[Marwhini]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I'm all for theorizing about Middle-earth matters Tolkien took for granted, as long as those posited ideas are in line with what he say about his world.

That is kind of my point

At the end of the day though, Middle-earth is a fictional world very similar to our own. It's different enough though, with the open presence of the supernatural, that purely scientific analysis of it is, in my opinion, a lost cause. And dear Gandalf had that saying about not breaking a thing to find out what it is...

Fictional or not, the "Supernatural" is explainable given the assumptions Tolkien makes about the world.

Nor does it make it a lost cause. That it is similar to our own world provides a starting point.

Thus the quote I provided earlier from Tolkien regarding Biology within Middle-earth.

Nor does it need to be "Broken" to find out what it is.

No more than one needs to "break" an Exoplanet to discover what the Atmosphere is composed of, nor to discover its mass, even though the Closest of the Exoplanets yet discovered is roughly a dozen Light Years away (Gliese 15Ab - Gl 15Ab: 11.7LY - and most are hundreds of LY from Earth).

I get the feeling people are actually afraid to ask these questions.

That the "Supernatural" exists within Middle-earth, as I have pointed out elsewhere, simply means that something other than Baryonic Matter exists within Middle-earth; that there exists some-thing... some "stuff" that is not composed of normal molecules that we find in our Universe, yet is just as capable of affecting normal "molecular matter" (Baryonic Matter) as is molecular matter.

Anyone familiar with René Descartes, Augustine, or with the Early Gnostic Christians will be able to provide an answer for what this "Stuff" might be (To say nothing of the Manichaeans, Bogomils, Cathars, etc.).

From that point, it just becomes a matter of looking at the different ways in which this stuff manifests, and interacts with regular matter.

And, we know that it is just as convertible to energy as is Matter (See the Fire Gandalf creates on the side the Redhorn Stair in the snow). We know from this same incident that this conversion to energy somehow is observable by others. And we know that it is not simply limited to this one instance.

That gives quite a few observations from which to derive possible mechanisms, given what we do know about physics, the Enthalpy/Gibbs Free Energy of wet Wood, etc. for just that one instance.

We also have things such as Glorfindel's appearance at the Bruinen, Gandalf's Lightning on Feathertop/Amon Sûl, The Balrog (and Gandalf's Battle with it - twice), The flaming "Mane" of the Balrog, The "Shadow" of the Balrog (and possible "wings"), a litany of things within Lórien, a litany of things concerning Saruman (or Sauron, for that matter), Gandalf rescuing Faramir (twice), the operation of the Palantíri, the disintegration of Saruman's body, The "Bodies" of the Nazgûl, . . . and I am certain others as well... And that is JUST from The Lord of the Rings.

If we look in the other works, we can find similar things with which there are known components.

And, as Tolkien said.... The "Sciences" exist within Middle-earth. You just need to account for what you would observe within it, and the study of it is no less "worthwhile" than it would be for our world, only the products/discoveries would apply only to Middle-earth.

Some of it might be "conjecture" in that we cannot formally test it.

But that is no different than much of our own universe (we cannot test Quantum Theory, either, yet we know without a doubt that the products of Quantum Mechanics produce predictable, reliable results that are more precise than many things we can test), much of which is "Conjecture."

But that doesn't stop the study or examination of it.

MB