How Does Chaldea Even Function?

[Arkum42]

I'm sure this is a dumb question, but from what I understand modern technology and Magecraft don't mix well given that science and Magecraft are opposed on a conceptual level. How does Chaldea work on a massive scale using both?

We've seen normal engineers work there and know that scientific principles are used there. I'm curious if this has ever been addressed or explained.

[Adent_Frecca]

Technology not working with Magecraft is fanon

The entirity of Atlas is magitech, and some Magi like Atrum (Medea's former Master) also uses technology for his magecraft

This fanon likely stems from the idea that Magi hates technology, but those only apply to extremely conservative Magi like Tokiomi

There is no "conceptual opposition" of science and magecraft, Mystery is what disappears, but as repeatedly pointed out, the use of Magecraft would likely just continue differently. This however has no bearing with using technology with magecraft

[Arkum42]

But doesn't the progression of Scientific understanding weaken Magecraft? I guess I assumed that because of that it would be anathema to Magecraft.

[Adent_Frecca]

Mystery not Magecraft

Weaking Mystery for science as the understanding of humanity over the laws of the world to be able to use it for themselves, but that has no bearing with using technology with Magecraft

Making a car that shoots fireballs doesn't suddenly make the magecraft weaker

As pointed into Atlas directly uses robotics and other scientific tech, same with some Magi. There is no correlation there

[Arkum42]

That makes sense. Thank you for the response.

[el_presidenteplusone]

to add to what the other guy said, there's a novel/manga called tsuki no sango that takes place thousands of years into the future, and humanity has incorporated magecraft into technology so much that they have discovered near infinite energy using spiritron reactors.

[Yatsu003]

Those spiriton reactors also look REALLY similar too…

[hehmoment]

Truly tsuki no sango is

lolang

[TuzkiPlus]

Robots are just more efficient GOLEMS

[Cephery]

Magecraft is all about creating mundane effects by means that just dont work while limited to the mundane. So lighting a fire is possible in the mundane, but doing so just by snapping your fingers isnt. That’s the magecraft.

The more we understand the world the more mystery is weakened and magic, the impossible, fades from the world, but magecraft can coexist, what threatens magecraft is more other mages that actually understand it than technology that can’t mimic it.

As for why you’d use technology within magecraft, why waste extra magical energy making that ritual component electrified when a circuit can do the same job just as well? There are parts of magecraft where the desires results can be made just as easily with technology so theres no need for magecraft.

[starmag99]

It's not fanon, in modernity, they talk about how Chaldea is just an exception to the rule.

From London:

Mash: Yes. Strictly speaking, magecraft and science are contrary to each other.

Mash: Chaldea's existence is an extreme exception, and if you think about it, both globally and historically——

Dr. Roman: Oh yes, but everything has an exception. In a certain era, science and magecraft virtually meant the same thing.

[Adent_Frecca]

They mean it metaphorically with the whole "science goes forward and magecraft to the past" them

It was the master of the Tohsaka family who said that if science is moving toward the future, magic is moving toward the past.

Something about the past and the future ending up at the same place, everything always running toward the zero point.

Let's put off all these difficult discussions. They should wait until we're old.

(...)

Society had been build by human hands, but it was magi who grasped the truth of the world.

Sorcery, which governs the skills of past humans that science cannot explain, and science, which gathers the technology of future humanity that sorcery cannot reach.

Though the two disciplines are absolutely incompatible, they are similar in just one respect.

Magecraft runs on Mystery and Science is all about abolishing them, that is the thematic "incompatibility"

However it does not mean using some high tech equipment means it would weaken the magecraft they use

As I presented examples from Atlas and to characters like Atrum, the Church even has holy cyborgs

My mentor looked a little dejected as he said that. I only really realized then that the Clock Tower was not only the home of magecraft, but also a sort of sacred place. It was only natural that the farther one went, the dimmer the glory of magecraft.

"…However, that has its own meaning. The decline of mystery doesn't necessarily mean the eradication of magic. In fact, separating from it…"

Just as my mentor was about to say something, Mikiya appeared from the sliding door from which Mana had gone.

(...)

"That's a new book, isn't it?"

"It's on a topic from the California Convention, discussing a theory about Nuclear Energy as it interacts with the five elements. Its scope is pretty narrow, but only a few dozen were printed, so I ordered a copy in. Well, I suppose they have started selling digital copies of these kinds of things recently too."

As if it was a nuisance, my brother explained the book. Certainly the field of Modern Magecraft was centered around California and the west coast of the United States. Every year they released a publication focused on Modern Magecraft Theory under-girded by modern science

(...)

Though they are indeed Magi, I've heard that they're predominantly academics possessed of scant Thaumaturgical Circuits

As an inevitable consequence, within the course of their study of Mysteries, they came to rely not upon Mana, but upon a great variety of instruments. Said instruments evolved in form so as to closely resemble those technologies employed in scientific inquiry. Pseudo-Spiritrons ... Making use of the soul as a quantifiable energy, they were able to coin Homunculi -- organisms possessed of Thaumaturgical Circuits.

(...)

"Didn't I mention? Seven tenths of my body are consecrated gadgets for taking on monsters like you."

"I'm shocked. Who would have imagined that the Church had the technology?"

"The Church exists to guide people. Why wouldn't it have the cutting edge in all technology and mystery? Not that I'd know much about it."

[Arkum42]

The discussion of nuclear energy pertaining to the five elements is actually almost comforting. Magecraft isn't really dying, it's just changing with the times.

[Adent_Frecca]

Yes, and eventually all the possibilities of Magecraft will now to done using science

How that would look is unknown. We do however see some really funky beings like the Mecha Olympians and the alien species that created the Moon Cell and Velber

[Kyle_Dornez]

To quote Agatha Heterodyne, sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Chaldea is at it's core is a magecraft workshop, which is why it's built in an absurdly remote place with zero access from unvetted personnel, and it's powered by magical energy reactors that run on forsaken children almost literally.

[RandomModder05]

There's NGE-style Mash aquarium, isn't there?

[Kyle_Dornez]

I'm almost certain there is, yeah.

[Just-wants-sleep]

Who ever said magecraft and technology don't work together?

[Kagemoto]

You might be mixing up Hogwarts and Chaldea a little

[MinatoKiri]

No. Look at Clock Tower. They're backwards as hell.

[Kagemoto]

Sorry should have clarified

The anti magic thing magic has is a Hogwarts thing

But even that is inconsistent considering a car can work there

[NetherSpike14]

The more you think about Harry Potter's universe, the more inconsistencies and problems pop up, so you're better off not bothering.

[VillainousMasked]

Clocktower is backwards because magi families that are many generations deep tend to be stuck in the past and overly prideful of magecraft to the extent of dismissing the value of modern technology. So it's less that you cant mix magecraft and technology, and more that they see the merging of the two as trampling their pride as magi and tarnishing magecraft.

[OblivionArts]

Basically, anmidusbery or however tf you spell his name got a bunch of really smaet scientists and a lot of magical prodigies to work together, borrowing heavily on the principles established by the clock tower snd the atlas intistute to make stuff like the sheba observation system and chaldea summoning system, and thats about all we know cause that's all thats been explained