Sufficiently Analyzed Magic/Playing With
Basic Trope: Mages discover how magic works by using The Scientific Method
- Straight: The wizard Bob studies the nature of magic by re-casting simple spells, with subtle variations in the casting each time, and recording the results.
- Exaggerated: Bob is a better scientist than the Flat Earth Atheists who call themselves scientists.
- Justified: Magic, like physics, follows strict rules that inherently lend themselves to scientific study.
- Inverted: Magic Versus Science
- Technology has reached the point where it looks like magic to most people.
- The people in the setting are a Cargo Cult, and their "magic artifacts" are things the viewer would consider perfectly mundane gadgets.
- Subverted: Bob attempts to study magic, but discovers Science Cannot Comprehend Phlebotinum.
- Double Subverted: It turns out that Bob has to discard many assumptions of modern science in order to account for magic, but The Scientific Method still works as he rebuilds science from the ground up.
- Parodied: Bob, in a High Fantasy setting, wears a labcoat and has a Magitek laboratory that looks exactly like a modern one.
- Deconstructed: Magic is reduced to being just another branch of science, no more exciting than physics or biology.
- Reconstructed: Magic is transformed into being another branch of science, just as exciting as physics and biology.
- Zig Zagged: Alchemy has been developed into a science, but other forms of magic remain entirely impenetrable.
- Averted: Wild Magic is in full force, and getting enough control over it to even attempt experimentation is impossible.
- Magic probably could be studied, but the scientific method hasn't been developed.
- Enforced: The author wants to show how much effort he went into defining the laws of magic in his work.
- Lampshaded: "So, a wizard is basically just a scientist with fancier clothes."
- Invoked: A ruler funds the construction of a magical laboratory to make his empire more powerful.
- Defied: People who try and study magic Go Mad from the Revelation.
- Discussed: "Magic has to obey certain laws; it's inevitable somebody will figure them out."
- Conversed: "What was wrong with magic being mysterious? Why did they have to try to explain it?"
- Played For Drama: Bob is studying magic via The Scientific Method, but it blows up in his face killing/injuring him or a loved one
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