what does magic and alchemy have
to do in helping to create
global civilization?¹¹⁷

Scientific Laws of Magicality

The child's mind, remains profoundly and frankly magical, states image psychologist Ahsen.¹¹⁸ The universe of childhood is enchanted and organic: every entity there is alive and experiencing. The philosophy of childhood therefore fully supports panexperientialism of postmodern constructive philosophy.

Ahsen formulated four laws of magicality, which were evolved from his exploration of the magical lands of children, poets, and ancient mystic cultures:
1. The Part is the Whole
2. Contact is Unification
3. Imitation is Reality
4. Wish is Action

Nowhere in the material universe, writes Ahsen, are those laws valid: part is certainly not a whole, contact not unification, imitation is not reality, and wish is not an action. In the re-enchanted universe, the laws of magicality have the status of scientific laws. I wish to extend Ahsen's magical laws:

5. Something from Nothing

This fifth law is one of the most persistent themes of fairy tales: one swing of a magic wand and something desirable occurs in front of your eyes. Looking at five laws of magicality, I am fascinated by how much they resonate with the advances and insights of cutting edge science.

1. The Part is the Whole
The holographic model of the universe: the essence of a holographic principle is that each part contains the information of the whole.

2. Contact is Unification
Quantum unseparability (nonlocality) principle: once two entities contacted, they always feel each other, no matter where or when.

3. Imitation is Reality
Quantum mechanical experiments indicate that our reality just pretends to be solid and material. At a mysterious subatomic level, it dissolves into probability waves. According to a holographic model, our world might be just an image of a deeper hidden order. Also, with development of holographic technologies, virtual reality becomes another level of real reality.

4. Wish is Action
We increasingly understand our power and role in the creation of reality and ourselves.

5. Something from Nothing
Chaos comprises hidden order. Vacuum is plenum. Nanomachines, devices as small as a molecule, are expected to produce unimaginable materials, cheap food, and new effective drugs to cure any disease. From the article "The Incredible Shrinking Future" by Tom Barret, published in the Vancouver Sun: Proponents of nanotechnology say it will allow us to manufacture just about anything for next to nothing.

It looks like state-of-the-art science, with all its sophisticated experiments, is currently moving into a magical universe, intuitively known to everyone from childhood. Young children do not have to put on magic glasses to see an enchanted world. They naturally reside there.

It may be, that humans hide magic beneath them, just as mysterious chaos hides ordered patterns. If so, learning science magically could mean learning science naturally, without trying to be someone we are not. Yesterday, I passed by the school - rectangular box looking like a prison. It is located on 41st avenue: the face of industrial culture that is clean of magic. I imagined a castle-like, magical school instead of a prosaic, prison-like one, and I imagined its being located on the Avenue of Stars instead of the 41st Avenue. I thought that such a re-arrangement could help children (and adults) not to be who they are not.

Inconclusive Conclusion:
The Chaotic Butterfly Continues its Flight

My mechanistic realistic self craves a conclusion, but my re-enchanted self avoids rigid conclusions as attributes of a static and idealized world. In the real, complex, and dynamic universe, truth keeps happening. The trick is to balance on the edge of chaos, to capture a place of junction between stillness and motion, flux and permanence, time arrested and time passing.

For the very open ending of this manuscript, I saved one message from an anonymous Physical Science in Elementary Schools Course evaluation:

This course was an inspiration and eye opener. I will happily and gratefully never see science as dry and purely formal, methodological etc. I know how to bring nature back into science, for myself, and my students. My class will reconnect with the world through poetry, drama, stories, experiments, and feelings. That's science, science is life!!!

Bingo. The Omega point. The heart of a chaotic butterfly. I hope for many, many more of such reflections. But, the challenge remains to reach those students of science who are lost, irritated, or silent. The challenge remains to find a meeting place for scientific inquiry, story, and spirit, the place that will be comfortable and transformational for everyone. The challenge remains to balance the flexibility of creativity and the firmness of organization, to dance between dream and reality, to fuse the possible and the existing.

The challenge simply remains.

imagining universe(s) into existence,
especially if they are re- enchanted,
is not a very easy task,
but the cosmic creative principle pulses in my heart
this means the chaotic butterfly
continues its dizzying flight
from one strange attractor to another
via the process of self-organization
along the spiral of the great holarchy of becoming
toward the new complex order
of the re-enchanted world

Butterfly, butterfly,
Oh where are you butterfly fluttering through the wind?