Where do elves get metal?

[Formendacil]

Actually... I think the latest round of wearied explanations on the part of Marhwini has me finally comprehending what he is about... sort of. You're attempting to build a model of Middle-earth, down the physical (and metaphysical) laws--a digital orrery, so to speak? Assuming I have that right, I was certainly off the mark to speak of your goal as being a Unified Theory.

As far as this goes, I can see how someone having a passion for both Tolkien and computers (or should I say "computational science?") would develop a sustaining interest in such a project. It is, however, quite far from the norm of the fandom around here--I'd say this forum skews Luddite rather than Early Adopter.

Except for one thing: it seems to me that you cannot proceed with this project without, in fact, having a criteria for establishing what is or is not "true" in Middle-earth. The comparison with an orrery sticks in my mind because you cannot construct an orrery without determining how the solar system actually moves: is it geocentric or sol-centric? In the case of Middle-earth this is no throwaway analogy: was Arda ever flat? Was it geocentric?

And this brings me back to the question of canonicity (every few years, it seems, I get the itch to goad people back to that impossible topic): unless you are to make yourself the sole arbiter of what is true or not in Middle-earth--in which case it seems to me you'd be better off just creating your own world from scratch and admitting that it's based on Middle-earth--or you have to establish a rule by which to admit or deny Tolkien's own work.

And you're still going to end up with places where Tolkien is silent, at which point you have to fill in the blanks yourself. As I said, I can see how this is an attractive project to pursue, but surely it should be equally clear how someone not participating in the project might be cool to it: the project invites you to add your own decision-making and art, however measured, and this is bound to make the observation of the project less appealing to other Tolkien fans. As fans we tend to assume immense feelings of personal ownership regarding the objects of our obsession.

One final point:

Originally Posted by Marhwini

While Tolkien's work might be "Art" it does not dismiss the statements made by Tolkien himself (see where I have quoted them above in the thread more times than I can now count) that there are Operational Rules (Sciences) within Middle-earth that are just as robust and rigorous as are our Sciences in this world.

Let us grant for a moment that Tolkien's quotes mean exactly what you claim they do (personally, I do think they stretch QUITE so far, though I agree with that he sees Middle-earth as a rationally-constructed world), this does not mean that him stating this would make that so. Just because Tolkien SAYS that Middle-earth is based on operational rules does not make it so. For one thing, Tolkien lacked the Divine Omniscience necessary to ensure all these rules were kept proper and in play in the creation of all his fiction. For another, Tolkien is known to occasionally mis-characterise his own writings when reflecting on them from a later time.


Perhaps the most pertinent point of all to my mind is that any such model of Middle-earth would have to be precisely that: A model. Not the model. In complete fairness to Marhwini, I should note that his explanations do say, multiple times statements of this nature: "an Operating Virtual World of Middle-earth," "a Model World of Middle-earth to be Instantiated," "a working System and Foundation." Of course, if it truly is only *A* model, then it is implicit that other models are possible on the same data--and the data of Middle-earth is self-conflicting and limited, unlike the real world, where we have the possibility of going out and acquiring more.