Divination -- Cause or effect?

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 33945

> > I watched the Div class in PoA and began to wonder
> > which way it was 
> > working.  Trelewany tried to get Harry to "see"
> > Beaky twitching 
> > headles on the ground, but Harry tells her he sees
> > him flying off. My 
> > question is, did Harry "seeing" Beaky fly away,
> > somehow _cause_ or 
> > contribute to causing, Beaky's escape?
> 
> Predictive causation on the atomic scale was one of
> the great problems in the early days of QM.  Consider
> the famous photon experiment that illustrates that
> which way the probability function collapses
> determines which 'side' of the barrier the photon
> 'chooses'.  Rephrasing your notion slightly, if one predicts
> something and has enough belief to See it occur, does
> that Sight force the event?  If so, does this imply
> that magic has both substance and force?
> 
> Given your well-chosen example, I would support this
> as being true, at least within what we have been shown
> in Rowling's universe. 
> 
> > Going out
> > further on this limb,
> > night this be how magic works, involving
> > visualization of the desired
> > effect?
> 
> You approach one of the major schools of Western
> magic(k) with this, as I am sure you're aware.  One of
> the bases of what is called Ceremonial Magick (and
> this is the school that most closely resembles
> Rowling's version of magic) is that if the thaumaturge
> can visualize an object (or an effect; again the QM
> duality) precisely enough at a fine enough level,
> he/she will, in effect, create or transform the object
> into whatever it is that he/she wills it to be.  (To
> do what thou will shall be the whole of the law.)
>  
> > 
> > Running, dodging, and ducking,
> > 
> > Tex
> 
> Stand  and deliver, sir!
> 
> {grin}
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Drieux
> 
I find the predictive causation analysis as a theory of magic in HP 
fascinating and very plausible.   But I'd like to throw out another 
predictive causation example.  In 
Trelawney's first class, she predicts that Neville will break 
teacups, whereupon nervous Neville begins breaking them almost 
immediately.  Some of us in the Trelawney-is-a-fraud camp have used 
this as an example of her use of the power of suggestion to create a 
self-fulfilling prophesy, arguing that if you tell the most nervous 
person in the class that he will break something, that increases the 
probability that the breakage will occur, but that is merely using 
one's powers of observation and playing the odds, not divination.  Is 
this a valid example of predictive causation, or is it different from 
the Harry/Buckbeak example because Trelawney did nothing to bring 
about the result except to make the suggestion?  If it is valid, then 
I hesitate to classify predictive causation as "divination" as that 
term appears to be used in the Potterverse, at least by Trelawney 
(though seeing possibilities and acting on them, while more mundane 
than prophesy, is arguably a more valuable form of "seeing" than 
merely knowing the future).> 
> 
Debbie (who has never studied probability and welcomes enlightenment)

Divination:  (1) "the art or practice that seeks to foresee or 
foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge usually by the 
interpretation of omens or by the aid of supernatural powers"
(2) "unusual insight; intuitive perception"

Websters Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary> 
> =====