Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

How to refer to magnetism in ancient cultures?

+0
−0

I need to make a character, who is agnostic of electricity, electromagnetic fields, and any modern age theories, refer to electromagnetic phenomena.

Ancient cultures, like greeks, chinese, were somewhat aware of electricity and magnetism. Few examples are: thunder and yellow amber, which has an electrostatic property.

Right now, I'm using yellow amber to refer to the phenomenon. But I'm not very satisfied.

"There is no yellow amber in the region.", says a character who sees an improbable electromagnetic phenomenon.

To clarify: we're in an ancient civilization. The character is aware of some electromagnetism effects, like electrostatic field effects, or thunder. He does not fully understand why these effect happen, in details. But he understand that in certain conditions, it happens. Now, he sees these effects happening in a situation where those conditions are unmet. He is confused about it and in his thought he needs to refers to electromagnetism using words of his culture.

His culture is theocratic and is known as the most technologically advanced culture in the world. It is said that they have no new discoveries to do : they think they know everything there is to know.

The character, here, has a proof that they don't. Hence, he will need to say something like :

"I have found the proof that something about [electromagnetism] cannot be explained by our current knowledge, despite our belief that it is complete".

A replacement for "electromagnetism" is this sentence is what I am looking for.

That said, I can probably invent some word refering to a wrong, imaginary, inexistent cause for electromagnetism effects. But I would like to avoid referring to some God of Thunder. Their religion is monotheistic.

So, what I need is a somewhat realistic term to replace "electromagnetism" in the bold sentence, that would refer to an misbelief about the causes of electromagnetism effects.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/14142. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

1 answer

+0
−0

I'm not entirely sure what you are aiming for here, but it sounds like you need people in an ancient culture to refer to electricity and magnetism without actually using those words. Describe the effects. Is the piece of metal moving? The reader will probably come up with magnetism. Is there a spark? The reader will probably guess electricity.

If this is not what you're after, I might suggest adding a few details to the question. What is the context for this?

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

0 comment threads

Sign up to answer this question »