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Maester's Conspiracy


Joey Crows

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I've seen some posts about the whole "The Maesters are plotting to stay in power thing." It makes a lot of sense and seems to be an allegory for science vs. religion, albeit the reverse of what we hear in the real world (at least in my liberal bubble.) 

With the exception of The Mage and his small group of disciples, most of the Maesters are indeed perpetuating a world view that relies solely on a history passed down from those in their own ranks with little regard for the realm of magic/dragons etcetera. From a real world perspective that seems understandable. However, this is not the real world. It is a fantasy world that clearly embraces magic and dragons and the yet to be determined battles between the gods.

So, my questions is; Is this truly an agenda based on politics and the quest for power and control, or is it simply a case of men of science imploring the world to take reason over superstition? 

The fact that The Mage is undermining the Citadel would lead us to believe that he is a light in the darkness of a medieval society, but again, this is counter to what the intellectual battles fought during the actual middle ages were. Is this a juxtaposition of what we are used to for the sake of a though experiment, or is there actually a conspiracy coming out of the Citadel that suggests they are seeking to gain power and influence?

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I think its George's struggle against rationalism, nowadays anything that claims to be "scientific" is held as automatically true and unquestionable, the only thing ever questioned is whether the correct scientific method/instrument was used to reach the conclusion. Feyeraband wrote a great book called The Tyranny of Science where he questions the exclusive use of science over human experience. The maesters know dragons and therefore magic has existed-the evidence is there is their bones left behind in KL, Marwyn is still a member of the citadel, he just questions the orthodoxies they promote because of the empirical evidence he has seen himself that proves magic still exists in that world. I'm not sure if its a conscious conspiracy- groupthink is very real and the Maesters may actually have convinced themselves that magic is a myth their world would be better off without despite the evidence that magic exists all around them if they cared to look for it. Luwin seems to be an honest man and is certainly loyal to the Starks yet he tries to convince Bran that Nan's tales are just stories and magic, if it ever existed (seems a funny thing to claim when the wall itself is so nearby) is long gone from the world.

I think Marwyn is a symbol of the importance of questioning orthodoxy, that's what those enlightenment intellectual battles were all about for me, rather than the split between the arts and the sciences we ended up with.

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7 minutes ago, BlueBard said:

I think its George's struggle against rationalism, nowadays anything that claims to be "scientific" is held as automatically true and unquestionable, the only thing ever questioned is whether the correct scientific method/instrument was used to reach the conclusion. Feyeraband wrote a great book called The Tyranny of Science where he questions the exclusive use of science over human experience. The maesters know dragons and therefore magic has existed-the evidence is there is their bones left behind in KL, Marwyn is still a member of the citadel, he just questions the orthodoxies they promote because of the empirical evidence he has seen himself that proves magic still exists in that world. I'm not sure if its a conscious conspiracy- groupthink is very real and the Maesters may actually have convinced themselves that magic is a myth their world would be better off without despite the evidence that magic exists all around them if they cared to look for it. Luwin seems to be an honest man and is certainly loyal to the Starks yet he tries to convince Bran that Nan's tales are just stories and magic, if it ever existed (seems a funny thing to claim when the wall itself is so nearby) is long gone from the world.

I think Marwyn is a symbol of the importance of questioning orthodoxy, that's what those enlightenment intellectual battles were all about for me, rather than the split between the arts and the sciences we ended up with.

This is my interpretation too. Being a scientist myself, I find very troubling that the only accepted approximation to the World nowadays is through "science and reason", rejecting any other form of knowledge. In our World as well as in Westeros, this is going to bring dire consequences.

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9 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

This is my interpretation too. Being a scientist myself, I find very troubling that the only accepted approximation to the World nowadays is through "science and reason", rejecting any other form of knowledge. In our World as well as in Westeros, this is going to bring dire consequences.

The best part of using science and reason (with an open mind) is that it often leads to new discoveries and understandings that were previously inconceivable. Things that might once have been thought of as magical are given a legitimate foundation from which to better understand them.

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