Superstition

Poul Anderson, "Superstition" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 231-264. (Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1952.)

This is a queer short story:

two of the characters' names are familiar from Anderson's two Operation... novels but these are different characters;
this is yet another impoverished-Earth-recovering-from-nuclear-war-with-limited-resources story;
the story describes a routine journey in a spaceship from Earth to Mars, which is a standard sf theme;
however, the characters practice magic rituals and take for granted that these work so this seems to be a "hard fantasy" story;
but one of the characters is an Old Believer in science who denounces the rituals as mere superstition - so, in effect, the characters argue about which kind of story they are in!

The Argument
Hall: If a rain dance does not bring rain, you say that there was a counter-influence, so your ideas are unfalsifiable and therefore meaningless.
Valeria: If your radio circuit fails to work, you say that there is something wrong with it so what is the difference?
Hall: I can find out what is wrong and correct it.
Valeria: If a rain dance fails, the warlock finds out what was amiss, makes amends and holds another dance until it works.

Captain Martin: Earth stays in its orbit because of American Indian rituals.
Hall: But there were no such rituals in the old days.
Martin: There were always rituals in so-called backward tribes.
Hall: But before mankind?
Martin: God did it, then turned over the responsibility to mankind.

Maybe magic was less effective in the old days because there was so much disbelief?

When Valeria detects a meteor swarm not by radar but by foresight, Martin sees approaching meteors through the telescope but Hall suggests that he has hypnotized himself to see them. When two meteors penetrate the ship but Valeria says that she has deflected the rest, Hall suggests that telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis and psychosomatics are mental powers that are aided by believed-in rituals but can now be understood scientifically. Valeria replies that magic given such names is "'...still magic!'" (p. 263) So we still do not know which kind of story we are reading.

But the story contains yet another issue.

Martin: "'But the superstition is this, son: that science could understand everything, and do everything, and make everything good.'" (p. 262)

Then he cites radioactive craters and mutations as proof not that science does not work but that it does not make everything good. We must agree with this - that science alone does not make everything good. Politicians and their publics must stop waging wars, especially when they have become so destructive.