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The concept of metal in the Metallic Arts


Ripheus23

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I imagine this topic has been done to death somewhere here, but, well, I'm wondering what concept of metal Sanderson is using to undergird the Metallic Arts? There's a nuclear physics definition, a chemistry definition, and an astrophysics definition, on Wikipedia, in the article "Metal," none of which seem... pertinent... to the magic systems in question. At least not so far as I can see.

OTOH Sanderson has said that it's the color of gems in the SA that determines their powers, not their molecular structure, so I'm guessing it's the "color" of metal, the glossiness or what-have-you, that determines something to be a "metal" in the Cosmere. If that's so, though, I'm going to speculate that there's some run-around from the physics of color perception, through the matter-energy-Investiture equivalence, to the Metallic Arts, though I suspect that Team Cosmere haven't quite pinned down the dynamics yet.

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In every Cosmere magic system, perception plays a huge role into what makes a magic work. Color plays a role in both the gemstones on Roshar and in Awakening. People's perception of what constitutes a metal gives the final say as to what a metal is. Most of the alloys of metals used in the Metallic Arts are formed of two metals, but steel is made of iron and carbon, a nonmetal. Iron and steel are an extremely famous pair of metals such that people (or Leras, or Scadrial, or nature itself) made them pairs in Allomancy - despite steel not being made of only metal atoms. 

In sum: Perception is more important than what occurs on the chemical or quantum level for magics in the Cosmere.

Edited by Artemos
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It's the actual physical structure of the metal. It plays a similar role on Scadrial as the Aons do on Sel. 

Quote

Lyndsey Luther

Ok, last question. It was really difficult coming up with three questions that haven’t been asked already...

Brandon Sanderson

OK... you’re not going to ask me the “what would you ask me” question?

Lyndsey Luther

Not quite...

Brandon Sanderson

OK good, because I hate that one! (laughs)

Lyndsey Luther

My question is if there’s anything that you’ve never been asked that you would like to talk about?

Brandon Sanderson

Oooooh, ok. Hm. That one is so hard! Every time people ask me something like this... What have I never been asked that people should be asking, is basically what the question is? Something that the fans have just missed... They pick up on so much, that it’s hard... I do wonder if, you know… all the magic systems [in my books] are connected and work on some basic fundamental principles, and a lot of people haven’t been asking questions about this. One thing I did get a question on today, and I’ll just talk about this one... they didn’t ask the right question, but I nudged them the right way, is understanding that tie between Aondor [the magic system from Elantris] and allomancy [Mistborn’s magic system].

People ask about getting the power from metals and things, but that’s not actually how it works. The power’s not coming from metal. I talked a little about this before, but you are drawing power from some source, and the metal is actually just a gateway. It’s actually the molecular structure of the metal… what’s going on there, the pattern, the resonance of that metal works in the same way as an Aon does in Elantris. It filters the power. So it is just a sign of “this is what power this energy is going to be shaped into and give you.” When you understand that, compounding [in Alloy of Law] makes much more sense.

Compounding is where you are able to kind of draw in more power than you should with feruchemy. What’s going on there is you’re actually charging a piece of metal, and then you are burning that metal as a feruchemical charge. What is happening is that the feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic charge, and so you actually fuel feruchemy with allomancy, is what you are doing. Then if you just get out another piece of metal and store it in, since you’re not drawing the power from yourself, you’re cheating the system, you’re short-circuiting the system a little bit. So you can actually use the power that usually fuels allomancy, to fuel feruchemy, which you can then store in a metalmind, and basically build up these huge reservoirs of it. So what’s going on there is… imagine there’s like, an imprint, a wavelength, so to speak. A beat for an allomantic thing, that when you burn a metal, it says “ok, this is what power we give.” When it’s got that charge, it changes that beat and says, “now we get this power.” And you access a set of feruchemical power. That’s why compounding is so powerful.

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Interesting...there are currently experimental manufacturing techniques aimed at more tightly controlling, manipulating, and fundamentally altering the basic structure of common metals and alloys to better tune their physical properties, sometimes in profound ways. IE: you could have 2 samples of steel with the same ratio of iron to carbon that have wildly different atomic structures and thermal properties. Up until relatively recently, changing the chemical composition of the alloy was required to be able to manipulate a metal's properties.

I wonder if in era 3 or 4 there could be super-pure or highly-tuned metals/alloys that interact differently or more powerfully with the metallic arts than their more primitive and "natural" counterparts. Probably would be hard to explain to readers without breaking the 4th wall though...

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12 hours ago, Artemos said:

In every Cosmere magic system, perception plays a huge role into what makes a magic work. Color plays a role in both the gemstones on Roshar and in Awakening. People's perception of what constitutes a metal gives the final say as to what a metal is. Most of the alloys of metals used in the Metallic Arts are formed of two metals, but steel is made of iron and carbon, a nonmetal. Iron and steel are an extremely famous pair of metals such that people (or Leras, or Scadrial, or nature itself) made them pairs in Allomancy - despite steel not being made of only metal atoms. 

In sum: Perception is more important than what occurs on the chemical or quantum level for magics in the Cosmere.

Yeah, I think the Cosmere universe utilizes a kind of quasi-metaphysical idealist conception of reality wherein mind/perception is more fundamental than matter/energy. I don’t know if there’s an actual philosophical term for it, but definitely something leaning towards idealism or panpsychism.

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42 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Yeah, I think the Cosmere universe utilizes a kind of quasi-metaphysical idealist conception of reality wherein mind/perception is more fundamental than matter/energy. I don’t know if there’s an actual philosophical term for it, but definitely something leaning towards idealism or panpsychism.

The Elder Scrolls universe has a similar property of perception significantly affecting reality. In the context of TES, "mythopoeia" describes people's ability to rewrite the mythology of the world by simply collectively believing it. If a lot of people believe X is the god of Y, X is the god of Y. Mythopoeia doesn't mean that by definition (literally, it just means making myths), but the TES community has adapted that term to explain this. It usually relates more to gods and histories (both of which are very real and malleable in TES) than it does to magic, but it's a similar idea.

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51 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

It clearly isn’t ALL perception though. I’m pretty sure if you gave a blind tin-eye steel and told him it was tin, regardless of whether he sincerely believed it or not, he still wouldn’t be able to burn it. So the perception thing only goes so far.

Right. It's a matter of the perception and belief of the people/world as a whole, not the perception of a single person. One person's will can't change much (unless it's a really powerful will, like a Shard, perhaps).

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It’s pretty interesting to speculate just how far it goes though. I mean the fact that how people think of something affects how it manifests in Shadesmar is common knowledge; that’s why Scadrial’s Shadesmar is misty, why Roshar’s consists largely of spheres, and presumably why Nalthis’ is composed of colours. And that’s not at all problematic since Shadesmar is basically ‘composed’ of perceptions in the first place. But saying that it also affects how it ‘manifests’ in the physical realm would seem to lead to a chicken or egg-style paradox, since in order to be able to think of something at all, you first need to see it, but how something appears is related to how it’s thought of. That’s the fatal problem with pretty much any non-realist metaphysics. So at some level, even the Cosmere must have some fundamental ‘essence’ or what-have-you that exists independent of any perception. The only question is what exactly that base level of reality is.

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As far as the magic system itself goes, I don't think perception plays a very large part. 

I doubt the power of atium came to be because people believed that's what it would do. 

Allomancy was unknown pre-Rashek to the point that Alendi didn't know he was a seeker, and he was still a bronze misting. 

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@Calderis (the long post), that seems to indicate we're working with the nuclear and/or chemical, but not the astrophysical, concept of metal. In that event, though, I have to wonder if every such metal could have a different magical effect, as such? I mean I know the image of the sixteen metals and Preservation's numerical signature and all that, but it seems to me as if there have to be more than 16 Allomantically/Feruchemically/Hemalurgically usable substances, if it's the essence of the substances that makes them so.

From Wikipedia, "Metal":

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A metal (from Greek μέταλλον métallon, "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, has a lustrous appearance, and conducts both electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typically malleable (they can be hammered into thin sheets) or ductile (can be drawn into wires). A metal may be a pure chemical element such as gold, or an alloy of variable composition such as stainless steel, or an alloy of fixed composition, otherwise known as an intermetallic compound, such as one of the nickel aluminides, Ni3Al, NiAl, or NiAl3. Most elemental metals are denser than other elements; iron, for example, is heavier than carbon, and sulfur.

In physics, a metal is regarded as any substance capable of conducting electricity at a temperature of absolute zero. Many elements and compounds that are not normally classified as metals become metallic under high pressures. For example, physicists were able to keep hydrogen in its solid state under more than 3 million times the atmospheric pressure and deduce its metallic properties.

EDIT: But if there are more than 16 magically viable metals, then I wonder how 16-centric the Scadrian system is, or whatever, or how this all ties together...

Edited by Ripheus23
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4 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

In that event, though, I have to wonder if every such metal could have a different magical effect, as such?

We know that they don't. 

Silver and lead are two examples in Era 1 of allomantically inert metals. Outside of an allomantic alloy they do nothing. 

Edited by Calderis
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I don't know why this should be so, though. "It’s actually the molecular structure of the metal… what’s going on there, the pattern, the resonance of that metal..." doesn't seem like a sufficient basis for such an explanation of the matter. I'd be interested to hear Team Cosmere come up with a molecular description for Godmetals, for example.

If, however, the logic is, "The only Allo-feru-hema-theurgically active metals are those specifically Invested so by Preservation/Ruin/Harmony, as such," then it's not that we're dealing with metals as metals but as things perceived so, for as Artemos noted, "Steel is made of iron and carbon, a nonmetal."

In other words: I have some doubts as to the coherence of Sanderson's current model of the Metallic Arts. But doesn't he say that there's a sort of "scientific consensus" to the deep-level explanations of Investiture, where these explanations have to be changed as people analyze the stories more? (That does something right interesting to the notion of "Words of Brandon," I would say...)

Edited by Ripheus23
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11 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

But doesn't he say that there's a sort of "scientific consensus" to the deep-level explanations of Investiture, where these explanations have to be changed as people analyze the stories more?

Yes, and this is shown repeatedly. There were believed to be 10 allomantic metals. This was wrong. It was the accepted truth of things... It is what everyone believed. That does not mean it was accurate. 

It goes well beyond simple magical mechanics into the much deeper workings like the entire "end-positive/negative/neutral" mechanic.

Quote

Questioner

So for the Old Magic, in this classification system of end-positive, end-neutral, and end-negative, where would that fall under?

Brandon Sanderson

So, almost every magic in the cosmere is end-positive, almost every magic is relying upon an external source of Investiture to power it. So that phrasing is mostly more relevant to Scadrial than anywhere else, because that concept is how I'm dealing with things like the laws of thermodynamics, and even what they call end-neutral is relying a little bit on the power of Investiture to facilitate. So even an end-neutral magic system as they define it on Scadrial is actually not end-neutral. What you get put in you get out, but the power is facilitating that transfer… So that phrasing is kind of a... Take that as a science on.. Scadrial that does not extrapolate well, and may not even be 100% accurate.

Moderator

That would have been a great thing to know before we did the cosmere magic panel. *laughter*

Brandon Sanderson

I look at it as, is an Investiture externally powering the magic, and if you look at Allomancy, yes it is. You are drawing that power out. Feruchemy, you are putting Investiture in from your own body, it's your energy transferring to Investiture, which is being stored, which you are then drawing out, and things like that. But that changing forms is facilitated by the magic. Whereas you're stealing stuff with-- So you could look, for instance at the magic on Nalthis, you could look at that one as being-- as kind of working as end-negative, meaning "I am taking it away from someone else", or end-positive depending on if you're the one receiving it or not. So again, it's a phrasing that can be useful as a tool but doesn't scale well to the other magics.

source

This isn't the magic changing. Just people's understanding of it. 

15 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

as Artemos noted, "Steel is made of iron and carbon, a nonmetal."

Yes. And nicrosil contains silicon. It is still a metal alloy that changes the structure of the metal.

There are 8 base metals, and an alloy for each making 16 allomantic metals. Considering Leras chose that number for his sign not because it was something special to him, but because he said it was some kind of unalterable Cosmere constant... I don't think we're going to find more. 

If that's proven wrong later too, so be it. But we've been show that metals can be allomantically inert. 

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14 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

 I'd be interested to hear Team Cosmere come up with a molecular description for Godmetals, for example.

You're in luck, as they tried to do exactly that.

And I'm certain that not every metal has a power in the Metallic Arts. Each Allomantic metal is like a key that opens a door to some flavor of Preservation's investiture for Pulling, Pushing, improved senses, strength, etc. There's no reason that every metal in existence has to be a key to some new kind of power from Preservation.

Also, I didn't mean to imply that people's perceptions actively decide what each metal do. They don't. I was giving a bad example in implying that steel isn't a metal, but that people's perceptions making it one. Steel is a metal. People's perceptions don't change that. Sorry for the wording.

 

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I know various metals are Allomantically inert but I think this is due to them not being chosen for Investment by Leras and Ati, and that they didn't, in fact, choose metals per se, but metals-perceived-to-be-so (not merely believed to be, but visually seen to be, metallic), and whether something is "scientifically" a metal or not is not sufficiently connected to the explanation of Allomancy [Sanderson's assertion contrarywise notwithstanding].

EDIT: Sanderson can claim that the "molecular structure" and "resonance" of a substance is relevant, here, but I think he's (a) wrong or (b) incompletely explaining things [not that this is wrong on another level, though, for Team Cosmere has itself said that these matters are not decided just by authorial fiat, it seems?].

EDIT 2: The role of the number 16, here, is not what it seems to be said to be, either. For Leras and Ati could have chosen 16 base metals if that's what they were up to. But the fact is that they chose the concept of 8 metals + an alloy per each, which means the numbers 8 and 2 were just as "numerologically" significant, it seems. (Of course 8 times 2 = 16, which makes 16 the "end-goal" number in this system, I suppose, but there's a different... base... number.)

EDIT 3: It's like the general description of Investiture as "some third thing, in the same category as matter and energy." That sounds interesting, but one might wonder if different definitions of that category, or the known examples, would rule out there being a "third" example, even imaginatively-speaking.

Edited by Ripheus23
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22 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

EDIT: Sanderson can claim that the "molecular structure" and "resonance" of a substance is relevant, here, but I think he's (a) wrong or (b) incompletely explaining things [not that this is wrong on another level, though, for Team Cosmere has itself said that these matters are not decided just by authorial fiat, it seems?].

How can Brandon be wrong about a made-up system that he made-up? There can be aspects of the Cosmere that you don't agree with because you think there better-fitting explanations. There are some parts that I don't agree with at all, but his explanations are ultimately absolutely right unless he corrects a prior statement.

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1 hour ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Well actually, not even Brandon can be correct if his explanation is either internally inconsistent or inconsistent with what we’ve seen in the books, which is the point I think Ripheus was making.

I agree that was the point he was making, but I disagree that it's inconsistent. 

What we've been shown as far as "what constitutes an allomantic metal has not been contradicted. It's one of the sixteen. It's a godmetal. Or it's inert like silver and lead. 

Edited by Calderis
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As far as I remember, Sanderson and Peter(?) (I don't remember his last name, is it Ahlstrom?) have said that they are working on the physics/metaphysics of the Cosmere in a rather novel way, that is instead of just declaring, "This is how it is," they are simulating the process of scientific discovery, within this world of theirs, such that there is the matter of "scientific consensus" or something, to it.

In that event, I am not totally criticizing Sanderson for being inconsistent or incomplete in his explanations. Science in the real world is a difficult thing. So for all that being said, I think that there is something else going on, here, than just "the molecular structure" and "resonance" of specific metals. I was reading somewhere WoB-ish that Honorblades could be used, in theory, Hemalurgically. But Honorblades are made of tanavastium(?), are they not? Which is not a metal Invested in by Leras and Ati. Albeit Honor-metal is Invested in by Honor, in some way, wherefore we might say, "Any metal Invested by a Shard, in some [appropriate] way, can be used for the Metallic Arts," but again I don't see what definition of metal is in play, so I'm still confused about this subject as per the OP (is tanavastium a metal because it conducts electricity and heat in the relevant fashion?).

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30 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

I agree. I was just pointing out that it’s wrong to assert that because an author says X that X is necessarily true.

True, but as long as there are not contradictions or inconsistencies, what the author says is truth, at that point in time. 

10 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

I think that there is something else going on, here, than just "the molecular structure" and "resonance" of specific metals

That's fair, but in the absence of any other information, Brandon can't be wrong on this subject. At most, he hasn't explained more on the matter that he has conceived. 

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1 minute ago, Spoolofwhool said:

... but as long as there are not contradictions or inconsistencies, what the author says is truth, at that point in time.

I'm not sure that's true, at least not in this case. Although explaining this doubt would require quite a detour into the philosophy of fictional objects, I suppose...

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13 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

But Honorblades are made of tanavastium(?), are they not? Which is not a metal Invested in by Leras and Ati.

Neither is Trellium, and yet we've actually seen that used as a Hemalurgic spike. 

Trying to apply the "standard rules" to godmetals is not going to work.

I mean, this entire thread is about that issue concerning mistings and ferrings. 

 

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