A great article, but it has a misunderstanding about what is 'science' trying to figure stuff out. He's right about the neuroscientists - they're trying to figure stuff out from the bottom up, and it's a fairly new discipline. But he's wrong to think that that's all science is. The other half of science in this field is psychology.
Neuroscience is a 'bottom-up' field, starting from the smallest components and trying to understand how they're interacting. Psychology is the 'top-down' field, starting with complex phenomenon and trying to break them down. The psychology of cognition and attenion is the stuff that's relevant where magic's involved. Much of the things that Penn & Teller expose in the workings of magic is known to cognitive and attentional psychology - it's the flawless execution to make it work that is the trick, an idea supported by the magician's mantra 'practise practise practise'.
The problem with the two disciplines above is that there's so much we don't know - we're nowhere near being able to make them 'meet in the middle'. The human mind is incredibly complex.
Neuroscience is a 'bottom-up' field, starting from the smallest components and trying to understand how they're interacting. Psychology is the 'top-down' field, starting with complex phenomenon and trying to break them down. The psychology of cognition and attenion is the stuff that's relevant where magic's involved. Much of the things that Penn & Teller expose in the workings of magic is known to cognitive and attentional psychology - it's the flawless execution to make it work that is the trick, an idea supported by the magician's mantra 'practise practise practise'.
The problem with the two disciplines above is that there's so much we don't know - we're nowhere near being able to make them 'meet in the middle'. The human mind is incredibly complex.