Textbook reliablility? RE: Lupin, mon amour was Re: Page-filler Lupin [the_old_crowd]

[Eileen Rebstock]

Silmariel:
> I
> saw Scamander using a light tone not to give a too bad impression, but the
> history underneath is usually bloody and violent.

Just to complicate things further, I must add that our 'Fantastic Beasts' must be a very condensed version of the textbook actually referred to in the books, which apparently has full chapters and is not read in half an hour. So how the students are taught about the whole werewolf issue and whether Scamander gave more context than the précis we've read is not clear at all. 

> Now that I know it is by bite, I have to ask myself how they reproduce, if
> it
> was only by accident, I think the population curve would tend to 0, so I
> assume every generation has had its share of Greybacks.

That's a reasonable assumption, I think. Frightening, of course. The other rather cynical option is that bitten wizards are so bloody incompetent that they can't *not* mess up and bite someone eventually. This has going for it the fact that Rowling's wizards *are* spectacularly incompetent. 

> I also think if vampires are studied in DADA it's for something, howhever
> 'beings' they are as a whole, but vampires have something to offer that
> wws
> don't: a kind of inmortality, so I see that some wizards can be seduced
> into
> being one (instead of 'accidented' or forced).

Hmmm.. Did Voldemort look into being a vampire at any time, do you think?

> But the point is, JKR sees it that way, or wizards have been experimenting
> and
> developing charms and potions for the last centuries?

Well, given that they've been using the exact same textbook for Advanced Potions since the 1940s, I'd say they're kind of stuck when it comes to innovation. The one guaranteed new potion in the book is Wolfsbane Potion and, although it's not stated to be so, I think most fans are right in suspecting the inventor is Snape, the non-traditional innovator. 

They *have* been keeping up with broom improvements, mind you. 


>I'm not very
> interested in a realistic background for the evolution of the WW, 

To my mind, there's no way you can approach an issue like "What are werewolves *really* like and how do they relate to the wizarding society?" without a) saying it's just a story so we'll take JKR's remarks about prejudice against werewolves being unfair on trust or b) playing that this is all real and trying to 'find out' what could have happened. Both legitimate responses. I enjoy playing with the latter, though the former is the 'real' truth. 

>I
> have to ask: Any type of knowledge in every part of the world was treated
> that way, or cultures/societys made a difference? Wizards strike me as
> very
> international very early (they unite against muggles, half breeds and
> other
> species, but I haven't seen religious/terrytorial/etnic wars between them
> to
> create compartimentalized knowledge), with an international council in
> 1750.

Well, you'd be surprised. Conflict, war, imperialism are often the ways knowledge gets uncompartmentalized (the Crusades were great for the general cause of knowledge!), but that's kind of beside the point, because as you say, there isn't very much evidence for traditional conflict among wizards. Lots of personal vendettas and feuds but not much of a nationalist, ethnic, or religious primary identity. They're wizards first before all things.

But while internationalism is a good thing for spreading knowledge, it's not necessarily a pushing point for innovation. Medieval Europe was an extremely international place, and earlier, so was the Roman Empire and before that, the Hellenistic World. If anything, internationalism sometimes exacerbated the problem, as people scrambled to get hold of the old texts that would explain everything. Telling an author his work was original would have been an insult before the Renaissance. 

As for other cultures, I am not an anthropologist but I really can't think  of any other pre-modern culture that historically *has* much valued innovation. Certainly not Japan or China before modern influences. That's not to say innovation doesn't happen, because it does all the time, but it's not eagerly pursued the way we pursue it today. And empirical experiments to gain knowledge weirdly seems to be one of the most foreign ideas in the world for people to grasp. It seems normal to us because we've been educated to see reality that way. 

The wizarding world has many features of the pre-modern world, and one of them is a focus on what is traditional to the expense of what is new. How far it goes is a good question. It is influenced by the Muggles, as well, to be sure.

Eileen