Hello SCIE 300 students and readers of science, this is Bruce Wayne, multimillionaire industrialist and hobbyist magician.
I enjoy magic. I enjoy the study and the practicing of it. But what I enjoy the most about magic is the science behind it. The history behind the techniques and the methodology behind what creates “magic” for people.
Image by Asrar Makrani
To understand magic, we must first break magic down to “What is magic?”
In the real world where there are no dragons or wizards, magic can be broken up into two parts: the method (how the trick works) and the effect (what the spectator sees).
For magic to be successful, the audience must see the effect clearly without being aware of the method.
So why does magic work? Why does it fool so much of the population?
The answer is because of how the human mind works. The human mind likes to make a lot of assumptions of the real world, which for most people is learned at a young age through experience. For example, object permanence, the assumption that an object continues to exist even when it is no longer visible. Try it. Put a sock in your drawer and close it. Look away for five seconds and open your drawer. The sock should still be there. Of course, we would already know that because we learned that from experience growing up. We learned at a young age that even if mom covered her face with her hands, she would still be there.
Now these assumptions are often correct. However, magicians use methods to take advantage these assumptions to create a result that is rather inconsistent to what is supposed to happen. In the video below, a coin is placed into a hand and seemingly disappears.
The magician’s most well-used tool is misdirection, used to divert attention away from the method. In a general term, misdirection is the control of the audience’s attention and perception. Magicians have known for centuries now that out of the information that enters the eyes, only a small amount of it enters attentional awareness. This limitation of attention allows the magician to operate in an covert manner while looking ordinary.
Image by Blog De Magia
The most known form of misdirection is physical misdirection. The control of attention using the body. There are certain actions that automatically capture attention, such as speaking, using hand gestures, rolling up the sleeves. The objective is to create high areas of interest to capture the audience’s attention so that the method may be carried out in a low area of interest. One’s own gaze is a powerful tool as well as there has been recent work that show eye gaze can lead to automatic shift of attention.
So now that you know why magic works, I am confident to say that you are now a professional magician. Armed with the knowledge of human cognition and misdirection to fool the eyes, you are ready to perform. Good luck and may you look handsome doing it.
