Harry Dresden Meets Robert Langdon
By Martin Lambert
Is any sufficiently ancient wisdom indistinguishable from magic?
My apologies to Arthur C Clark for the paraphrase, but hopefully I have your curiosity piqued. As the old saying goes “opposites attract”. So perhaps this is the case with two current fiction authors, Dan Brown and Jim Butcher.
According to Jim Butcher’s main character, professional wizard Harry Dresden “magic still has to do business with the laws of physics”. All through the “Dresden Files” Harry explains that “magic” is a way of working with the energies of the universe. Harry tells us that “magic is in your head really” that the spells, potions, tools, and props of magic only serve the purpose of aiding in the focus of thought and will to accomplish your intended goal. He tells us repeatedly that with talent, training and strong personal belief in yourself and your intended purpose, “magic” can be done.
While most people can’t do “magic”, neither can they all sing, or play music, or calculate formulae in their heads. We are raised with the understanding 
that people are born with certain individual talents or gifts or abilities that are not necessarily common to the all. Some people are lucky from birth, or never seem to get ill, or have photographic memories. Other people can do extremely complex mathematical equations in their head, or draw perfect portraits of people or cities from memory, and if you look hard you find the people who can do truly unbelievable things from birth or after accidents or illnesses that alter their mind or body in some way.
To flip the coin on this matter, Dan Brown’s symbologist hero Robert Langdon learns about the real world science of “noetics” in his latest adventure “The Lost Symbol”. 
Dan’s well known exhaustive research into the side details of his stories is respected by his readers and the public media alike. In a recent interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, the concepts and goals of noetics are discussed and as Dan Brown himself says, “don’t take my word for it, go find out and decide for yourself what to believe.” Having explored the net quite a bit after having read “The Lost Symbol” myself, I see noetics as a science that has spent the last several decades researching the intuitive and esoteric abilities of the human mind, from a scientific point of view. With some simple and accepted scientific ideas in mind, they make it hard to dismiss the possibilities out of hand. What is the nature of thought? Is it chemical, electrical, both or neither? If thought, memory, consciousness, intuition, and reason, are based on or affected by the matter and or energy of the universe, matter and or energy in turn MUST also be affected by them as well.
Dan’s book asks a seemingly simple question, is it possible for thoughts to have mass? A purely scientific response would hardly be able to say no. You can claim (as the book does) that such a mass would be immeasurably small, but if it does have even the smallest mass, then it has to exert force upon the rest of the universe. Dan’s research also refers back repeatedly to what he calls “the ancient mysteries” or “lost wisdom of the ages” from many cultures all around the world. It takes no great effort to find mention of these mysteries in world history and cultural heritage. If a part of these ancient mysteries is learning to control and employ the energies of the universe through the use of human thought, as so many legends claim, and if even only one person in a million can manage to reach any level of significant ability in this field, that would still mean more than 6000 of such practitioners could exist on the planet today.
I make no claims, and do not wish to force what I might believe upon anyone else, but I agree whole heartedly with Dan Brown, don’t just blindly accept what others will tell you is the nature of the universe. Seek, discover, and decide for yourself what you believe to be true. In this age of information and communication there is more opportunity than ever before to find our own answers.
By Martin Lambert
Guest Blogger – Buzzy Multimedia
Dark Matter Made Me Do It
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Don’t Make Me Get My Wand
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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Still, while there are all sorts of connections between us and the Universe, the butterfly effect has yet to be proven. Not that it doesn’t have a romantic appeal. I clapped for Tinker Bell. Perhaps the best possibility of influencing the external is by using our minds to understand the workings of our corner of the cosmos and with that understanding mold the physical in some measure and some degree. If thought alone without action could bring about change then you would have thought that the collective agony of millions of people who have and continue to be tormented and killed would have toppled the monsters. Their thoughts and feelings have not been enough, yet nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. An idea that people are ready to put into practice.
You forgot to mention one very important thing – Jim Butcher does real honest to goodness research when he writes a book. Dan Brown does not. I can almost take offence to your comparing the two men as equals.
You lay claim that Brown’s research is well known, but that is not true—it is his blatant lack of research that makes him infamous. When taken up on his challenge to go out and check his facts, he was found wrong on so many, many points. There have been no less than three different Discovery and History Channel shows that I have seen pointing out how off the mark Brown was in his books. I can only imagine that his newest debacle is just as inaccurate as “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” were. A fictional novel as a means of entrainment does not have to be historically correct, in fact, it makes for better storytelling sometimes when the truth is tweaked. Colleen McCullough, of “Thorn Birds” fame, made a wonderful career of writing books about ancient Rome. But it is outright irresponsible and incredibly silly to claim to be historically accurate when Brown had to know that his book was not. He didn’t do his research, or hired a poor researcher to do the job for him.
Furthermore, noetics is not a science. Noetics is, by definition, the study of guesswork and how it relates to a divine power. Noetics is nothing more than saying aloud to God “If my team make the point spread than I will go to church next Sunday just like you want me too” and then finding yourself in church the following Sunday. At best Noetics is a philosophy, the study problems concerning abstracts.
Dan’s book asks is it possible for thoughts to have mass and therefore energy? And that if only 1 in a million people can create thoughts with mass and energy than there are 6 thousands of these people on the planet right now. Let me guess, does Brown also suggest that baseball teams have the “real” home field advantage because the thought power of their fans control the power of the universe and make them play better, make the other team play worse? Truly, THAT is wishful thinking. Dan Brown is not even half as credible as Erik von Däniken. At least von Däniken does his research even if he makes fantastic leaps of logic.
Lomax
“ A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read ‘The Lost Symbol’, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.
— The Economist
Nov 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition
I have always liked Dan Brown. And have always seen his stories being more about supposition than based in fact. I think the legal controversy surrounding “The Da Vinci Code” shows that he does take some inspiration from non-fiction sources, despite that it might not be the best of factual sources.