Post by teflonbilly on Aug 31, 2012 18:50:23 GMT -5
OK! *Cracks Knucles* Let me give a swing at this:
Ground Rules for my explanations: I am endeavoring to describe a consistent system, but not necessarily a scientifically provable system. So talk about hard and fast rules about genetics, molecular reactions, etc.. just banish that from your minds, gentle reader, but look to things such as philosophical order, platonic ideals, and metaphysical qualities. Those are tools upon which I am making these arguments.
First, other than Food, none of the other five exceptions have been explicitly enumerated as being any of the other five. Let us assume for our discussion that these five exceptions are at least describable as a concept or class of objects, as apposed to processes (i.e. you are not permitted to transfigure water into ice on thursdays, but fridays are possible.)
Second, Transfiguration is never clearly defined, that is, Elemental Transfiguration as the term is used by Gamp is never defined. Let us examine this for a moment, the word elemental in this contexts could be simply be a modifier to the word Transfigure and then I would interpret the term elemental transfiguration to mean "basic" transfiguration or "foundational" transfiguration. However, an alternative definition (and IMO more productive to this discussion) would be Gamp's Laws of the Transfiguration of the Elemental Aspect of Substance. Both definitions are implied by the canon title of Gamp's Laws of Elemental Transfiguration. Here, the word "elemental" goes to the foundational aspect of the thing being transfigured, not of the process of transfiguration.
Third, if what is posited above holds, then I hold that Magic is not a "Aspect of Substance" that is being discussed in Gamp's Laws. Gamp's Laws are Laws of Magic as they apply to all things that are not magical. So, the whole conundrum about transfiguring/conjuring magical objects just goes away for the five laws. The laws dealing with magic are something else entirely, conjuring magic for example is already done (what are wizards doing when they cast a spell, if not "conjuring" magic) So, to conjure a flying broom, provided some fundemental aspect of making a flying broom has nothing to do directly with the materials upon which it is created, would require that the wizard at least be able to a. conjure a physical broom from nothingness, and b. have the capability to enchant a physical broom into a permanently enchanted flying broom, ala a Firebolt, or Nimbus 2000. So the reason why people don't conjure firebolts or Weasley Wheezes out of thin air is not that Wizards are not able to conjure magic (which clearly from canon they are) but that they do not have the personal knowledge or proficiency to be able to cast the magic from which the enchanted item is based. It isn't an aspect of not being able to conjure a pair of pants when you don't know anything about textile fabrication or sewing, but that magic as a concept is different and separate from what Gamp is discussing in his Five Laws.
Now, that the ground rules are out of the way, I'll move onto the Five Laws and how I see them being layed out in the HP universe, at least by implication from what is seen in the canon novels and from a few snippets I've read from direct interviews with JKR, that I know many of you already know (i.e. the impermanence of conjured substances from "thin air")
As I said in (1) above, only the restrictions on Food have been explicitly stated as being one of the Five Rules as layed out by Gamp. However, it is heavily implied from the books that the other four exceptions are: Money, Life, Love, and Knowledge.
I will discuss each of these concepts (and a little on my justification of choosing these non-explicitly enumerated concepts.)
1. Food: As stated by Hermione in DH, you cannot conjure food or transfigure non-food into food. By Conjure I mean bring something into existence from nothingness, and by Transfigure I mean alter the form and substance of something that exists into something entirely different, i.e. wood into stone, cloth into glass, etc... And by Food, I mean a substance that nourishes the body, which is why Water is not part of the exception, and why I believe minerals such as salt also would not be part of the exception. For something to be Food, it needs to be something that provides for the substance of the living body. While, yes, we can get technical about water and minerals both being part of the basic substance of a human (or any living) body, what we are getting at is a more philosophic discussion but also bringing a little bit of mundane muggle scientific thought (protein builds the body, but salt is needed to live) but I am not strictly using these scientific processes when getting to the foundation of these magical concepts. So basically, to move the discussion along, Food would be metabolizable protein, carbohydrates, and fat (heck, lets include Alcohol in this as well)
So Gamp's Law in relation to Food means that you cannot transfigure/conjure something that would provide the Body (I am talking about "the body" here because what is Food but that which is consumed by a living being? Food as a concept is meaningless to a rock, rock consumes nothing.) And this could be intrinsically linked with the idea about Life being something that can't be conjured. I don't want to stretch the point too far, but all of these concepts that can't be conjured could all be linked by being foundational aspects for a prosperous Human life, that is the Aristotelian "Good Life."
So what would happen if someone were to try and violate Gamp's Law with regards to Food. Lets examine it:
A. Conjured Food: JKR has already stated the conjured items, which are conjured from thin air, do not last. So right off we know the answer to conjured food, wizards can conjure food from thin air, but it would not last and would eventually fade. The fade rate of the conjured Food would be critical to the toxicity of this magically created substance. If conjured food faded relatively rapidly (within minutes to hours of being swallowed) it would not be injurious to the person that consumed it, only non-nourishing. The person would eventually succumb to starvation or malnourishment. If the fade rate was long enough out that the Body took in the substance of this conjured food into the Body itself (metabolized and built cells from the conjured protein and fat) then eating conjured food would be a much more serious problem. Parts of the Body would just disapear at the cellular level and would quickly become fatal. Owing to the overall tone of JKR's HP universe, I'm inclined to believe that the conjured Food would just cause eventual starvation/malnourishment as apposed to the more complex issue of dealing with "What happens to the energy that was used when the body metabolized the conjured carbohydrates after the conjured substance fades?" See how complex this stuff gets if you hold to hard and fast scientific rules?
B. Transfigured Non-Food into Food: In this instance a Wizard would take a non-food substance (wood, stone, a television) and transfigures it into something that is Food (rice, steak, Lasagna) IMO, transfiguration (as apposed to conjuration) is capable of changing/making something permanently. That is, a wizard can conjure bricks and build a patio grill, but eventually they would wake up one morning and find that they only have a pile of broken mortar and no grill, but if they were to transfigure lumber, water, or something else physical into bricks, then their patio grill would be permanent. At least for the length of their natural life, as was mentioned with regards to Slughorn's fish Francis (a delayed effect transfiguration of a lily petal into a fish) it seems that transfigurations only last for the life of the wizard, as apposed to conjured items which seem to last some period of time less than that.
This works rather nicely into explaining why wizards just don't transfigure everything they own from unmanufactured raw substances such as dirt or grass, 1. It reverts to it's original form upon the death of the wizard, and/or 2. While permenant it may still be lacking some essential quality that "real" things still have. While (1) has explicitly been shown in canon, I am willing to accept that (2) is also a strong possibility. It could be even transfigured items are non-permanent just like conjured items, just not fading back to their original form as quickly as conjured items fade completely away. This would go a long way to explaining why Mrs. Weasely knits sweaters herself instead of transfiguring her old Daily Prophets into a sweater. She may not have the magical skill to knit a jumper from a pile of yarn with just a flick of her wand but she has the magical skill to animate knitting needles to knit the sweaters by themselves. Which goes along with Tonk's statement about the specific effects of magic being based on some level of skill, where she says a simple level of "flick" allows her mother to both pack/neaten laundry AND have it end up being neatly folded, whereas Tonks is only able to achieve the effect of packing/neatening up clothes laying around. So, the impernance of transfiguration/conjuration would go a long way towards explaining why there is the need for manufacturing by wizards. But that is another discussion.
Now, the four concepts that are not explicitly stated but which are highly implied in canon text.
2. Love: Slugorn states that Love as a concept is not something that can be created by Magic, only a pale shadow of Love (i.e. the emotion of Infatuation) This descriptions implies a much deeper meaning of the concept of Love as opposed to just the simple feeling of Love (which is merely a small aspect of the overall concept of Love, it's expression, what it encompasses, etc...)
Because Love is such a complex concept and in reality not something I can nail the definition down so exactly to make a productive argument about, I will just say that what I feel not being able to Elementally Transfigure Love would mean.
While infatuation and physical attraction can be parts of what encompasses someone Love for another person, an example of how this could not be increased/changed to such an extent to ever actually be Love. A wizard in the HP universe could not create a Love potion or charm so strong that even though this person would feel/mentally believe their Love for the objects of there desire so much that if they sacrificed themselves (like Lily) for this person, that person would not be protected by the sacrifice as Harry was. At the bottom of it, there still was no Love there for the sacrifice to have any real metaphysical meaning such that the Love Magic that Dumbledore talks about to be generated.
3. Money. Owing to how the Philosopher's Stone was described, I will state that this really is something that violates, somehow, one of Gamp's Laws and this is partly why it is such a phenomenally important magical creation. And that actually it isn't "money" per se but actual physical Gold. While Gold in the real world is a precious metal and has had an intrinsic monetary worth since time immemorial, I am willing to bet that in the HP universe Gold's intrinsic value goes a little deeper than just it's physical qualities. I'm willing to bet that Gamp's Law as it would apply to Money may extend to the abstract concept of wealth and affluence, but I'm willing to consider that, like Food, only extends to a physical substance. However, if it was a concept (as Love is) then how that concept is express in physical world of HP is that you can't transfigure lead into gold. And it could be that Sickels and Knuts are not made of just mundane silver or bronze but could be Gold that has been transfigured. Which totally blows the fanfic "The Methods of Rationality"'s objection to the wizarding economy right out of the water, because then there really isn't an exchange rate issue, because magical currency would not be based simply upon the intrinsic raw material value of silver to bronze or silver to gold as it is in the muggle world.
Think for a moment, that Gold is a metaphysical yet real substance which is the universe's physical expression of the abstract concept of Money. Which is why it isn't something that can be truly conjured. Nor can something that isn't gold be transfigured into gold.
However, that does not necessarily imply that a wizard (or a goblin) is not able to transfigure gold into something that is not gold. And I am, for arguments sake, willing to bet that items transfigured from gold are actually truly permanent transfigurations (that is, they don't revert after the death of the wizard.) And are able to be transfigured back into Gold, because they started out as gold. Which would lend even more value to gold has a substance in the wizarding world, even beyond its intrinisic muggle monetary value.
What I would be willing to accept is that Sickles and Knuts as minted by Gringotts start off as Gold and are transmuted into a proper amount of silver and bronze, but fundamentally are still gold and would be able to be transfigured back into gold, which is why the silver and bronze of sickles and knuts have value, and you won't have to expand the restrictions on gold to anything that can have commoditized value. You could transfigure or conjure silver all day, it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans in the wizarding economy, because the wizarding legal tender is actually only based on gold.
For transfiguration to not be able to generate unlimitted wealth there has to be something that holds actual value within the wizarding world which is not capable of being conjured or created. I'm not going to dig into what would happen if a wizard transfigured a bunch of wood into silver and tried to sell it for muggle currency or anything else. This may only be due to the imposed separation of the two societies (it might in fact be one of the foundational reasons FOR seperations, for wizards creating precious metals would cause a inflationary nightmare and wreck muggle economies, which would very easily be a cause for some of the torch and pitchfork parties that wizards and witches had to deal with in the HP universe.) But, again, see how things get very very complicated if you dig too deeply?
So, what I'm saying with regards to transfiguring gold, a Goblin would start off with 1 Galleon's worth of gold and be able to transfigure it into 17 sickles worth of silver or 493 knuts worth of bronze, but you could not take 493 knuts worth of normal bronze and transfigure that into 1 galleon's worth of gold. Gold as a substance is the universal expression of material wealth and as such is not conjurable or transfigurable. This is why actual Sickles and Knuts have monetary value in the Wizarding economy, but some wizard couldn't take muggle silver and transfigure it into sickles and spend them, they physically would be similar to Gringott's sickles but would not be actual transfigured gold so would have no value in the wizarding economy. Where as Gringott's sickles and knuts are transfigured gold and therefore have monetary value, i.e. are Money.
BTW, this would be an excellent way to base the HP wizarding economy on something that is understandable (all money is really gold, and gold is special because you can't conjure or transfigure it from nothing)
4. Knowledge. There really isn't much stated in the books to prove that this is one of the elemental concepts, but it just explains many things that would not happen otherwise if knowledge could be conjured from nothing. Wizards would end up all being as knowledgable as Dumbledore from the moment one of their parents got around to casting the Universal Education Charm upon them.
However, but Hermione's mentioning of being able to "summon" food as being something that you can do to Food, and applying this to Knowledge explains nicely such things as the Marauder's Map (basically, in addition to drawing the layout of the school, it summons the true name of every person in the school and prints it on the page. While this may not be how it actually works, but it does illustrate a way in which this would be "summoning" knowledge as opposed to conjuring knowledge. The true name of a person exists, it isn't coming from nothing, the map is able to detect persons and is able to summon Knowledge/Information that is contained in the abstract aspect of that person which is expressed as their Name.)
Other than that, the restrictions on transfiguring knowledge would have to be more clearly delineated by JKR for me to extroplate what it would entail She'd also actually have to say Knowledge is one of the exceptions for me to be even right about this. ;-)
I figure it would be entirely reasonable, if someone wanted to copy a book (and make that copy permanent, as I said above, I am working from the assumption that transfigured objects have a certain amount of impermanence associated with them, how much is an open question) They would have to start off with a real copy and a blank book with a proper quantity of ink and then perform a similar charm as whatever charm work was used to make diary horcrux or the Marauder's map which would take the ink and print it on the book as a copy of the already existing copy. This would not be transfiguration or conjuration so much as just having the spell move the ink around magically until it settled on the page in the same way that it exists in the original book.
And finally,
5. Life. In the books it is stated unequivocally that you can't bring the dead back to life which can be read as meaning that you can't bring life into being from nonlife. What this means to me is that all of the conjured birds, transfigured tea cups into mice, or desks into pigs, are not actually conjuring living things. Conjuring animals in an of itself (living or not) violates Gamp's Law with regards to Food. The restrictions about life gets to, would be that these things (birds, mice, pigs) are not actually living beings, but are self-moving, semi-independent, automatons that take the form of living things. While it may look like a pig, and probably would die like a pig if you butchered it (though the meat would not provide nourishment, see Food above), it couldn't reproduce, it wouldn't have a soul, wouldn't grow, become old, or even die. But it also would probably lack personality (such as a pet dog or cat) and be missing other essential qualities that Life encompasses in the HP universe (similarly how Love can be the source of a protection spell against AK)
Now, one of the reasons that I believe wizards are able to transfigure gold but are not able to transfigure lead into gold, is in the same manner that you can transfigure a beetle into a button and transfigure it back with the beetle still being alive (otherwise animal transfiguration classes would be a gross example of animal cruelty) but not be able to transfigure a pencil into a truly living earthworm.
You start off with the actually non-conjurable substance (be it gold, food, living breathing animal) and transfigure into something else (a brick, car tire, a ruler) and still be able to get that non-conjurable substance back. The metaphysical being of the object is still that of gold, or food, or a living mouse, whereas if you start off with a rock and transfigure it into a cow, you couldn't eat it because the metaphysical aspect of the meat would be that of the inedible rock (i.e. something that is NOT Food) and therefore be non-nourishing.
*-*-*-*-*-*
Now, I personally think that JKR made a mistake when she added the ability to "increase the quantity" as an exception to Gamp's restrictions.
Summoning makes sense (even if it is apparitional summoning, i.e. the Food doesn't cross the intervening space before it gets to the wizard from wherever it started) the Food/Gold/etc.. is already in existance so it isn't being conjured/transfigured for it to brought to the wizard's location.
And changing the substance also makes sense. I mean going beyond the gross transfigurations I spoke about above (Food into something that is not Food) but a really important one would be being able to turn spoiled Food into fresh Food. This would be part of the reason for Ron's complaints against Hermione's cooking, that while Mrs. Weaseley may not have had enough money to buy good quality food, she was able to magically make it much more palatable than Hermione's skill was able to do, and lead to Ron's perception that Hermione was trying hard enough when she was doing the cooking. That doesn't mean Ron wasn't being very rude in his complaints, I'm just saying what a possible magical source for his complaints were that no matter what his mother started off with she was able to make it taste good through magic. Which goes to the ability to change food by magic.
However, the ability to increase the actual quantity of Food (as opposed to just increasing the perceived quanity of food, i.e. doubling an apple but only getting two physical apples with half the nutritional value.) Really scuppers the hole restriction against conjuring things from nothing and transfiguring things into the Five Exceptions.
Because that begs the question: Why didn't the Golden Trio take the one time risk of going to a muggle supermarket (which exist all over muggle Britain) and purchase a wide selection of non-perishable foodstuffs and just duplicate the base quantity every meal. Heck, if they were able to cast permenant freshness or freezing charms this non-perishable restriction would go away as well.
All it would require is that Hermione purchase one bag of flour, rice, beans, one can of tuna, corn, peas, etc... And they would permanently have had enough food for the entire journey.
Either duplicated food isn't food (which makes much more sense) or the Golden Trio were a bunch of monumental fools in their inability to take the onetime risk of purchasing food.
Well, I think I'm done writing this novel ;-D
TB
Ground Rules for my explanations: I am endeavoring to describe a consistent system, but not necessarily a scientifically provable system. So talk about hard and fast rules about genetics, molecular reactions, etc.. just banish that from your minds, gentle reader, but look to things such as philosophical order, platonic ideals, and metaphysical qualities. Those are tools upon which I am making these arguments.
First, other than Food, none of the other five exceptions have been explicitly enumerated as being any of the other five. Let us assume for our discussion that these five exceptions are at least describable as a concept or class of objects, as apposed to processes (i.e. you are not permitted to transfigure water into ice on thursdays, but fridays are possible.)
Second, Transfiguration is never clearly defined, that is, Elemental Transfiguration as the term is used by Gamp is never defined. Let us examine this for a moment, the word elemental in this contexts could be simply be a modifier to the word Transfigure and then I would interpret the term elemental transfiguration to mean "basic" transfiguration or "foundational" transfiguration. However, an alternative definition (and IMO more productive to this discussion) would be Gamp's Laws of the Transfiguration of the Elemental Aspect of Substance. Both definitions are implied by the canon title of Gamp's Laws of Elemental Transfiguration. Here, the word "elemental" goes to the foundational aspect of the thing being transfigured, not of the process of transfiguration.
Third, if what is posited above holds, then I hold that Magic is not a "Aspect of Substance" that is being discussed in Gamp's Laws. Gamp's Laws are Laws of Magic as they apply to all things that are not magical. So, the whole conundrum about transfiguring/conjuring magical objects just goes away for the five laws. The laws dealing with magic are something else entirely, conjuring magic for example is already done (what are wizards doing when they cast a spell, if not "conjuring" magic) So, to conjure a flying broom, provided some fundemental aspect of making a flying broom has nothing to do directly with the materials upon which it is created, would require that the wizard at least be able to a. conjure a physical broom from nothingness, and b. have the capability to enchant a physical broom into a permanently enchanted flying broom, ala a Firebolt, or Nimbus 2000. So the reason why people don't conjure firebolts or Weasley Wheezes out of thin air is not that Wizards are not able to conjure magic (which clearly from canon they are) but that they do not have the personal knowledge or proficiency to be able to cast the magic from which the enchanted item is based. It isn't an aspect of not being able to conjure a pair of pants when you don't know anything about textile fabrication or sewing, but that magic as a concept is different and separate from what Gamp is discussing in his Five Laws.
Now, that the ground rules are out of the way, I'll move onto the Five Laws and how I see them being layed out in the HP universe, at least by implication from what is seen in the canon novels and from a few snippets I've read from direct interviews with JKR, that I know many of you already know (i.e. the impermanence of conjured substances from "thin air")
As I said in (1) above, only the restrictions on Food have been explicitly stated as being one of the Five Rules as layed out by Gamp. However, it is heavily implied from the books that the other four exceptions are: Money, Life, Love, and Knowledge.
I will discuss each of these concepts (and a little on my justification of choosing these non-explicitly enumerated concepts.)
1. Food: As stated by Hermione in DH, you cannot conjure food or transfigure non-food into food. By Conjure I mean bring something into existence from nothingness, and by Transfigure I mean alter the form and substance of something that exists into something entirely different, i.e. wood into stone, cloth into glass, etc... And by Food, I mean a substance that nourishes the body, which is why Water is not part of the exception, and why I believe minerals such as salt also would not be part of the exception. For something to be Food, it needs to be something that provides for the substance of the living body. While, yes, we can get technical about water and minerals both being part of the basic substance of a human (or any living) body, what we are getting at is a more philosophic discussion but also bringing a little bit of mundane muggle scientific thought (protein builds the body, but salt is needed to live) but I am not strictly using these scientific processes when getting to the foundation of these magical concepts. So basically, to move the discussion along, Food would be metabolizable protein, carbohydrates, and fat (heck, lets include Alcohol in this as well)
So Gamp's Law in relation to Food means that you cannot transfigure/conjure something that would provide the Body (I am talking about "the body" here because what is Food but that which is consumed by a living being? Food as a concept is meaningless to a rock, rock consumes nothing.) And this could be intrinsically linked with the idea about Life being something that can't be conjured. I don't want to stretch the point too far, but all of these concepts that can't be conjured could all be linked by being foundational aspects for a prosperous Human life, that is the Aristotelian "Good Life."
So what would happen if someone were to try and violate Gamp's Law with regards to Food. Lets examine it:
A. Conjured Food: JKR has already stated the conjured items, which are conjured from thin air, do not last. So right off we know the answer to conjured food, wizards can conjure food from thin air, but it would not last and would eventually fade. The fade rate of the conjured Food would be critical to the toxicity of this magically created substance. If conjured food faded relatively rapidly (within minutes to hours of being swallowed) it would not be injurious to the person that consumed it, only non-nourishing. The person would eventually succumb to starvation or malnourishment. If the fade rate was long enough out that the Body took in the substance of this conjured food into the Body itself (metabolized and built cells from the conjured protein and fat) then eating conjured food would be a much more serious problem. Parts of the Body would just disapear at the cellular level and would quickly become fatal. Owing to the overall tone of JKR's HP universe, I'm inclined to believe that the conjured Food would just cause eventual starvation/malnourishment as apposed to the more complex issue of dealing with "What happens to the energy that was used when the body metabolized the conjured carbohydrates after the conjured substance fades?" See how complex this stuff gets if you hold to hard and fast scientific rules?
B. Transfigured Non-Food into Food: In this instance a Wizard would take a non-food substance (wood, stone, a television) and transfigures it into something that is Food (rice, steak, Lasagna) IMO, transfiguration (as apposed to conjuration) is capable of changing/making something permanently. That is, a wizard can conjure bricks and build a patio grill, but eventually they would wake up one morning and find that they only have a pile of broken mortar and no grill, but if they were to transfigure lumber, water, or something else physical into bricks, then their patio grill would be permanent. At least for the length of their natural life, as was mentioned with regards to Slughorn's fish Francis (a delayed effect transfiguration of a lily petal into a fish) it seems that transfigurations only last for the life of the wizard, as apposed to conjured items which seem to last some period of time less than that.
This works rather nicely into explaining why wizards just don't transfigure everything they own from unmanufactured raw substances such as dirt or grass, 1. It reverts to it's original form upon the death of the wizard, and/or 2. While permenant it may still be lacking some essential quality that "real" things still have. While (1) has explicitly been shown in canon, I am willing to accept that (2) is also a strong possibility. It could be even transfigured items are non-permanent just like conjured items, just not fading back to their original form as quickly as conjured items fade completely away. This would go a long way to explaining why Mrs. Weasely knits sweaters herself instead of transfiguring her old Daily Prophets into a sweater. She may not have the magical skill to knit a jumper from a pile of yarn with just a flick of her wand but she has the magical skill to animate knitting needles to knit the sweaters by themselves. Which goes along with Tonk's statement about the specific effects of magic being based on some level of skill, where she says a simple level of "flick" allows her mother to both pack/neaten laundry AND have it end up being neatly folded, whereas Tonks is only able to achieve the effect of packing/neatening up clothes laying around. So, the impernance of transfiguration/conjuration would go a long way towards explaining why there is the need for manufacturing by wizards. But that is another discussion.
Now, the four concepts that are not explicitly stated but which are highly implied in canon text.
2. Love: Slugorn states that Love as a concept is not something that can be created by Magic, only a pale shadow of Love (i.e. the emotion of Infatuation) This descriptions implies a much deeper meaning of the concept of Love as opposed to just the simple feeling of Love (which is merely a small aspect of the overall concept of Love, it's expression, what it encompasses, etc...)
Because Love is such a complex concept and in reality not something I can nail the definition down so exactly to make a productive argument about, I will just say that what I feel not being able to Elementally Transfigure Love would mean.
While infatuation and physical attraction can be parts of what encompasses someone Love for another person, an example of how this could not be increased/changed to such an extent to ever actually be Love. A wizard in the HP universe could not create a Love potion or charm so strong that even though this person would feel/mentally believe their Love for the objects of there desire so much that if they sacrificed themselves (like Lily) for this person, that person would not be protected by the sacrifice as Harry was. At the bottom of it, there still was no Love there for the sacrifice to have any real metaphysical meaning such that the Love Magic that Dumbledore talks about to be generated.
3. Money. Owing to how the Philosopher's Stone was described, I will state that this really is something that violates, somehow, one of Gamp's Laws and this is partly why it is such a phenomenally important magical creation. And that actually it isn't "money" per se but actual physical Gold. While Gold in the real world is a precious metal and has had an intrinsic monetary worth since time immemorial, I am willing to bet that in the HP universe Gold's intrinsic value goes a little deeper than just it's physical qualities. I'm willing to bet that Gamp's Law as it would apply to Money may extend to the abstract concept of wealth and affluence, but I'm willing to consider that, like Food, only extends to a physical substance. However, if it was a concept (as Love is) then how that concept is express in physical world of HP is that you can't transfigure lead into gold. And it could be that Sickels and Knuts are not made of just mundane silver or bronze but could be Gold that has been transfigured. Which totally blows the fanfic "The Methods of Rationality"'s objection to the wizarding economy right out of the water, because then there really isn't an exchange rate issue, because magical currency would not be based simply upon the intrinsic raw material value of silver to bronze or silver to gold as it is in the muggle world.
Think for a moment, that Gold is a metaphysical yet real substance which is the universe's physical expression of the abstract concept of Money. Which is why it isn't something that can be truly conjured. Nor can something that isn't gold be transfigured into gold.
However, that does not necessarily imply that a wizard (or a goblin) is not able to transfigure gold into something that is not gold. And I am, for arguments sake, willing to bet that items transfigured from gold are actually truly permanent transfigurations (that is, they don't revert after the death of the wizard.) And are able to be transfigured back into Gold, because they started out as gold. Which would lend even more value to gold has a substance in the wizarding world, even beyond its intrinisic muggle monetary value.
What I would be willing to accept is that Sickles and Knuts as minted by Gringotts start off as Gold and are transmuted into a proper amount of silver and bronze, but fundamentally are still gold and would be able to be transfigured back into gold, which is why the silver and bronze of sickles and knuts have value, and you won't have to expand the restrictions on gold to anything that can have commoditized value. You could transfigure or conjure silver all day, it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans in the wizarding economy, because the wizarding legal tender is actually only based on gold.
For transfiguration to not be able to generate unlimitted wealth there has to be something that holds actual value within the wizarding world which is not capable of being conjured or created. I'm not going to dig into what would happen if a wizard transfigured a bunch of wood into silver and tried to sell it for muggle currency or anything else. This may only be due to the imposed separation of the two societies (it might in fact be one of the foundational reasons FOR seperations, for wizards creating precious metals would cause a inflationary nightmare and wreck muggle economies, which would very easily be a cause for some of the torch and pitchfork parties that wizards and witches had to deal with in the HP universe.) But, again, see how things get very very complicated if you dig too deeply?
So, what I'm saying with regards to transfiguring gold, a Goblin would start off with 1 Galleon's worth of gold and be able to transfigure it into 17 sickles worth of silver or 493 knuts worth of bronze, but you could not take 493 knuts worth of normal bronze and transfigure that into 1 galleon's worth of gold. Gold as a substance is the universal expression of material wealth and as such is not conjurable or transfigurable. This is why actual Sickles and Knuts have monetary value in the Wizarding economy, but some wizard couldn't take muggle silver and transfigure it into sickles and spend them, they physically would be similar to Gringott's sickles but would not be actual transfigured gold so would have no value in the wizarding economy. Where as Gringott's sickles and knuts are transfigured gold and therefore have monetary value, i.e. are Money.
BTW, this would be an excellent way to base the HP wizarding economy on something that is understandable (all money is really gold, and gold is special because you can't conjure or transfigure it from nothing)
4. Knowledge. There really isn't much stated in the books to prove that this is one of the elemental concepts, but it just explains many things that would not happen otherwise if knowledge could be conjured from nothing. Wizards would end up all being as knowledgable as Dumbledore from the moment one of their parents got around to casting the Universal Education Charm upon them.
However, but Hermione's mentioning of being able to "summon" food as being something that you can do to Food, and applying this to Knowledge explains nicely such things as the Marauder's Map (basically, in addition to drawing the layout of the school, it summons the true name of every person in the school and prints it on the page. While this may not be how it actually works, but it does illustrate a way in which this would be "summoning" knowledge as opposed to conjuring knowledge. The true name of a person exists, it isn't coming from nothing, the map is able to detect persons and is able to summon Knowledge/Information that is contained in the abstract aspect of that person which is expressed as their Name.)
Other than that, the restrictions on transfiguring knowledge would have to be more clearly delineated by JKR for me to extroplate what it would entail She'd also actually have to say Knowledge is one of the exceptions for me to be even right about this. ;-)
I figure it would be entirely reasonable, if someone wanted to copy a book (and make that copy permanent, as I said above, I am working from the assumption that transfigured objects have a certain amount of impermanence associated with them, how much is an open question) They would have to start off with a real copy and a blank book with a proper quantity of ink and then perform a similar charm as whatever charm work was used to make diary horcrux or the Marauder's map which would take the ink and print it on the book as a copy of the already existing copy. This would not be transfiguration or conjuration so much as just having the spell move the ink around magically until it settled on the page in the same way that it exists in the original book.
And finally,
5. Life. In the books it is stated unequivocally that you can't bring the dead back to life which can be read as meaning that you can't bring life into being from nonlife. What this means to me is that all of the conjured birds, transfigured tea cups into mice, or desks into pigs, are not actually conjuring living things. Conjuring animals in an of itself (living or not) violates Gamp's Law with regards to Food. The restrictions about life gets to, would be that these things (birds, mice, pigs) are not actually living beings, but are self-moving, semi-independent, automatons that take the form of living things. While it may look like a pig, and probably would die like a pig if you butchered it (though the meat would not provide nourishment, see Food above), it couldn't reproduce, it wouldn't have a soul, wouldn't grow, become old, or even die. But it also would probably lack personality (such as a pet dog or cat) and be missing other essential qualities that Life encompasses in the HP universe (similarly how Love can be the source of a protection spell against AK)
Now, one of the reasons that I believe wizards are able to transfigure gold but are not able to transfigure lead into gold, is in the same manner that you can transfigure a beetle into a button and transfigure it back with the beetle still being alive (otherwise animal transfiguration classes would be a gross example of animal cruelty) but not be able to transfigure a pencil into a truly living earthworm.
You start off with the actually non-conjurable substance (be it gold, food, living breathing animal) and transfigure into something else (a brick, car tire, a ruler) and still be able to get that non-conjurable substance back. The metaphysical being of the object is still that of gold, or food, or a living mouse, whereas if you start off with a rock and transfigure it into a cow, you couldn't eat it because the metaphysical aspect of the meat would be that of the inedible rock (i.e. something that is NOT Food) and therefore be non-nourishing.
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Now, I personally think that JKR made a mistake when she added the ability to "increase the quantity" as an exception to Gamp's restrictions.
Summoning makes sense (even if it is apparitional summoning, i.e. the Food doesn't cross the intervening space before it gets to the wizard from wherever it started) the Food/Gold/etc.. is already in existance so it isn't being conjured/transfigured for it to brought to the wizard's location.
And changing the substance also makes sense. I mean going beyond the gross transfigurations I spoke about above (Food into something that is not Food) but a really important one would be being able to turn spoiled Food into fresh Food. This would be part of the reason for Ron's complaints against Hermione's cooking, that while Mrs. Weaseley may not have had enough money to buy good quality food, she was able to magically make it much more palatable than Hermione's skill was able to do, and lead to Ron's perception that Hermione was trying hard enough when she was doing the cooking. That doesn't mean Ron wasn't being very rude in his complaints, I'm just saying what a possible magical source for his complaints were that no matter what his mother started off with she was able to make it taste good through magic. Which goes to the ability to change food by magic.
However, the ability to increase the actual quantity of Food (as opposed to just increasing the perceived quanity of food, i.e. doubling an apple but only getting two physical apples with half the nutritional value.) Really scuppers the hole restriction against conjuring things from nothing and transfiguring things into the Five Exceptions.
Because that begs the question: Why didn't the Golden Trio take the one time risk of going to a muggle supermarket (which exist all over muggle Britain) and purchase a wide selection of non-perishable foodstuffs and just duplicate the base quantity every meal. Heck, if they were able to cast permenant freshness or freezing charms this non-perishable restriction would go away as well.
All it would require is that Hermione purchase one bag of flour, rice, beans, one can of tuna, corn, peas, etc... And they would permanently have had enough food for the entire journey.
Either duplicated food isn't food (which makes much more sense) or the Golden Trio were a bunch of monumental fools in their inability to take the onetime risk of purchasing food.
Well, I think I'm done writing this novel ;-D
TB
