" Sherrine grinned and made a rainbow ring.  "A lot of my mundane friends," she said to Alex, "think that explaining a phenomenon 'ruins the magic.'  I think the explanations just make it more magical than before.  'Danes live in a world where everything happens on the surface; where everything is a symptom--like the rainbows.  But a cloud of microscopic crystal prisms is as magical as an unexplained rainbow any day." "

From Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn