Surgebinding vs Soulcasting

[11thorderknight]

So, everyone seems to pretty much accept that Soulcasting is a form of Surgebinding, one of the ten abilities of the ten orders, shared by two of them. This is definitely supported by Jasnah's assertion that two of the ten orders had "inherent" Soulcasting abilities.

 

However, there's a couple of points in the book where it's implied that Soulcasting is something different, or at least, is somehow special. For instance, in Dalinar's vision with Nohadon, the latter mentions Surgebinders and Soulcasters as two distinct types of people. If Soulcasting is just one form of Surgebinding, why the special emphasis?

 

Two more points. The first is the fact that Soulcasting relies on different colors of Stormlight to produce different things. With Kaladin and Szeth, any Stormlight they inhale gives them the exact same abilities. Why the difference? Also, inhaling Stormlight gives Szeth and Kaladin a physical boost, which seems entirely unrelated to the Surges of Pressure and Gravity that their order is based on. Mixing metaphors a bit, it's like there's an "internal" use of stormlight that acts sort of like burning pewter does for allomancers, and an "external" use that differs based on a Knights order. I'm not sure how else one can possibly explain the Szeth/Kaladin scenes. However, we get no hint at all of Shallan/Jasnah having any "internal" use of Stormlight.

 

Finally, there's the name itself - Soulcasting. What exactly does this mean? We know that Kaladin's order was called the Windrunners, and it's a pretty obvious name. However, note that the name applies to the order, not to what they do. Why does Soulcasting get it's own capitalized name? And what exactly does this name have to do with changing things? 

 

Just some thoughts. I'll admit that most evidence seems to point to it as simply one of the Surges, but still....the issues I brought up do seem a bit inconsistent.

[Windrunner he/him]

It is confirmed to be a part of Surgebinding.

JOSH
Is Soulcasting a subset of Surgebinding?

BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, it is.
Source

Soulcasting is the Surge of Transformation. The weird gem thing is a restriction unique to Soulcasting, according to Brandon.
 
EDIT:
Here's a few more relevant quotes.

QUESTION
You've mentioned that each of the smaller glyphs on the inside cover of the The Way of Kings represents a type of magic. Can you tell us how many of these types we've seen so far?

BRANDON SANDERSON
Remember that to get an order of the Knights Radiant you take two of the small glyphs and one of the large glyphs. The large glyph represents a concept or an ideal mixed with an essence, what they call the elements of this world, with two magics attached to it. You have seen the Windrunners, which is the first, top-right glyph, mixed with the two Surges—the forces in this world—attached to it. So you've seen pressure and gravitation as mixed together to form a Windrunner. You have seen one of the other Surges, which is Soulcasting]—Transformation—though which other Surges that mixes with to form orders of the Knights Radiant I am not specifically going to say at this time. What else have you seen? Those are the only ones that are overt. But you have seen the effects of others.
Source

 
And the gem thing

STORMATLAS
I finally got to ask a question about the Stormlight Archive that Windrunner17 and Chaos helped me with which was:

"Why Can Kaladin Surgebind with any gem type but Jasnah and Shallan need specific types?"

BRANDON SANDERSON
A lot of that will be explained as the series comes along. It is really the difference between soul casting and the other forms of Surgebinding. Its more a quirk of Soulcasting than a it is something that is different about about Kaladin. So you've kind of got it reversed a little bit though, Soulcasting has this additional restriction that the other ones don't.

Source

Hope that this was helpful!

Edited July 9, 2013 by Windrunner

[hoser he/him]

Finally, there's the name itself - Soulcasting. What exactly does this mean? We know that Kaladin's order was called the Windrunners, and it's a pretty obvious name. However, note that the name applies to the order, not to what they do. Why does Soulcasting get it's own capitalized name? And what exactly does this name have to do with changing things? 

Just spitballing here.  Consider the goblet that Shallan Soulcasts as having a soul that indicates what kind of thing it is.  The "soul" of the goblet is cast into something else.  In the general (cosmere?) section there are threads which make my brain hurt, but that's my quick and dirty understanding. 

[Morsk he/him]

There's a much older quote that makes it sound like Surgebinding and Soulcasting used to be separate, in an earlier revision.

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=428#21

Nadine

Will The Way of Kings series be based on one of the worlds and magic systems you have already created or are you inventing a totally new one for this series?

Brandon Sanderson

It will be new. There are going to be a lot of different types of magic in the world (I see there's a question below asking about that, so I'll answer more there.) But there will be two main magic systems for the first book. The first will deal with the manipulation of fundamental forces. (Gravity, Strong/weak atomic forces, Electromagnetic force, that sort of thing.) The second will be a transformation based magic system, whereby people can transform objects into one of the world's ten elements.

I'm not sure it really does mean that though. The quote could be referring to "all the Windrunner abilities" as one magic system, and "Shallan and Jasnah's Soulcasting" as the other, since that's what shows up in the first book.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

There's a much older quote that makes it sound like Surgebinding and Soulcasting used to be separate, in an earlier revision.

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=428#21I'm not sure it really does mean that though. The quote could be referring to "all the Windrunner abilities" as one magic system, and "Shallan and Jasnah's Soulcasting" as the other, since that's what shows up in the first book.

Brandon has mentioned that it depends on how you count them - you can definitely say there are thirty different magic systems (with each surge as a system)

[11thorderknight]

Thank you for clearing that up with Brandon's quotes, very helpful. His comments on the large glyphs (orders/essences) and small glyphs (surges) makes me wonder though, whether the magic is more complicated than each order having two abilities and sharing each with one adjacent order. As an example, Kaladin uses Pressure and Gravity, and we know that the 10th order will therefore also use one of these (I'm betting on Gravity, since Pressure seems to fit so much more with Vapor, order #2). However, does that mean that order 10 will be able to use the Basic Lashing the same way Kaladin does, and that order 2 will use the Full Lashing? My guess is no - they will use Gravity and Pressure respectively, but what they can do with them will be different. 

 

This leads to a very important question: is Soulcasting going to be different for Jasnah and Shallan? Or is it going to simply be a matter of each having one other, distinct ability?