Chapter 201

Murphy asked a few questions to test Hermione and Tom's math ability. The result was not unexpected. The math level of the two was equivalent to that of ordinary fourth or fifth-grade primary school students. Tom's math ability was slightly higher, but it was only at the primary school level.

Even so, it was already top-notch among British children. If Harry and Ron were allowed to come, they would likely not be able to calculate multiplication within ten correctly.

"You two need to make up for math in the future. Not to mention anything else, at least some simple analysis tools must be understood," Murphy said, "Quantification is the first step of research. If it cannot be quantified, it is difficult to conduct in-depth analysis of a thing."

Hermione was a bit hit. She rarely made teachers dissatisfied in her studies, "But, teacher, we haven't finished learning some simple spells yet. Is it too early to start researching profound magic now..."

This was also the voice of many young wizards. After all, letting first and second-grade children start doing magic research was really too strange.

"I don't want you to achieve any results," Murphy said, "But, I hope you can learn to understand and research magic ideas from the exploration of the unknown, instead of following the crowd and reciting from books."

This was also why Murphy chose to teach children from the first to fourth grades and let go of those above the fifth grade directly.

Children who had learned magic at Hogwarts for four or five years were already accustomed to the school's indoctrination education method, and their thinking patterns were likely fixed, making it too troublesome to transform them.

"Alright, you two come here."

Murphy said, taking the two children to a stand.

It was a tripod with a wand fixed on it, and the tip of the wand was aimed at a target one meter away.

And behind the tripod, there was a wire mesh with a human outline, and dozens of strange boxes were installed on the wire mesh.

"This is a portable magic power tester," Murphy pointed to those boxes and said, "It took me a lot of effort to make them usable at Hogwarts."

The magic power fluctuations around Hogwarts were very strong, and the more precise the electrical appliances, the more unusable they were. These magic power testers were researched by Murphy for a long time before they could operate normally in a high-concentration magic environment.

Simply replacing electricity with magic power was fine for ordinary electrical appliances, but for equipment like magic power testers that had extremely high requirements for precision, making magic power stable was not as easy as making the anti-magic property of the equipment better.

Saying that, Murphy took out an old-fashioned camera and aimed it at the stand.

Based on the same reason, modern cameras were also difficult to use at Hogwarts, so he could only use this old-fashioned bulky magnesium flash camera.

"This camera is used to take pictures of these portable magic power testers," Murphy said, "When doing experiments later, we need to monitor the status of all magic power testers at the same moment. There are dozens of magic power testers here, and it is difficult for the human eye to distinguish and record them instantly, so use the camera to take pictures first, and then record them one by one."

Seeing that the two were still confused, Murphy thought for a moment and explained.

"This set of things is used for magic effect testing of wands."

"I want to figure out the principle of the wand first, and then prepare to start making the wand."

"Don't you find it strange? Wizards and magical creatures have magic power, but the magic of magical creatures does not need to use things like wands, while wizards need it—of course, not all wizards need it. It is said that some foreign wizards do not use wands."

"But in short, many spells cannot be used by us wizards without wands. I am very curious about what kind of role the wand plays in this."

"Do you two have any guesses about this?"

Hermione and Tom both shook their heads. They had just entered the magical world. Everyone used wands, so they felt that using wands was a matter of course and never thought about why.

This was also the reason why Muggle-born young wizards entered the school every year, but they still couldn't bring scientific thinking to the magical world.

They were still too young when they enrolled, and their worldview was easily changed. Facing a completely unfamiliar field, it was natural that whatever others said was what it was.

Therefore, Murphy, a guy who came to Hogwarts with the soul of a Muggle adult, was an outlier.

"Hmm," Murphy nodded, encouraging, "Let's not make very scientific inferences, let's just guess. What does this nature of the wand remind you of?"

Tom frowned, having no clue, but Hermione thought for a moment and raised her hand, "Teacher, it's a bit like an antenna."

Murphy's eyes lit up, "Not bad! Very good! Very great!"

"This idea of yours is exactly the same as the teacher's first guess!"

"Look at the appearance of this wand, plus its nature of being able to enhance the wizard's spell ability, isn't this a magic antenna?!"

"Very great, Miss Granger, you now possess an important quality of becoming a researcher, association ability."

"The laws and rules of all things in the world are connected and similar. Association ability is to connect two things that may not be the same in essence, but have some similarities, and use the laws of the things we are familiar with to crack the unknown part."

"Association ability, which is correlation guessing, is a magic weapon for researchers to crack difficult problems."

"The so-called research is actually the process of observing, summarizing, correcting, observing again, summarizing again, and correcting again. And the most critical step of summarizing laws, to put it bluntly, is guessing."

"We guess that apples fall because of gravity, we guess why light has diffraction effects because it is a wave, etc. All laws are derived from guessing, and association is a good guessing method."

Hermione was blushed by the praise, but still puzzled, "But, teacher, what you said seems to be the method for Muggles to study science. Can it also be used to study magic?"

Murphy nodded, "That's right, it's the same method. What do you think science is? What is magic? What is the difference between them?"

This question stumped the little girl. She wrinkled her small face and thought hard, but Murphy didn't disturb her and waited patiently.

After a while, Hermione suddenly seemed to think of something, "I heard from the school teacher that science is materialistic and must follow laws, and things that are idealistic are called magic. Is this the difference between them?"

This should be something her teacher in Muggle school said.

"That teacher should have just made a metaphor," Murphy said, "The so-called idealism and materialism are actually philosophical concepts. It is a way of looking at the world. Materialism says that the essence of this world is material, and consciousness arises from matter, while idealism says that the essence of the world is spirit, and matter is the product of spirit."

"What that teacher said, science is materialistic, is that science provides a materialistic worldview. But in fact, the more important attribute of science is that it is a methodology, a method of understanding the world."

(End of chapter)