Uh you missed the point.
The Authority had the last word, regardless of who it was. I picked Aristotle off the top of my head (as Artes Liberales has 7 authorities, written by different people it is obvious that Aristotle is not the last word on everything). At the end of the day in the middle ages the sum of human knowledge could be contained in a small number of books according to the people who taught that knowledge. That was the point I was making, obviously poorly.
Plato's works wasn't available in western Europe until the fall of Constantinople, so all you have is the commentary and interpretations of (and based upon) the neo-platonists (e.g. Plotin). Of course with such a wide ranging organization, you could argue that the OoH may have access to the sources. Although they are few and far between, you do have some empirical "scientists" during this period (e.g. Albertus Magnus).
Well, these are clearly PCs that use modern ideas for their characters in complete disregard to the medieval paradigm 
There are things considered to be true in physics, but for example Newtonian physics was taught as an authority and until the "discovery" of quantum mechanics it very much looked like physics as a science would be dead. If all is known why bother looking for anything new? So the fact that discrepencies existed was very good for physics as a whole.
This is a large part of the reason there is such opposition to the "Standard Model" since if you know how things work then you stop looking.
There are no authorities in physics, there are no authorities in modern science even though there are good books (Haliday and Resnik for example), there are good papers and there is good work. But the asumption that a book by Einstien is the be it, and end it and total summation of what is known about Gravity or Reletivity is not made.
In fact testing what is commonly known to be true is a good place to begin an experiment.
We have a different attitude then do people in the middle ages, as that wonderful series shows Our Universe Has Changed several times since then.
Now this is also wholy irrelevant to the real question of authorities in game terms.
Humph. So I've gotten clear on how to quote (thanks for the pointers) (italics and so forth still don't seem to work), but I don't seem to be able to preview this (I click 'preview' and the page never loads). So if the formatting is all off, sorry! I tried, but my Latin incantations and Potter-esque finger-wagglings were unable to sway the computer to function.
Okay, point taken. But to make the argument that authorities sometimes actually did kill medieval disciplines, you would have to come up with some examples of authorities that did kill medieval disciplines. But furthermore, you would have to have an example where the discipline was actually killed, instead of pretty much complete. For instance, Aristotle's logic was the authority on logic, but logic was "liberated" — it became acceptable to question Aristotle — hundreds of years before anyone actually did anything new, so it's plausible to say that the discipline wasn't dead, just relatively complete in the sense that not just freedom but massive genius was required for progress. The same might be true of the various Artes Liberales. I mean, between medieval grammar and Chomsky, did anything happen in grammar? Between Euclid and the 19th century, no real advances in geometry.
I took you up on the Aristotle example because (thanks to the history of science and philosophy from Galileo to Hume) it's often thought that Aristotle worked a destructive influence on everything he touched, so it would be very reasonable for you to have intended the Aristotle example more seriously than you did.
I think that we're having a semantic problem. By 'authority,' I was trying to refer to a class of books that would be foundational in their disciplines, in the sense that one would have to be familiar with it to progress much in the discipline, and seminal, in the sense that many other books would have familiarity with that book as a prerequisite for their intelligibility and many books would be commentaries on that book. That is, by 'authority,' I meant the First Word, and I was trying to talk about a game-defined category. (I might be confusing things by using 'authority' wrongly, talking sometimes in game jargon and sometimes not.)
But you're talking about Last Words. I agree that it's definitive of modern science that no one gets to have the Last Word, and that a discipline has gone moribund if anyone does. When I called "On the Electrodynamics..." an authority, I didn't mean that it was unchallengeable, I meant that it is a paradigm case of good science that set the standard for how science is to be done and also determined the content of much later science: it's foundational and seminal.
Humph. So I've gotten clear on how to quote (thanks for the pointers) (italics and so forth still don't seem to work), but I don't seem to be able to preview this (I click 'preview' and the page never loads). So if the formatting is all off, sorry! I tried, but my Latin incantations and Potter-esque finger-wagglings were unable to sway the computer to function.
Okay, point taken. But to make the argument that authorities sometimes actually did kill medieval disciplines, you would have to come up with some examples of authorities that did kill medieval disciplines. But furthermore, you would have to have an example where the discipline was actually killed, instead of pretty much complete. For instance, Aristotle's logic was the authority on logic, but logic was "liberated" — it became acceptable to question Aristotle — hundreds of years before anyone actually did anything new, so it's plausible to say that the discipline wasn't dead, just relatively complete in the sense that not just freedom but massive genius was required for progress. The same might be true of the various Artes Liberales. I mean, between medieval grammar and Chomsky, did anything happen in grammar? Between Euclid and the 19th century, no real advances in geometry.
I took you up on the Aristotle example because (thanks to the history of science and philosophy from Galileo to Hume) it's often thought that Aristotle worked a destructive influence on everything he touched, so it would be very reasonable for you to have intended the Aristotle example more seriously than you did.
I think that we're having a semantic problem. By 'authority,' I was trying to refer to a class of books that would be foundational in their disciplines, in the sense that one would have to be familiar with it to progress much in the discipline, and seminal, in the sense that many other books would have familiarity with that book as a prerequisite for their intelligibility and many books would be commentaries on that book. That is, by 'authority,' I meant the First Word, and I was trying to talk about a game-defined category. (I might be confusing things by using 'authority' wrongly, talking sometimes in game jargon and sometimes not.)
But you're talking about Last Words. I agree that it's definitive of modern science that no one gets to have the Last Word, and that a discipline has gone moribund if anyone does. When I called "On the Electrodynamics..." an authority, I didn't mean that it was unchallengeable, I meant that it is a paradigm case of good science that set the standard for how science is to be done and also determined the content of much later science: it's foundational and seminal.
How in the bleedin' 'ell did I post that twice? The first eleventy-seven times I tried to post it, nothing seemed to happen, but the esoteric order of computing was posting it behind my back, it would seem. Sorry, didn't think the message was important enough to post twice! Just ignore the first one; I kept tinkering while trying to post it.
(This is why I say: If it wasn't in use by the reign of Alfred, it's in beta-testing. If it wasn't in use by the reign of Harold, it's not even in beta-testing. And you have to be test-pilot or lab-rat crazy or courageous to try to use technology invented since Elizabeth I.)
Huh? No serious scientist will object to the Standard Model for such a reason, it isn't a scientific reason. You can object to it, for example, on the grounds that it isn't provable in even atomic physics as the calculations involved are intractable; no one can model a nucleus, let alone a "real" system like a few ions in a gas environment, using the standard model. So you could say it's not a useful model, and claim reductionism isn't an effective paradigm. But objecting to it because if it's true you'll stop looking? No.
Not that any scientist would dare say that his theory (Standard Model or any other) is Truth - that's part of the ramifications of that whole "death of physics" not coming to be buisness.
We're getting sidetracked.
There are two ways to see Authorities. One is to consider them as ingallible and having said all there is to be said on a subject. Under this view, an infinite-level low-quality Summa could model them nicely.
This view is in direct contradition to what ArM5 says about authorities.
Another way to see them as seminal works that got the essentials of the subject-matter right. Under this view it makes sense to treat them as regular Summa, but build a mechanism that rewards revisiting and referencing them.
I am highly skeptical whether medieval views on the matter uniformly conform to any one of these contrasting views. I am even less convinced that this matters very much for an ArM game - both seem plausible enough to me to form a basis for a game.
I favor the view of authorities as presented in ArM5, and if it comes up in my saga will represent them as low-level Summa. This is strictly for game related issues, I believe it will make for a better game.
Regardless what I will take from this disucssion is prerequisites for Tractatus. I think I'll throw some Tractatus with prerequisites (Incomprehensible without them) at my PCs, eventually. Discovering a pile of tractatus that can be deciphered by locating a long-lost text, or that hint at Mystery, or so on can add interest, and requiring one to be read concurently with an authoritive text can be good for flavor.
P.S, Bryan, if you can put in (quote)...(/quote), you should be able to put (b)...(/b) for bold and (i)...(/i) for italic. But the esoteric order of computing is clearly working against you, so who knows.
My basic concern was that the books were too generic; they didn't have much personality. So I wanted to lend them personality by tying them to one another in various ways: give them special statuses and connections.
Based on my original idea and what y'all have said by way of criticism, I see two categories of very special books, the foundational and the unlimited; often, they will overlap. The texts that ArM5 defines as the authorities might be either foundational or unlimited or neither; this arrangement is orthogonal to the game's definition.
Some summae and tractatus are such that virtually every other book in their discipline will be incomprehensible to someone who hasn't read the book(s). These should exist for most academic and some religious abilities, probably for at least some magical arts, and certainly for magic theory.
Some summae are such that you can return to them forever; they are infinite in level. However, there shouldn't be more than one or two such summae per discipline, and there should be such summae only in academic or religious abilities (and, perhaps, magic theory, but that depends on Bonisagus's book). No more than 2/your ability of the seasons that you spend in study of that discipline can be with that summa, and one of those two must be with a commentary that is new to you.
A commentary is a tractatus the function of which is to make the summa on which it is a commentary more re-readable. As with all tractatus, commentaries have qualities, and can make the summa re-readable only to the level of the tractatus. A commentary studied without the text on which it is based is incomprehensible. (Perhaps there could be commentaries on commentaries, thus making even tractatus re-readable; study of a meta-commentary might or might not require the original summa.)
Obviously this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but is there anything unworkable or hyper-complicated about it?
Thanks for the great ideas, guys!
That is true. As a final comment though, I have spoken personally to theorists who don't like the standard model. Their reasons are not scientific in the sense you mean. But then neither were the arguments about ether made to explain away the michealson-morley experiment or Einstien's objection to quantum mechanics.
This also fits in how they were viewed, more or less. And the fact that there was no real original research or change or whatever in the middle ages. The middle ages viewed the universe differently then we did at the end of the day.
ArM5 is a rules book not a history text, I don't assume that they get all things correct. I like the game system but I am not at all blind to its short comings. I don't believe based on what I have read and seen on the way the scholarship of the middle ages was done that this view is correct.
This requires adding specific new rules for them.
I agree with you. The exact view of things like the Artes Liberalis probably varies slightly with every different Magister in Arbitis that taught it. It also likely varied with who they were teaching it to. But I think that overall the view was that the ancients knew more than they did and the likelyhood they would find anything new out was minimal. Hence the sum of all human knowledge could be contained in a few books. This is likely as any general statement to have specific exceptions and not be "correct" in itself--generalizing is always that way...but for game reasons treating them as infinite level Q4 (as Q3 is too low in my mind) summae seems right to me.
It strikes a good balance between value and time investment. It rewards players and hampers them also. It makes commentaries on, and other works also interesting to the player since they have higher Q's but level limits. This ties in well with Bryan's desire to have more interesting books.
Eric of Rüm's "Commentary on the Error in Aristotle" and the subsequent series by Authoris Varieties generally refered to either as "In Defence of Aristotle" or "Why Eric is an ASS" would likely be highly interesting reading for the players interested in Artes Liberalis.
But at the end of the day so long as it does not apply to the two subjects which are abusable: magic theory and the arts what you do is a matter of taste and personal preference. I don't see how either way of handling them (though I have no idea what you mean by allowing repeated readings in actual game terms) is going to cause the game system to implode or explode.
PaulM wrote:
One way to view the ME study of Authorities is: by the study of Authorities and other texts, the student comes to understand more of the Authorities - which contained all there was to know, but the student did not previously understand it.
Some students are just particularly good at expressing the understanding nd kanowledge that was contained in the Authorities. (ie their Ability score, after decades of study, now exceeds the Ability score of the Founders!)
Even a "brand new discovery" (original research) was actually there before, but only now is it understood.
This is one of those explanations which fails under the light of C21 methods and examination - like the idea of Species and (later) Phlogiston -- but it can be used In Character to explain the world working within the Game Rules
The ArM5 skill level is thus really just a mark of their understanding, not of their knowledge (since "clearly" their knowledge cannot exceed that contained in the Authorities.
Do not forget that in ArM5 you can Practice any subject, including Knowledges.
This rule is, in itself, yet another abstraction...
We can note that the Source Quality of private practice of most knowledges is quite low (but never lower than Exposure!);
study from an Authority can, mechanistically, be viewed as Practice with a better Quality. In that light, Q4 seems low...
The only snag with this suggestion is that Book Learner does not cover Practice, but some of the other study Virtues do/might.
I would suggest that we look at the Practice rules, and the example Source Qualities, and place "Studying an Authority" in one of those categories.
(I'd suggest one myself, but Serf's Parma - no books to hand)
I veer strongly to treating Commentaries - mechanistically - just like Tractatus.
ArM5 had the opportunity to include all of the book types in the 4e WGRE, but not only did it not do so, but actually removed book types that were in 4e core (LQ), and reduced the rules to 2 Book Rules: Summa & Tractatus.
There's an argument for saying that one can write more Commentaries that the Ability-score based number-of-Tractatus limit, but beware of abuse and Tractatus inflation if you do so...
Just to be clear by commentaries I just mean other Artes Liberalis summae not commentaries as mentioned in 4th edition.
For example:
Eric of Rüm's "On the Errors of Aristole" Artes Liberales Lvl5Q15
Authoris Varieties "Why Eric is an Ass" Artes Liberales Lvl3Q1 (but can only be read with comprehention after reading the above for at least one season, otherwise you miss the good jokes).
An ArM4-style authority for Artes Liberales would, in my opinion, be impossible, considering that each level in the skill represents knowledge of a new alphabet. Even summae would prove interesting to study, since they would necessarily include a different script for each of their levels.
Just curious. "De Theoria Magica" by Bonisagus is mentioned as the Authority on Magic Theory in Mystery Cults and "The Art of Magic," also by Bonisagus, is referred to in Covenants as an epitome. Given that the definition of authorities from The Wizard's Grimoire (4th ed) no longer appears to be applicable how should this be interpreted?
You could surely get an artes liberales authority if you found hidden texts from before the destruction of the tower of babel. It wouldn't contain any specific language, but it would be a perfect primer from which to learn any language devolved from it.. which is all of them
GotF page 57 , has the section on the library at Durenmar ,
which refers to Principia Magica as the Authority on Magic Theory written by Bonisagus.
(no actual numbers given)
But that merely says what quality/level a summa has; not what an Authority has. This does seem like a gap left by Atlas here. I am using Quality Zero + INT + Concentration, which carries over from 4th but without the minus 5. I am thinking of halving Conc though: I have a mage with 0+3+6 + book learning, making it quite a source.
This would indicate that the Authority is a Summa.
You know, rather than focusing on whether Authorities are low, high or infinite level, low or high quality, the interesting thing about them is that they are at the origin of their field. As such, there should be a plethora of commentaries on them, which require you to have read the original book first. That is be what makes the difference between a book by Obscurus Ex Miscellanea and one by Bonisagus the Founder. To make any kind of serious attempt at studying Magic Theory, you just have to have read Bonisagus. No other book can do.
That's one of the complaints I have, as far as flavor goes, about the book system: in most cases, books are completely interchangeable and you have little to no reason to seek a specific book so long as you have something with similar characteristics - they exist in a vacuum. With commentaries in play, famous books become attractive because of the body of literature that surrounds them (thus justifying their fame), rather than merely about their intrinsic qualities.
That is what makes Authorities authorities.
Yes, I like the idea of having to have read the Authority to benefit from the commentary.