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Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

> The title either refers to the art practised by the Magi (the Zoroastrian priests from Persia), or it refers to the fact that the discussion is a discussion about the Magi

In Aristotle's time, Magic / Magi refers mostly to priests and/or healers, not the "sorcerers" that we might have in mind today.

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Also medicine and magic used to be synonymous until quite recently. See for example the American Indian medicine men.

American Indians and Europeans have/had radically different cultures.

"Magic" and "medicine" have been distinct for thousands of years in Europe.

> "Magic" and "medicine" have been distinct for thousands of years in Europe.

Medicine and magic have been intertwined throughout human history, all over the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materia_medica

Not sure why you linked to that page, as it doesn't mention magic at all, unless I missed it, apart from this in the first paragraph:

"The Ebers papyrus is an ancient recipe book dated to approximately 1552 BC. It contains a mixture of magic and medicine with invocations to banish disease and a catalogue of useful plants, minerals, magic amulets and spells."

Materia medica was the old term for what is now pharmacology.

There's also this bit on Egyptian medicine:

"It contains a mixture of magic and medicine with invocations to banish disease and a catalogue of useful plants, minerals, magic amulets and spells."

So it doesn't, except when it does.

I'd also argue a lot of medicine employed 'magical thinking' such as efficacy from similarity. Herbs were recommended based on their physical similarity to organs or parts of the body. I don't think it's pejorative of early practitioners to point this out. Until empiricism and experimentalism there was no way to reliably clarify what worked and why.

> There's also this bit on Egyptian medicine:

> "It contains a mixture of magic and medicine with invocations to banish disease and a catalogue of useful plants, minerals, magic amulets and spells."

The sentence you seem to be saying I missed is one of the two I quoted.

> So it doesn't, except when it does.

Please don't do that on HN.

> Also medicine and magic used to be synonymous until quite recently.

Not at all. Under Roman law, "magic" was forbidden, and healing magic was considered "not magic" precisely because it was helpful instead of harmful. (As we can see by the fact that people wrote about the question at all, they were well aware of the conceptual similarity.)

Compare WWII terminology in which the difference between a submarine and a U-boat is that the submarine is good and the U-boat is evil.

Really they all seem to have had roughly common roots and then engaged in speciation over time by culture. "Witch" essentially meaning poisioner or "bad pharmacology/herbalism" ans posioned and cursed as essentially synonymous. Given that dose and application make the poison this ends up being a very dangerous look for any herbalist even before any cynical power grabs because they would always look guilty of carrying poison even if the foxglove was to steady the heartbeat instead of stopping it.

The split from Philosopher to Natural Philosopher which later split to Scientest and Philosophy of Science essentially are a more "modern" version of the same process.

I agree, I think a lot of context is lost here by wordage that now has different meaning.

It's the same thing. There were posers and those with practical knowledge. Today it's almost entirely clueless posers.

The way that occultists all claim that all of the other occultists are clueless posers is one of the things that makes the whole lot look rather silly.

Including the clueless posers that fill 90% of hospital positions!

The OECD suggests [1] that there are about three nurses for every doctor. Complain about doctors as much as you like, but most nurses have lots of useful and relevant practical experience.

(I think most doctors are probably fine. But I don't need to win that argument to deny the 90% claim.)

[1] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/health_glance-2017-5... suggests

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