EAST LANSING, Mich. – Author J.K. Rowling’s young wizard Harry Potter might be fiction, but the historical basis of his “magic” is not.
The latest motion picture adaptation of Rowling’s series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” opens July 15 in the United States to again enchant fans with a tale of potions and spells. But if Harry’s Hogwarts classrooms bear an uncanny resemblance to today’s chemistry laboratories, Michigan State University visiting assistant professor Mark Waddell points out that it’s no mystical coincidence.
“Magic was about control and in a lot of ways, science is too,” Waddell told a mixed-generational group during a recent “Grandparents University” lecture. That program brings grandparents and grandchildren to the campus for three days each summer for bonding and educational activities.
Waddell, who acknowledges his affection for the Potter series, also weaves popular culture into his more typical scientific history lectures to Lyman Briggs College pre-medical and science students.
"What makes the Harry Potter books so compelling, I think, is their ability to mix the familiar and mundane with the strange and fantastic, and I've always believed that history can accomplish the same thing,” he explained. “The past can often look simultaneously familiar and strange, and that's especially true when you begin to delve into the ideas and beliefs that gave rise to modern science. We're not as far from mandrakes or the Philosopher's Stone as we might think."
Both the human-formed root (mandrake was reputed to scream upon extraction from the soil) and the Philosopher's Stone, a mystical source of elemental transmutation, have a basis in popular belief dating back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. They also appear in the Potter stories, together with references to other historical beliefs and people.
Alchemy – the quest to turn base elements into gold – formed the basis for modern chemistry, Waddell said, while astronomy grew out of ancient astrology and herbology was the root of some of today’s horticulture. Robert Boyle, considered the father of modern chemistry, and physicist-philosopher Isaac Newton both were obsessed with finding the Philosopher’s Stone, Waddell said, which was said to prolong life as well as transmute metals.
Waddell’s research on the historical basis of the Potter saga is the subject of a traveling exhibition produced by the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine. The exhibit, “Harry Potter’s World: Renaissance Science, Magic and Medicine,” compares historical magical notions with today’s science on a half-dozen 3-by-7-foot banners. On tour from September 2009 through November 2010, it is booked into a dozen libraries around the country through the American Library Association.
Drawing from materials in the NLM’s own extensive historical collection, Waddell used the exhibition to highlight the beliefs and people -- alchemists, naturalists and occultists -- of the 15th and 16th centuries who often are referenced in Rowling’s pages.
The exhibition complements the National Library of Medicine’s Web page, “Harry Potter’s World,” which includes secondary and college-level curricular elements and online activities.
Weaving such popular culture into his lectures, Waddell said, “gets people thinking about history as something fun as opposed to something boring, which is always a challenge.”
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