Eu me deparei com um pequeno número de histórias que postulam uma equivalência metafísica entre rituais mágicos tradicionais e modernos rituais matemáticos (ou seja, programação de computadores ou provar certos teoremas):
Qual é a primeira dessas histórias?
Eu não estou procurando por sistemas de magia que "funcionem como" programação de computadores ( Wiz Biz , Dragon Knight , Babylon 5 Techo-Mages, etc.), nem computadores que funcionam via mágica.
L. Sprague de Camp e Fletcher Pratt escreveram uma série de romances de fantasia baseados na premissa de que soluções mentais de certas fórmulas matemáticas poderiam ser usadas transportá-los para universos alternativos ... Não exatamente algoritmos de computador, mas as histórias remontam ao início dos anos 40. [Especificamente, "The Roaring Trumpet" em Unknown Fantasy Fiction , maio de 1940 e "The Matemática da Magia "em Unknown Fantasy Fiction , agosto de 1940 .]
Acho que a história mais antiga seria "Os Nove Bilhões de Nomes de Deus" , de Arthur C. Clarke, publicado em 1953, em que um grupo de monges tibetanos
use a computer to enumerate all the names of God and end the universe.
Eu mencionaria a série de Rick Cook , que começou em 1989 com "Wizard's Bane" e terminou com 4 sequências e um trabalho inacabado. Não tão cedo quanto a série japonesa, mas postula a equivalência que você pergunta exatamente.
Sonhos na Casa da Bruxa é talvez o mais ilustrativo. Várias citações mostram como Lovecraft equiparou a compreensão matemática à capacidade de realizar feitos mágicos:
Gilman came from Haverhill, but it was only after he had entered college in Arkham that he began to connect his mathematics with the fantastic legends of elder magic.
...
There was much in the Essex County records about Keziah Mason’s trial, and what she had admitted under pressure to the Court of Oyer and Terminer had fascinated Gilman beyond all reason. She had told Judge Hathorne of lines and curves that could be made to point out directions leading through the walls of space to other spaces beyond, and had implied that such lines and curves were frequently used at certain midnight meetings in the dark valley of the white stone beyond Meadow Hill and on the unpeopled island in the river. She had spoken also of the Black Man, of her oath, and of her new secret name of Nahab. Then she had drawn those devices on the walls of her cell and vanished.
...
As time wore along, his absorption in the irregular wall and ceiling of his room increased; for he began to read into the odd angles a mathematical significance which seemed to offer vague clues regarding their purpose. Old Keziah, he reflected, might have had excellent reasons for living in a room with peculiar angles; for was it not through certain angles that she claimed to have gone outside the boundaries of the world of space we know?
...
What made the students shake their heads was his sober theory that a man might—given mathematical knowledge admittedly beyond all likelihood of human acquirement—step deliberately from the earth to any other celestial body which might lie at one of an infinity of specific points in the cosmic pattern. Such a step, he said, would require only two stages; first, a passage out of the three-dimensional sphere we know, and second, a passage back to the three-dimensional sphere at another point, perhaps one of infinite remoteness. [...] Professor Upham especially liked his demonstration of the kinship of higher mathematics to certain phases of magical lore transmitted down the ages from an ineffable antiquity—human or pre-human—whose knowledge of the cosmos and its laws was greater than ours.
Eventualmente, o protagonista, tendo conseguido começar a entender a geometria extra-dimensional necessária e é capaz de imaginar os ângulos corretos, começou a atravessar e viajar através das dimensões em seus sonhos.