[HPforGrownups] Re: Arithmancy, Etc.

[Margaret Dean]

No: HPFGUIDX 14657

rainy_lilac at yahoo.com wrote:
 
> My big question is this:  Hermione made much about how Divination and
> fortunetelling is such an inexact science-- NOTHING like Arithmancy!
> Now we find that Arithmancy is simply another form of divination. So
> why is it taught separately from Trelawny's class?
> 
> Maybe JKR was just being casual with the word (how unlike her though!)
> and really intended Arithmancy to be the magical equivalent of higher
> math (and a science!) That is the image I have anyway.

I suspect it's JKR's joke on how we tend to think that something
"magically" ;) becomes an exact science once you can slap a lot
of numbers on it and play around with them.  Well, don't we? 
Anything that can be quantified is "exact" and "scientific"
whereas anything that deals with qualities rather than quantities
is, at best, "soft science."


--Margaret Dean
  <margdean at erols.com>