How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
There was no magic in the world. Magic was movie special effects. Magic was stage shows with rabbits and doves and sometimes tigers, and David Copperfield sawing people in half and levitating over the audience. There was no such thing as real magic. (5.15)
Okay Josh, we get it. There's no such thing as magic. At this point, we're getting a bit tired of his disbelief. But still, we can totally understand where he's coming from, can't we? It seems like Josh's broken record routine is just the poor kid's trying to convince himself that magic doesn't exist (despite what he has just seen), because if magic does exist, then the world as he knows it is gone forever.
Quote #5
Exactly. When Watson and Crick announced that they had discovered what they called 'the secret of life' in 1953, they were merely rediscovering something alchemysts have always known […] It's called magic. (9.39)
You know what? DNA is pretty magical when you think about it. Seriously, the recipe to create any living thing is contained in such a tiny little code. And maybe that's precisely Flamel's point: science and magic aren't too different. There are elements of magic in science (like the miracle of DNA), and there is totally science in magic, too. After all, Flamel was quite the experimenter.
Quote #6
But what science cannot understand, it dismisses. Not everything can be so easily brushed aside. Can you dismiss what you've seen and experienced today as some sort of misinterpretation of the facts? (10.45)
If science can't explain something, that something doesn't exist. Wait, that doesn't sound quite right… at least not to Flamel. And it's definitely not right in the world of the novel. After all, how do you scientifically explain that Sophie's aura smells like vanilla ice cream? Frankly, you don't. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.