One thing I believe is that there's a relationship between the fascination of magic and the fascination of science, and that consequently a bunch of scientists would make a particularly good audience. The reason I believe this might be illustrated with any number of natural phenomena, but there are few examples better than the Lotus Effect: the self-cleaning property of the lotus flower. This has a lot to do with magic, in a sense of the word very familiar to magicians. (As a bonus, I suspect that if you could find the right trick to go with it, this information could be turned into really good patter.)
I first learned about the Lotus Effect in a column by Hans Christian Von Baeyer, published in the January/February 2000 edition of The Sciences magazine. I'll use quotations from that article to illustrate my points. The article begins by discussing the cultural significance of the lotus around the world.
The lotus was an important icon in ancient Egypt, the inspiration for the Phoenician capitals that preceded the Ionic order of design, the sacred flower of Hindu religions and the object of the principle matra of Tibetan Buddhism: om mani padme hum, which means "Hail, jewel in the lotus". [...] In various parts of the world it has been a symbol of fertility, birth, beaut, sunlight, transcendence, sexuality and the resurrection of the dead. [...] But above all, the lotus represents purity.
Then the article explains that the lotus is a symbol of purity because it repels dirt, and then frames the question in scientific terms, saying:
Those remarkable physical characteristics have captivated mystics and inspired artists for millennia. Is it any wonder, then, that the lotus has also excited the curiosity of modern scientists? How does it work? Why does mud cling to most plants, but not to the leaf of the lotus? How does it compel drops of water to roll off without wetting its surface?
To me, these questions are exactly the same thing as asking how a magic trick works. The only difference is that in this case (as in countless other natural phenomena) the trick is performed by nature, not by a magician.
Anyway, the article then goes on to discuss how before scientists could discover the secret of the lotus they had to invent the electron microscope, and before they could invent the electron microscope they had to invent quantum theory and other advanced physics. Again, this is relevant to magic because the secret to a trick can be very well hidden from detection, just as are the secrets of nature.
Then the article goes on to describe the solution to the Lotus Effect. It is a very simple secret, and that too is relevant to magic because the secret to a trick is often very simple as well. Here is the secret explained with the help of an analogy.
Imagine a leaf is a wooden board through which a forest of nails has been driven from below, so that the points stick out through the top surface. Now think of a fleck of dust magnified many times, so that it resembles a ragged piece of paper landing gendly on the bed of nails. The strength of the adhesion between the paper - the dust fleck - and the board depends on the surface area of their mutual contact. [...] Because of the pointy nails, the contact area is miniscule and the fleck is barely attached. It hovers on pointe, as it were.
Now imagine that the board is slightly tilted, and that a drop of water, magnified to the size of a great round medicine ball, rolls over the nails towards the dust fleck. (The drop of water, like the dust fleck, is only barely attracted by the nails.) Faced with the choice of balancing on the nails or clinging instead to the big, smooth surface that is rolling over it, the dust fleck quickly pops over onto the ball, sticks to it and gets carried away. Thus drops of water collect dirt from plant surfaces and roll off, leaving the rough surfaces both clean and dry.
After that, Hans Christian Von Baeyer's article goes on to ask another question relevant to magic: does knowledge of the secret take away appreciation of the phenomenon? He writes:
So there you have it, the secret of the sacred lotus: its purity derives from its nubbly surface. Is that all? Does the solution to this little mystery of nature somehow diminish the spiritual value of the sacred lotus?
For me, the opposite is true. When I see a lotus blossom now, or, what is more likely, the leaf of a cauliflower or tulip, I marvel at the ingenuity of nature in bringing forth, after a hundred million years of evolution, such pristine beauty through such an exquisite design. My awareness enhances my appreciation.
Now, it's true that in the case of magic, knowledge of the secret can devalue the phenomenon, but I contend that it doesn't have to. It depends on a number of things, one being the audience, and another being how the secret is revealed.
I expect that an audience of scientists is far less likely to feel disappointed by a secret, on average, than are other sorts of laypeople. But I also contend that, by the same token, the secret should certainly not be revealed for "free". After all, scientists are interested not only in the secrets behind phenomena, but also in the discovery of those secrets. So if an individual, in private, wants to know the secret, you might do well to make them work for it. One approach is with the twenty-questions-esque method that Randi famously used with Feynman, and another is to offer small hints as a reward for good guesses. If it's your secret, it's your choice.
In passing, I'd like to point out that the interest of a scientist is not the same as the interest of an engineer. It is a fascination with the underlying principles behind the phenomenon, not a wish to be able to replicate the phenomenon (replication, to a scientist, is typically the means to the end of understanding, not the other way around). I think it's an important difference, and I don't agree with the idea that the only valid reason to learn a secret is in order to perform the trick.
Of course, there are differences between science and magic. In science, there are usually several possible explanations and the scientist endeavours to find out which is right. In magic, I am told that Orson Welles wrote, "A real magician's task, it seems clear, is to abolish the solution, the possibility of *any* solution" (my source: T.A.Waters). But the keyword here is "usually", and this difference does not demolish the connection between magic and science.
Baeyer's article goes on to discuss technological innovations to which the Lotus Effect has been put, and concludes by pointing out the poetic paradox of how the simplest things in nature often have to wait for the most advance developments in science before the secret can be known.
(Speaking of science, I don't know how many of you are aware that the secret to mixing oil and water was discovered only a few years ago. But I must say I don't really understand the alleged medical applications. You can't go removing all the dissolved air in a patient's blood, surely.)
I've posted this to The Dove's Head so that it may drift on or off topic, as it wants to.
). In short, feel free to argue for a connection between magic and technology if you want (I'll argue that in most cases advanced technology is much more complicated and less elegant), but I think you'll find it's quite a different thing from a connection between magic and science.
