Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
It's also all it takes to do science, yet far from every educated person is capable of actually doing difficult science, and that's with modern standards where 12 years of education isn't seen as enough to make one educated.
No, but the average educated person (and by educated I don't mean "has a degree," I mean educated as in "has reached the basic social expectations of education") knows rudimentary chemistry, mathematics, engineering, astronomy, and physics. In a world where knowing how things work = exerting some level of control over them, basic book learning would logically afford a minor capacity for spellcasting.

And, related to my above rejection of "The Special," no I don't buy that a first level wizard has the equivalent of a doctorate, let alone a PhD. Being a wizard is well within the capacity of races with lifespans significantly shorter (and intellects objectively dimmer, so it's not a raw talent thing) than humans, so it's not like it takes 30-odd years to learn how to cast cantrips (unless you're an elf, in which case it takes that long to get toilet trained).