Actually, genetic dilution might still be a factor… if the rationalism of the founders was imperfect, and they didn’t know much about heredity, the inability of most people to duplicate magical feats might have been interpreted as the result of an error in those finicky incantations. Emphasis on rote memorization of reliable effects would then come at the expense of higher-level invention and item creation techniques.
There are some possibly-relevant discussions of a history of magic in Tales of MU.
There are some possibly-relevant discussions of a history of magic in Tales of MU.
You’ll have to link them, then (unless you mean the very funny section about the science cultists); I read a bit of Tales of MU, but got weirded out after a while.
“The first codified definition of a ‘wizard’ as opposed to other less formal and implicitly inferior magic-users was someone who did ‘name-workings’. Nowadays, the formal definition of ‘wizard’ is somebody who uses spells, whether they invoke true names or not, as opposed to sorcerers, who throw around raw techniques…
I couldn’t help but think how close this approach was to the old “scientific” method of formalizing spells that had been left behind in the dark ages, the way that resulted in spells that only worked at all under highly select circumstances and could rarely be duplicated by more than a handful of people.
Actually, genetic dilution might still be a factor… if the rationalism of the founders was imperfect, and they didn’t know much about heredity, the inability of most people to duplicate magical feats might have been interpreted as the result of an error in those finicky incantations. Emphasis on rote memorization of reliable effects would then come at the expense of higher-level invention and item creation techniques.
There are some possibly-relevant discussions of a history of magic in Tales of MU.
You’ll have to link them, then (unless you mean the very funny section about the science cultists); I read a bit of Tales of MU, but got weirded out after a while.
http://www.talesofmu.com/story/book0x/378
http://www.talesofmu.com/story/book0x/235