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The Engines of Our Ingenuity 1637: Natural Magic
- Science
Episode: 1637 In which science and magic struggle to become separate pursuits. Today, let's practice Natural Magic.
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Today, let's practice natural magic. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
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Is this episode right for you?
B2 · Upper-intermediate
Comfortable if you already follow TV news
- 89% of the words are B1 or easier.
- 157 words a minute: a natural pace.
- 33 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.
Transcript
The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.
harder words (B2+)
This is the Engines of Our Ingenuity, made possible by the friends of KUHF, Houston. Today, let's practice natural magic. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. The ancient science of alchemy enjoyed a flurry of revitalization during the 16th century. A bit like Don Quixote briefly rising from his deathbed to reassert his madness, I suppose.
But in the language of that last gasp, we hear scientists figuring out how to accommodate a new science of experiment and observation. John Dee, Queen Elizabeth's science advisor, introduced the term tama turgica for the making of magical machines. magica for the making of magical machines, machines for creating an illusion of magic. Consider what thaumaturgical magic it would seem if you could have, say, driven your car
into Queen Elizabeth's court. Any machine is magic until it's understood, just as surely as putting a live person in a box, and sawing the box in two without harming the person is magic. He took another term from an Italian colleague, Maggia Naturales, or Natural Magic, that
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