Law and Magic Blog

Forbidden Histories, a Website Devoted To Science and Magic @ForbidHistories @Sommer_HPS

Forbidden Histories, a very interesting and useful website with information about the intersection of science and magic, edited and maintained by Andreas Sommer. 

ICYMI: Fritz Graf, La magic dans l'antiquite greco-romain, 2d ed. (2004)

ICYMI:

 

Fritz Graf, La magie dans l’antiquité gréco-romain. Idéologie et pratique, 2d ed. (Paris, 2004).

Teller On Teaching and Performing Magic @jesslahey @MrTeller @TheAtlantic

Jessica Lahey has published a very interesting interview with the famed magician Teller on the similarities between teaching and performing magic. According to Teller, they include the necessity to make the audience (the student) "fall in love" with the subject matter of the performance (the subject), and then to engage the deeper engagement of the audience in the subject, even if it is uncomfortable or contradicts what they believe. Both education and magic performance require participation by all parties. As to the current trend to protect students from discomfort or engagement with difficult or unhappy content, Teller says, 

When I go outside at night and look up at the stars, the feeling that I get is not comfort. The feeling that I get is a kind of delicious discomfort at knowing that there is so much out there that I do not understand and the joy in recognizing that there is enormous mystery, which is not a comfortable thing. This, I think, is the principal gift of education.

 

Read the entire extremely provocative article here.

ICYMI: Pittard on The Travelling Doll Wonder: Dickens, Secular Magic, and Bleak House @CAPittard

ICYMI:

 

Christopher Pittard, The Travelling Doll Wonder: Dickens, Secular Magic, and Bleak House, 48(3) Studies in the Noel 279-300 (January 2016).

 

A Website on Magic and Science @pprevos

Check out magicperspectives.net, a website devoted to the intersection between magic and science. Posts by Peter Prevos, engineer, social scientist, and magician.

ICYMI: Kuhn, Caffaratti, Teszkal, Rensink on a Psychologically-Based Taxonomy of Misdirection

Of interest: Gustav Kuhn, Hugo A. Caffaratti, Robert Teszkal, and Ronald A. Rensink, A Psychologically-Based Taxonomy of Misdirection, Frontiers of Psychology, December 9, 2014. Link here.

Magicians use misdirection to prevent you from realizing the methods used to create a magical effect, thereby allowing you to experience an apparently impossible event. Magicians have acquired much knowledge about misdirection, and have suggested several taxonomies of misdirection. These describe many of the fundamental principles in misdirection, focusing on how misdirection is achieved by magicians. In this article we review the strengths and weaknesses of past taxonomies, and argue that a more natural way of making sense of misdirection is to focus on the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms involved. Our psychologically-based taxonomy has three basic categories, corresponding to the types of psychological mechanisms affected: perception, memory, and reasoning. Each of these categories is then divided into subcategories based on the mechanisms that control these effects. This new taxonomy can help organize magicians' knowledge of misdirection in a meaningful way, and facilitate the dialog between magicians and scientists.

Randall Baldwin Clark, The Law Most Beautiful and Best: Medical Argument and Magical Rhetoric in Plato's Laws @RLPGBooks

ICYMI:

 

Randall Baldwin Clark, The Law Most Beautiful and Best: Medical Argument and Magical Rhetoric in Plato's Laws (Lexington Books, 2003).

How can citizens be persuaded to voluntarily obey good laws? Randall Baldwin Clark addresses this question by looking at one of the oldest works ever to pose it: Plato's Laws. The Law Most Beautiful and Best explores one of the most striking metaphors in the Laws: the suggestion that the gentle and persuasive bedside manner that characterizes rational medicine should serve as the model for political persuasion. Clark's careful reading of the Laws challenges traditional interpretations of this metaphor, emphasizing instead the way the dialogue subtly reasserts the efficacy of the magical arts. Just as the Athenian stranger treats his patients with a combination of rational and irrational therapies, so too must the philosophical reader—should he wish to preserve his city's health—be willing to avail himself of both the gentle persuasion of reasoned discourse and the enchanting coercion of irrational rhetoric. Both a close examination of the Laws and a thoughtful approach to an ageless political dilemma, The Law Most Beautiful and Best is essential reading for scholars interested in jurisprudence, classics, rhetoric, and political science.

 

 

 

 

Eliot Cohen On the Reality of Magic

Via Ken Trombly: Eliot A. Cohen writes about attending magic conventions and the effect of magic itself on those who watch it and participate in it, here, for the Atlantic.

 

And Mr. Trombly is putting together an evening of Magic & Comedy with Congressman Jamie Raskin and Friends for Democracy Summer 2018 at his home in Bethesda, MD for ActBlue. Here's more.

Performers will include Darwin Ortiz, Eric Jones, Karl Hein, Rich Bloch, Alain Nu, Mark Philips, and Brian Curry.

A Visit to Tannen's, and Some Magic History @atlasobscura @tannensmagic @slaskow

For Atlas Obscura, Sarah Laskow writes about a visit to the fabled magic shop Tannen's, some magic history, and an encounter with magician Noah Levine. Ms. Laskow notes,

 

Even if you know how cups and balls works, in the hands of a skillful performer, you won’t see the movement of the balls, no matter how carefully you look. When Penn and Teller do it in full view it still feels like magic. The same principle applies to New York itself. However many times you walk down a street, paying close attention, some detail escapes your notice, or only exists for those in the know. The grave of Harry Houdini, perhaps the most famous magician in history, is part of a family plot in Queens, and though it might seem like an obvious attraction it spent years in disrepair. I’ve walked past the year-round Halloween costume store on Broadway countless times and never knew of the magic shop in the basement, stocked with throwbacks to the 1980s. Without an invitation, there’s no way to discover the illegal poker room hidden somewhere in Soho, where Levine was once asked to perform. New York itself is an engine of misdirection.

Some Magicians' Secrets From Mental Floss @mental_floss

This Mental Floss article on magicians' secrets quotes a number of famous prestidigitators, including Richard Bloch, who's also a lawyer and arbitrator. 

Some of the secrets are common sense. If you ask a magician to work for you, pay her. If you ask a magician to reveal the secret of a trick, pay for the secret. Save the corny jokes--she's heard them before. And she didn't go to "magic school"--she worked hard on her own, or with professional magicians, to learn what she knows and to do it skillfully and entertainingly. Again, pay her for that knowledge, skill, and artistry.