When your father is a magician, what do you believe?

"My earliest lessons in observation came not from a laboratory but in the living room, with my father in his tuxedo and top hat. To everyone else, he was "Big Ed," a larger-than-life physician who was a magician, an archer, a raconteur, and much else. By day, he mesmerized patients with his easy confidence; by night, he dazzled guests with sleight-of-hand, conjuring coins from behind ears or producing endless scarves from his sleeve. To me, he was both healer and illusionist, a scientist and showman."

"When your father is a magician, what do you believe? As a child, the boundary between real and unreal was porous. I wanted to believe in the rabbit pulled from a hat, the floating light bulb, the miraculous escapes. But even as a boy, I began to notice the seams: the telltale flash of a hidden card, the tiny bulge in his sleeve where the coin waited. What others applauded as mystery became for me a problem waiting to be solved."

"It was not cynicism so much as curiosity that drove me. I learned that every illusion, no matter how beguiling, had a mechanism beneath it. Magic was an invitation to look closer, to ask: How does this really work? That question - posed again and again in my childhood - propelled my apprenticeship in science. I became my father's assistant, carrying props, rehearsing patter, acting as the straight man."

A boy learned observational skills from a father who was both physician and magician, performing by day and dazzling by night. The child wanted to believe in miraculous escapes but began to notice the mechanical seams of illusion: hidden cards, bulging sleeves, and staged effects. Curiosity, not cynicism, motivated the search for how tricks worked. Magic became an invitation to investigate mechanisms and ask how things really work. Serving as assistant and skeptic, the child found satisfaction in uncovering secrets and developed a habit of demanding evidence that propelled a path into science.

Read at Big Think