A Scientific Basis for Magic?

"Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other.  There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.  Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only....It is quite conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected.  But it is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it.  Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology."
 -- D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior:  A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949

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Nemesis Fixx : 
What do you think has changed or stayed the same since then?


Van D:
We now know that neurons do not only interact bio-chemically, there are also some form of electric field coupling.

http://www.caltech.edu/content/neurobiologists-find-weak-electrical-fields-brain-help-neurons-fire-together

Which creates an additional vector for spirit to potentially interfere in bio-electro-chemical determinism.

Im still waiting for quantum mechanical phenomena to be discovered in the neurological machinery.  IMO anywhere that quantum indeterminism plays a role, magick has another doorway into reality.

Although a quick googling suggests no hard science has been discovered there yet, unlike the above-mentioned CalTech research into weak electrical fields of neurological origin providing additional neurological pathways.

Nemesis Fixx:
+Van D. Wow Thanks! That was a very informative article you posted!

"The perpetual fluctuations of these extracellular fields are the hallmark of the living and behaving brain in all organisms, and their absence is a strong indicator of a deeply comatose, or even dead, brain,"

"unexpected and surprising finding was how already very weak extracellular fields can alter neural activity," 

"Inside the mammalian brain, we know that extracellular fields may easily exceed two to three volts per meter. Our findings suggest that under such conditions, this effect becomes significant." 

Forgive me for wanting to make connections [this is the sin of the sentient :-)], but I would suggest that if we were to limit our definition of magic to "ability to manifest into the subjective universe reality by will", then these scientific results already give very good objective support for this form of magic.  

How? By one's willed induction of a particular "state of mind", one can generate a particular form of EEG waves, whose effects are not only noticeable to an external observer, but are strong enough to induce change in other parts of one's own brain - the said change in one's subjective universe.

Interesting.