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hp_essays)
I’ve been pondering the limits of Transfiguration. There must be some; monetary poverty (a là Weasley) wouldn’t be so significant if it was possible to meet all material needs through magic.
Legal Limits
Caius Marcius, in his essay on the limits of magic, implies (if I am reading it correctly) that there are [human-made] laws against someone magically creating whatever is needed. If this is the case, it seems to me that such a law applies to some things (e.g. gold) and not to others (e.g. purple sleeping bags). I can’t quite see how such a law could be made to work, however, if the sanctions were purely legal, which would imply that the restriction is a ‘natural’ (or magical!) law, inherent in the nature of matter and the Transfiguration process itself.
Alternatively, perhaps there is some sort of limitation built into wands, but I think that is unlikely because there are several wand-makers, and some are likely to be more [un]scrupulous than others.
Material goods
We’ve seen Dumbledore conjuring things out of mid-air – or is he merely performing a sort of summoning? Even if this is an ability only exhibited by a very advanced few, it would only take one individual to completely upset the economy if things could be created. Even an ability to Transfigure low-value items into high-value items would wreak havoc on manufacturers of the latter.
Or is this just how things get made in the wizarding world? Do wizards specialise in an area of Transfiguration so that, say, cauldrons are valuable because it is only a few people who can make them? That would imply that the wizarding economy runs on a scarcity not of material resources, but of skills. It would also explain the ‘cottage industry’ feel to it; a manufacturing process that inherently depends on the magical skill of an individual is difficult to scale up to mass-production.
If that’s true, then relative pricing in the wizarding economy could be very different from that in the Muggle economy. What’s cheap to produce industrially might not necessarily be cheap to produce magically.
Gold
Is it possible to Transfigure something into gold? I’m inclined to think not, else the gold-creating property of the Philosopher’s Stone is unlikely to be worthy of mention in wizarding books, and the Goblins wouldn’t need to bother employing Curse-breakers to find more treasure. But Hermione can create a convincing fake Galleon, and leprechaun gold is seemingly indistinguishable from the real thing. At least, it’s able to fool Ron and the Twins – though perhaps that’s only because they don’t see much of the real thing.
Still, it seems to be fairly easy to come up with a convincing fake. For this not to completely upset the economy, there must be some kind of forgery-detection spell that shopkeepers can use. I wonder how it works? Would it, for example, detect a difference in physical structure? Or the magical residue of the spell? Or…?
Basically I’m concluding that Transfiguration into certain items requires varying levels of various magical skills, some of which are rare enough to make those items highly priced in the economy. There is presumably something about gold (and silver and bronze) that makes it nearly impossible to create in this way.
However, I’m not at all sure how these restrictions arise. The physicist in me is thinking along the lines of some property of the structure of the basic material, or of some magical property that Muggle physics can’t detect. I suppose it depends on how Transfiguration works. Does anyone know of any good theories on that?
hp_essays)I’ve been pondering the limits of Transfiguration. There must be some; monetary poverty (a là Weasley) wouldn’t be so significant if it was possible to meet all material needs through magic.
Legal Limits
Caius Marcius, in his essay on the limits of magic, implies (if I am reading it correctly) that there are [human-made] laws against someone magically creating whatever is needed. If this is the case, it seems to me that such a law applies to some things (e.g. gold) and not to others (e.g. purple sleeping bags). I can’t quite see how such a law could be made to work, however, if the sanctions were purely legal, which would imply that the restriction is a ‘natural’ (or magical!) law, inherent in the nature of matter and the Transfiguration process itself.
Alternatively, perhaps there is some sort of limitation built into wands, but I think that is unlikely because there are several wand-makers, and some are likely to be more [un]scrupulous than others.
Material goods
We’ve seen Dumbledore conjuring things out of mid-air – or is he merely performing a sort of summoning? Even if this is an ability only exhibited by a very advanced few, it would only take one individual to completely upset the economy if things could be created. Even an ability to Transfigure low-value items into high-value items would wreak havoc on manufacturers of the latter.
Or is this just how things get made in the wizarding world? Do wizards specialise in an area of Transfiguration so that, say, cauldrons are valuable because it is only a few people who can make them? That would imply that the wizarding economy runs on a scarcity not of material resources, but of skills. It would also explain the ‘cottage industry’ feel to it; a manufacturing process that inherently depends on the magical skill of an individual is difficult to scale up to mass-production.
If that’s true, then relative pricing in the wizarding economy could be very different from that in the Muggle economy. What’s cheap to produce industrially might not necessarily be cheap to produce magically.
Gold
Is it possible to Transfigure something into gold? I’m inclined to think not, else the gold-creating property of the Philosopher’s Stone is unlikely to be worthy of mention in wizarding books, and the Goblins wouldn’t need to bother employing Curse-breakers to find more treasure. But Hermione can create a convincing fake Galleon, and leprechaun gold is seemingly indistinguishable from the real thing. At least, it’s able to fool Ron and the Twins – though perhaps that’s only because they don’t see much of the real thing.
Still, it seems to be fairly easy to come up with a convincing fake. For this not to completely upset the economy, there must be some kind of forgery-detection spell that shopkeepers can use. I wonder how it works? Would it, for example, detect a difference in physical structure? Or the magical residue of the spell? Or…?
Basically I’m concluding that Transfiguration into certain items requires varying levels of various magical skills, some of which are rare enough to make those items highly priced in the economy. There is presumably something about gold (and silver and bronze) that makes it nearly impossible to create in this way.
However, I’m not at all sure how these restrictions arise. The physicist in me is thinking along the lines of some property of the structure of the basic material, or of some magical property that Muggle physics can’t detect. I suppose it depends on how Transfiguration works. Does anyone know of any good theories on that?
