Magic and technology, or why I dislike Starfinder

Starfinder is a spin-off of Pathfinder which takes place in outer space. As with typical modernist fantasy, like its predecessor Dragonstar, it treats magic and technology as separate. In Starfinder specially, the use of magic is on the decline as its role is being taken over by the convenience of technology.

I consider this convention, in a word, stupid.

Firstly, if magic exists then it makes more sense that it would form the basis of all technology as with the steampunk magic in settings like DragonMech and Eberron. Secondly, as several blogs helpfully explain (see links below), separating magic and real physics leads to all kinds of unintended consequences that would preclude any conventional society or economy.

Furthermore, it makes no sense from a world building or physics perspective that the fantasy world would operate according to real physics with wholly self-contained magic tacked on to let you cheat it when convenient. If the setting was created by the gods, as the backstory claims, it would never occur to them to structure the universe this way because it makes no sense. It's a purely modernist conceit invented by people who grew up in modern times with modern beliefs who are trying to retrofit their views to an incompatible pre-modern system of belief.

In my cosmology, based on the pre-modern conceit, technology and nature are types of magic. Everything is made of magic. Magic explains why people are alive. Basic tools like spears and wheels are made of magic. Martial training is a form of magic.

In my cosmology, whenever people build guns or spaceships or whatever, they are employing a form of magic known as "artifice." There is no difference between a wizard reciting a spell formula or a programmer writing lines of code. A gun firing bullets is no different from a wand firing spells.

Relevant links:

• https://mythcreants.com/blog/six-consequences-of-high-magic/
• https://faustusnotes.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/post-scarcity-fantasy/
• https://faustusnotes.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/scientific-inquiry-in-a-magical-world/
• http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/antiscience.html
• http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/magicandsociety.html