is Alchemy in FMA magic or is it science?

ArekuKitten posted...

"How'd you make that bigass pillar shoot out of the ground?"
"I clapped my hands and thought really hard about it."
"Ok, but... how?"
"Well you see my disembodied living-armor brother and I had our souls whisked away to be interrogated by [your god here] when we tried to make a live human adult out of a pile of chemicals and cooking ingredients---"

It's magic.

this

who are these clowns saying "science"

thedarklordx3 posted...

What do you mean? Like that it would be possible to make massive bombs out of anything by converting it to energy?

No, e=MC^2 means that all matter is equivalent. So the whole equivalent exchange business would be meaningless.

Yes

From a writing/audience perspective, it's just magic. In-universe, it's a well understood science. It depends on the context.

TheSocialBunny posted...

Twisting the arm of Clarke’s 3rd law a bit backwards, any sufficiently well documented magic is indistinguishable from science. ^_~

https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ggmain/strips/ggmain20081205b.jpg

Kalirion posted...

https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ggmain/strips/ggmain20081205b.jpg

=~^_^~=

CharizardFang posted...

From a writing/audience perspective, it's just magic. In-universe, it's a well understood science. It depends on the context.

That is a good point. ^_~

Whether something is science or magic mostly depends on the relative perspective on if you are dealing with the natural or the supernatural. What seems supernatural to us, may just be the mundane natural for them.

The main problem though is that the practical difference between the two is that "supernatural", as we've at least understood it on our plain of reality historically, is just a blanket term for anything humans don't sufficiently understand well enough. Once it is understood, it gets thrown into the natural category and becomes scientifically compatible.

Unique abilities exclusive to a race or specific entity aren't excluded from science either, in our own world, reptiles can see ultra-violet light, dogs can smell 40x better than humans, and a random tree in Australia can cause humans so much pain from just touching it that they commit suicide, but nobody chalk these up to the supernatural anymore. I mean, if your litmus test for magic is clapping and having stuff happen, you can buy a clap activated on/off power switch from under $40 on Amazon right now and become a wizard.

The above being said, I do concede to Hyooz's argument earlier on the difference between the actual pragmatics of practicing the craft as being categorically different from science, as per the martial arts comparison. That is a sound argument I don't have anything to throw against. In actually, the Alchemy in FMA also is from a practical stand point, at least partially magical from our perspective as an audience, but since the TC specifically said it'd be too easy to go for both, I'm taking the scenic route, ahahaaa. ^_~

The above being said, the one magical form depicted in fiction that is definitely not science is anything that relies on borrowing power from a higher being or summoning... those are kind of closer to negotiation and business skills than any actual science I'd imagine, which are definitely magical to me given my apparent lack of them. ~^_^~

You can get prodigiously good at it by doodling some geometrics around baking soda and thinking about mommy really hard. It ain't science. You can approach it scientifically to try to do more precise things with it but it is fundamentally magic.

Can you do it IRL?
No?
It's magic.

Aceron posted...

No, e=MC^2 means that all matter is equivalent. So the whole equivalent exchange business would be meaningless.

Yeah but we can't just rip the protons off of lead atoms to make gold. We can split the hydrogen and oxygen in water to make fuel though. Alchemy is more closely connected to chemistry than quantum physics.

ArekuKitten posted...

"How'd you make that bigass pillar shoot out of the ground?"
"I clapped my hands and thought really hard about it."
"Ok, but... how?"
"Well you see my disembodied living-armor brother and I had our souls whisked away to be interrogated by [your god here] when we tried to make a live human adult out of baking soda and wishful thinking and then---"

It's magic.

Well not being able to ressurect the dead points more towards science than magic right? Science can't bring the dead back to life just like alchemy can't.