puppet show, creates a world beyond our reality using lines of code. While anyone can discover that initial magic, a totally new world is even more magical when you can appreciate that it’s made up only of code.

To a child, everything in the world is magical because they don’t know how it all works. As you know, losing that magic can happen quickly and even accidentally. This presents a problem since the world is a very complex place. We often only learn enough to take away the magic, but not enough to find it on the other side.

Ask a kid if they like science after showing them a chemical reaction and they’ll always say yes. Ask a kid if they like science after a few hours of studying before a test and you’ll get a very different answer.

Science is our method, as humans, of discovering and understanding the world around us. Unfortunately, science can delve infinitely deep into a single concept which can be quite daunting. This is one of the main reasons people shy away from science. The world starts out filled with magic and a bunch of scientists have to go and spoil all that magic.

Science always seems to feel like an exercise in humility, accepting that we don’t know everything and that the world is very complex. However, it’s important to remember that we’re not writing laws to restrict nature; we are describing the world using the most basic concepts. The trick when it comes to science is to trust that you will make it to the magic on the other side, even if you can’t see it right now.

An inexperienced child and a seasoned scientist can both stare up into the night sky with wonder and feel the magic, but each feels slightly different. The child imagines each glimmering light is magically pinned to the night sky. The scientist imagines the possible worlds that surround each star within view, and all the ones too far to see. The child imagines that the sun has gone to bed for the night. The scientist imagines the other side of the world and the invisible stars in their sky, blocked from view by the brilliance of our own star.

The child and the scientist both see the magic and feel a sense of wonder for the world they share. The only word the child can say is “Wow,” while the scientist can’t help but think, “If you only knew, kid; if you only knew.”