According to the five principal exceptions of Gamp's law of elemental transfiguration, one cannot create life. Yet, at multiple times in the series animals are, I assume, created by the use of magic. Are these animals not alive? I would love to ask the author herself, but this is my second best choice. There are various definitions of life, but these animals sure seem to be alive to me.

Then there is the sorting hat. It thinks, and in its own way also communicates with the outside world. It appears to have a certain ability to move, at least to speak. Is it not alive?

So what do you think is the explanation here?

The animals I can imagine are perhaps simply moved from somewhere to where the caster of the spell is, but that would create a lot of troubles in the end, wouldn't it?

The sorting hat... Well, the issue is really if it's alive or not, no?

Welcome to Veritaserum, Weaxezz! Wonderful question

The sorting hat violates more natural laws than the transfigured animals. It has no circulation, it does not eat (as far as we know), it cannot reproduce, etc. It seems likely that the sorting hat has a spell on it similar to the one used on all of the paintings and the marauders map, giving it life-like characteristics

The animals seem alive. They have all of the characteristics of living things, albeit a different origin. I think that magic defies the laws of science in some areas (Try not to think about things defying the laws of science, it makes you're head spin! )

Hope this is helpful some.
Have a lovely day.

But Gamp's law of elemental transfiguration is a law of magic, created by JKR herself. So, she breaks her own rules?

Mod Edit: We do not allow short posts on this site. Especially not in the Great Hall. I suggest you read the Great Hall Rules and the Site Rules before posting again.

Hey, guys.

Sorry to have to do this, but I'm closing up the thread. If you read through the Great Hall Rules (something you all should have done before you posted in here), you will see that we require approval by the Inquisitorial Squad before a new thread can be opened.

Weaxzezz, I recommend you send a PM to either Alkisti or Insomnia explaining why you think this topic should be kept open. They will make the final decision.

For the time being, take another read through the GH Rules -- this forum is a place for debate and in-depth discussion, so short posts are definitely not allowed.


For now, Topic Locked.



David
Forums Moderator

Hello Duelling Club members and everyone else!

As you know, this topic was originally opened by Weaxzezz, who wanted to discuss one of the fundamental laws of JKR's universe. Since this is a very interesting and wide topic, we decided to make it a little bit more general.

Thus, the topics you can discuss here involve everything about the Laws of Magic. From the five exceptions Weaxzezz mentioned, to the way this magical universe works. You are free to talk about all the contradictions, the things that make no sense, and anything else that fits in this category.

To begin with...

What is your opinion about the five exceptions of Gamp's law of elemental transfiguration? Do you think it was necessary for JKR to set such limits? And what does the no-creating-life law include?

Please, keep in mind the Great Hall rules while posting! No-one liners, no swearing, and long thoughtful posts!

Now...discuss!

alkisti

Well as far as I'm aware only 2 of the 5 things in Gamp's law are mentioned in the book.

You cannot create food or drink out of nothing, you can only make it appear from another place if you know were it is, or increase the amount of it if you already have some.

You cannot create love from nothing (The "something" needed to create love is obviously a close relationship.) , however you can imitate it quite realistically with love potions and entrancing charms. However if you were to give the drugged person a second look you could probably tell he was not really in love. The closest thing to a substance that can create real love is Felix Felecis when used to ask someone on a date, but as it simply adapts to make the best out of the current situation it can't really be called creating love from nothing.

Presumably the next un-create-able thing would be human life, or possibly the creation of any species that has the potential to do magic (I can't imagine anyone for instance on being able to create a dragon.). This would include muggles and squib as even though they can't perform magic, the human race is capable of performing magic. Another explanation is that they can love which is often described as magic. If this were to explain it then other creatures such as monkeys could be un-create-able as-well.

For the 4th law, I think it is that you can't make gold from nothing. You can use the philosophers stone to turn things into gold, but this isn't making gold from nothing.

As for the 5th I'm not sure. Up until now, I have always assumed that Gamps laws are to do with the creation of things (or more specifically the things that can't be created.). as it is Gamps elemental laws of transfiguration, and transfiguration is considered with making things. However if this wasn't the case and it was concerned with creating things then I'm sure that it would be "you can't reverse death." This is one of the consistently spoken laws of magic so if Gams laws were not concerned just with the in ability to create things then this would certainly be the 5th law.

I think, to answer the original question about creating animals, that the animals are not really alive perhaps. For instance, I dont think you could magic yourself a pet, i think it is just for spell purposes. I dont believe there is any instance where a wizard creates an animal and keeps it around. The snakes that malfoy/voldemort create with spells always go away or are magicked away. I think that is likely the case with all transfigured animals.

As for the sorting hat, it is just a hat that reacts and thinks like the founders of hogwarts. It is just an image of them left behind (much like the young tom riddle in chamber of secrets) its not really alive

"Out of the five exceptions, only four are mentioned in the series: food, love, life, and information. The fifth and final exception is likely money, as Rowling once remarked in an interview money is something wizards cannot simply materialise out of thin air, for the economic system of the Wizarding World would then be gravely flawed and disrupted." - Eng. wikipedia on 31/3 2oo9.

That's my source of information as a basis for my opinions in this discussion. (If anyone knows where information is mentioned in the books, I'd love to know!)

As for my personal opinion on the matter... I belive that magic is a form of natural force, similar to gravity, magnetism and such. It is 'created' inside all living things, but certain species or races are more adept at creating and using the power. These are referred to as 'magical'. When using magic one must therefor have good knowledge of the way nature works. Say, for instance, that I would like to conjure a shoe; I would need full knowledge of what the shoe is made of, how it is put together and all that. Then, I would have to picture it in my mind and transform the energy within me (magical power) into matter, in accordance with E=mc2.

Using this theory it would be quite possible for me to conjure the body of an animal, but it would be dead. Why? Because no one really knows what life is. Sure, we can tell the difference between dead and alive, but do you know what it really is? No. Therefor you cannot create it. (I also imagine that you would have to use enourmous amounts of energy to create life, seeing as the thing you would create would have to survive on only its original energy for a while till it can eat/gain energy from somewhere else.)

On the topic of Gamp's Laws, I reckon that the fifth exception must be money, otherwise why would very able wizards, such as the Weasleys be poor??? I'm sure that either Mr or Mrs Weasley would be perfectly capable of creating money for themselves and their family if it were possible, although as they're such kind-hearted and honest people, maybe they wouldn't? If they could would it be cheating/stealing/being dishonest to do so?

Moving away from the topic of Gamp's Laws, has anyone else wondered about the pair of vanishing cabinets from Borgin & Burkes? I re-read HBP a few days ago for the 11th time and I noticed that while discussing whether or not Malfoy did indeed plant the cursed necklace on Katie Bell, Harry mentioned the time he hid in a cabinet in Borgin & Burkes while Malfoy & his father were in the shop. At the end of HBP it becomes clear that this cabinet is the other half of the pair of vanishing cabinets that Montague got lost in the previous year, while they were broken. Montague was stuck in limbo between the shop and the school. How did this not happen to Harry? Logically, to me, one of two thing should have happened:

1. The cabinets were still functioning then, in which case Harry should have been transported to where the other one was at the time



2. They were already broken then, in which case why didn't Harry get stuck the same way Montague did?

Does anyone have any ideas on this, because I've been puzzling over it for a week, and am completely stumped!

well we know that the vanishing cabinet would still be working as Harry went in it before his second year when the cabinet broke:

"But as Filch lowered his quill there was a great BANG! on the ceiling of the office which made the oil lamp rattle."

CoS: chapter 8, p97 (UK edition)

and next page we are explained that it was the vanishing cabinet that smashed.

" "That vanishing cabinet was extremely valuable" he was saying gleefully to Mrs.Norris. "We'll have peeves out this time my sweet." "

I would presume that Harry wasn't sucked in because you needed to touch the back of the cabinets interior perhaps.

I've been thinking a bit on this thing with money, and I belive that they could probably create gold, but it would be worthless, because they could never create the value that gold has. Gold isn't valuable because it's gold, it's valuable because it's rare, hard to get and all that. So I think perhaps not the money in physical form is uncreatable, but rather the value of money. Any kind of money created by magic would be worthless.

And about the vanishing cabinet... As far as I know Potter never closes the cabinet, he leaves it a little bit open so that he can peek out and see what's going on. Thus I think it could never take affect?

Hi umm... I think that yes the animals and the sorting hat are alive.

I think this because if they are breathing, moving, have a heartbeat(which they would if the animal is breathing...except in the case of vampires), and it has brain activity, then it is alive.

Also, the sorting hat is in my opinion an annomaly. The sorting hat is an inanimate object with animate characteristics. If the hat can read people's minds, hearts, and souls, has the ability to decide what kind of person they are and therefore what environment they should be in, and talk to give advie about the future, then it has to be alive. I mean, the hat is acting like a human with skills in divination, it just so happens that it cannot move with arms or legs, cannot smell, touch, taste,or see (as far as I know), and he cannot procreate for there to be baby sorting hats.

But then again, aren't some humans already limited on whether or not they can have children?

And, just becuase we have figured out parts of magic does not mean we know everything about it. Someone can't say that one can't create something from magic. Isn't magic itself something uncomprehensible, unfathomable, and something that in its self cannot be explained because of the nature of it. If we found one case where someone created something frommagic, and it was alive, then that law would be proven wrong.

Magic can never be completely understood and therefore, how can we come to assume something about it, when the very word magic implies that anything is possible?

My views are that tjhe sorting hat is alive to a certain extent.Technically for something to be alive it needs to be able to move,reproduce,breathe,excret,drink,touch etc. But I do think the sorting hat is alive because in one of it's songs it says that the four founders gave it brains so the brains make it possible for the hat to speak and move it's mouth.However,the hat as far as I know has no other organs.I suppose we have to accept that this is just an enchantment.For instance how do the paintings talk?Do they have brains?They seem to know alot.Also I was wondering why didn't harry consult dumbledores portrait on what he must do next?Surely it would have known??

Although Mauroder's slyDaughter makes a good case for the sorting hat, I suddenly remembered Dumbledore telling Snape "You are a braver man by far than Igor Karkaroff. You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon..." That's in Deathly Hallows p545. Who's we?
Anyway, that leads me to believe that the Sorting Hat is only a tool and it does not act on its own accord thus it cannot be alive.
Furthermore, I would like to dispute Gawmp's law that one cannot create food BUT can summon it if one knows where it is. Well, how about "Accio Big Mac from Trafalgar sq Mac Donalds" or "Accio Mrs Weasly's dinner from her kitchen." How can somebody not know where food is?!

I think that the animals were just conjured or "summoned". The banishing spell is the opposite of the conjuring spell, and when you banish something, it doesn't die or anything, it just goes away. So I think that the thing is already in existence and you are just bringing it to you.

As for the sorting hat: I do not think it is alive. I just think that Godric Gryffindor put a spell or charm on it to kind of give it an aritificial brain.

I believe that the sorting hat is not alive, it just has brains. It said that the founders gave it brains so this might explain the brains in the Department of Mysteries. The Ministry is probably experimenting and trying to copy the founders of hogwarts magic to create some kind of weapon or interrogating device.

As for the transfiguration of inanimate objects into animals I assume that the witch or wizard is just rearranging the molecules in the object to look and act like the desired animal.

Well my maybe they are alive but if you really think about to be alive is complex, a strange magic. To live is to care, to love, to hate why those creatures may have the simple definition of life, but really aren't at all for they aren't really there. They are changed and always whether in 10,000 years or 1 day they will change back to what they are.

I had the strangest idea last night...I was thinking about the Sorting Hat and how we feel as if it is alive, since it has a mind on its own, and this thought rang a bell. I instantly remembered of Voldemort's diary. It was acting on its own, reading into people's minds and sucking life out of them. So, could the founders have sort-of given a piece of their soul in the Sorting hat? I know it's simpler to assume that they just gave it brains, but maybe it's more interesting to believe they gave it a tiny piece of their soul, so that the Hat represents all four Houses equally. It sounds crazy but wouldn't that be intriguing?

As for turning objects into animals...well it kind of breaks the laws of physics. I do believe myself that they just change the position of molecules and cells etc, sort of alternating the DNA. But I wonder, how long would something like that live? I believe that animals have some kind of soul too, so can objects live only with brains? Maybe they'd die after a while. Or maybe JKR didn't give that much thought on it. Who knows.

The hat idea with the souls is cool I like it

I just got an idea from the new movie. In the movie (I don't remember this from the books, but if it's there I am such an idiot to have missed it!) Slughorn tells Harry about this flower/goldfish he got from Lily, and that when Lily died the goldfish dissapeared.

This, I believe, implies that when creating something with life you do not give it it's own life, rather than implant a bit of your own life in it. Then, when you die so does the life that you 'created'.

What do you think?

alkisti:

What would differentiate the hat from a horcrux then? What other ways to tear a part of your sould from yourself is there than to kill?