What taught me the existence of a magician for a father about the belief

MThe first lessons in the observation were not from a laboratory but in the living room, with my father in an evening and his upper cap. For anyone else, “Ed Big ED”, an older doctor, was a magician, a guide, Raconeur, and so much. One day, he boasted patients with his easy confidence; At night, he was amazed at slow guests, and he brought metal currencies behind the ears or an endless scarf of his sleeve. For me, it was both the therapist and illusion, the world and man of the show.

When your father is charming, what do you think? As a child, the boundaries between realism and unrealistic were porous. I wanted to believe in the rabbit that was pulled from a hat, a floating electric lamp, and the miracle escape. But even when I was a boy, I started noticing the seams: Telltale flash for a hidden card, and the little bloating in his possession where I waited for the coin. What others deal with when mystery became for me a problem waiting for its solution.

Magic has taught me that the unlikely may still have an explanation.

The irony was not like the curiosity that prompted me. I learned that every illusion, regardless of how dangerous, had a mechanism under it. Magic was a call to look closely, to the question: How does this really work?

This question – which has been repeated and repeated in my childhood – has led to a professional training disciple. I became my father’s assistant, carrying the pillars, trained to cut, and serve as a straight man. But I was also skeptical. If it was a trick that deceived me, I made my job to discover how. When he succeeded, applaud; When I found the secret, I felt satisfied to reveal the law of nature.

From illusion, I learned doubts, and from doubt, the demand for evidence. It was not enough for something that seemed true. I wanted to know the reality under it.

This interrogation situation extended until after theater. He grew up in the fifties of the last century, the world outside our house was already drowned in performance: Cold War training in school, and cocktail parties where adults were wearing masks from chanting while the anxies were deep, a culture addicted to appearances. My father, a doctor in the golden age of the attackers, was an embodiment of contradictions-healing from real healing, but also a wonderful self-innovation.

In this crucible of illusion and reality, I started to form my own identity, not only as a son but as an emerging scientist. If magic depends on deception, science seems greater magic, because it depends on asking the correct questions and answering the evidence.

By the time when she reached adolescence, “experiments” began. I did the time when the match will burn in different circumstances, weighing the contents of my chemistry before and after the interactions, and I drew the night sky of the backyard in New Jersey. None of this was an official science, but it was carrying the same spirit that my father’s tricks separated: given the appearance of appearances, the test of intuition, and he insisted that the truth is not what dazzles but what lasts.

The deeper, the more you see the similarities between magic and mind. The magician spoils interest. Likewise, the brain does. Participants take advantage of expectations; As well as perception. The illusion, whether on the stage or in the shell, depends on our willingness to fill the gaps, to accept the appearances of the nominal value.

Later, as a nerve doctor, I would like Return to these early lessons when studying Synesthesia And perceptions of perception. Patients told me that the numbers and messages have colors, or that tastes raised shapes. For decades, science rejected reports of such imagination. But I grew up to treat appearances with suspicion and testimony carefully. The boy, who was looking at his father’s sleeves to see what was hidden by the man who listened with interest and frankness when the patients described the world of hidden awareness.

Magic has taught me that what is still unlikely has an explanation – if someone is only ready to look hard enough.

Thus, I came to the belief that the real wonder is not in the disappeared currency or the fading dove. The real wonder is in the human mind that builds reality of fragments, which can be deceived by prosperity, but experience can also be lit. My father taught me to fade before I learned to appear. Science taught me to show without disappearing – to stand with evidence, to let the truth appear even when it contradicts the scene.

To this day, when I go to the lecture hall or a clinic, I hold both inheritance: the magician’s feeling of wonder and the world asked for proof. If the illusion taught me doubts, the science gave me faith – not in appearances, but in the same investigation.

What is broken can be completely, and what seems impossible to be understood. This is the greatest trick I have ever learned, and has nothing to do with rabbits or hats.

this Excerpts Recal it with permission from Reader. It was adapted from Magic partner: My father and I in the era of anxiety“

Pulse Image: Fran_kie / Shutterstock

• Richard E. Cytown

  Spread on September 9, 2025

  Richard E. Seto, Professor of Neuroscience at George Washington University. He is the author of many books published by The Mit Press, including SyneSthesia: Union of the senses, the man who tastes shapes, the nervous side of nervous psychology, the brain of the Stone Age in the era of the screen. Recently published notes The magician partner: My father and I in the era of anxiety.