[HPforGrownups] Divination

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 189542

  On 8/27/2010 1:36 AM, wildirishrose wrote:
> Was divination a class that every student has to take?  Or perhaps an optional class.

Bart:
     Before I go on, I haven't heard what JKR has said about this. But 
we need to look at this on two levels: as a story, and as internal 
continuity. Accurate divination is extremely problematic as a 
storytelling device. Probably the best handling of it was in Philip K. 
Dick's story, "The Minority Report" (do not confuse it with the travesty 
of a movie with the same title, and some similar character names).

     In any case, there are two basic ways of handling divination. The 
first is to make it accurate, but make the future non-fixed. The idea 
here is to make divination a sort of photograph of the future, as seen 
by the present. However, as the present only occurs in a moment, the 
future is always changing, so the fact that the divination was made 
invalidates it (an alternative is the "self-fulfilling prophecy", where 
the fact that the divination was made causes it to come true).

     The alternative, which JKR uses, is to make divination vague, where 
the real talent is to figure out what it really means. Professor 
Trelawny, if you look carefully, is quite capable of making accurate 
prophecies. Her problem is that she almost invariably misinterprets what 
she sees, except in the most trivial of cases (the centaurs have better 
systems, perhaps because they care less about the results. On the other 
hand, they specialize in what is called "mundane astrology", which used 
to be the most common form: using the patterns in the stars and planets 
to predict the future of nations and world events, rather than 
individuals).

     Finally, going to the earlier interpretation, there is the factor 
of free will. Even among physicists, this is somewhat controversial, as, 
at least currently, the amount of energy that would be required to test 
to see if randomness exists (which would be necessary for free will to 
exist) is greater than the total energy available in the universe. Which 
brings us back to the in-story continuity.

     An important theme of the Harry Potter books is the idea of making 
choices. And, in order to be able to make a choice, free will MUST 
exist. It may not be a major factor; most people do not exercise their 
free will, and let their desires pull them where they may go. But, at 
least in the Potterverse, free will does exist. And if free will exists, 
the future is NOT fixed.

     So, in the Harry Potter novels, JKR uses both techniques. 
Divination is vague, at best, AND free will can be used to change the 
future. This makes divination, at best, a useful tool, making it a 
course of study, but an optional one.

     Bart