Elements of real science I’d love to see in more fictional magic systems
Categories are defined by people, not by nature, and way looser around the edges than everyone thinks. “We like to divide spell-casting into rituals, runic magic, instantaneous spells, and curses or blessings, but the ‘curse or blessing’ category has more to do with how long a spell LASTS than how it’s SET, and the line between ritual and inscribed runes gets really blurry in places…”
Models of ‘how this works’ that get taught to little kids which are fully debunked later as ‘over-simplified and actually totally inaccurate, but a good way to learn, this is better’, only to be replaced two years of study after that because, ‘actually that was also a lie for the sake of learning, learn this one instead’. “Yes, we teach kids that planes stack in layers and sometimes holes form between them, and I know last year we covered the Humperdink Theory Of Planar Interweaving where those so-called holes are areas of enmeshment with the fibers of multiple planes at once, but today we’re finally going to talk about the Planar Mosaic Model.”
Frenzies of curiosity each time something unexpected happens, as wizards try to figure out, if this is a divergence from the pattern they THOUGHT they knew, then what is the bigger pattern? IE, “We’ve seen the Power of Friendship be insufficient to slaying this balrog for years! Why were these particular adventurers finally able to do it now?”
Basically, magic not as an objective force of the universe, but a hodgepodge thing humans made up to try and talk about and interface with the truth of the actual universe.
“Yes, we’ve been studying the lore and secrets of the universe for a thousand years. Things still just happen sometimes! That’s why it’s magic!”