All science is materialistic

[polymath257]

And why not? We can still observe patterns in the phenomena, determine when and where the phenomenon occurs, can figure out, potentially how to control the phenomenon, which would make it scientific and perhaps even technology.

Once again, I am not saying this is the actual case. I am saying that science could work with it if it was the case.

This is where we part company and I would simply cite "irreconcilable differences".  If a phenomenon happened (the amputee example) that simply shattered the Conservation Laws (Energy, Momentum, Angular Momentum), I would give up, once any reasonable possibility of fraud had been eliminated.  I doubt that most of our religious friends would be going on about "separate Magisteria" much, either.  Of course, you or anyone else could try to model magic, but, I think that there is going to be a practical problem when you or others try to replicate your results.

But, such is a bridge that no one has yet crossed, and, so, this conversation is purely hypothetical.

I think that the fact that we've been able to model quantum phenomena, which are often inherently probabilistic, suggests that science could, if necessary, deal with magical things that obey detectable patterns.

So, for example, if it was discovered that burning a specific herb while incanting specific words healed amputees, that would be basic data from which science could work to create a testable model. Looking at how the healing was affected by slight changes in pronunciation or rate of burning of the herb or by substituting related herbs would add further information.

Once again, this is clearly NOT what has turned out to be the case in the real world. But neither has the phlogiston theory of heat. Nobody would *return* to those hypotheses at this point, even though there is nothing about the scientific method that, prior to observation and testing, would eliminate those possibilities.