Excerpt from Lart Docer's lecture on intro to magical theory

Docer: "One cannot forget when they are memorizing their first order aspects of the importance of the primals. all aspects spring forth from various excitations and modifications of these four fundamental characteristics. Push, spot, heft, and future. With these four any object in the universe can be created, the other aspects merely flowing as a result of these intrinsic numbers."
Student: "what makes these aspects more fundamental than any other? push has four different values that seem to do wildly different things, couldn't it theoretically be separated into different aspects itself?"
Docer: "indeed push does seem to be made up of different forces, and at one point many mages did split it into pieces. But while it is not completely understood these values all seem to be different sides of the same whole, and the gods themselves may very well see only a single number. Our only glimpse into this truth lies in ancient texts found form before the collapse. Those old mages seem to have created conditions bizarre enough through extreme pressure to cause all four to collapse in on themselves. Those discoveries revolutionized aspect research and was a large part of why we only have four primals today. Similar discoveries were made with heft. It seems strange that one value of heft is dependant on how much of something there is, and another seems based on movement and where you put it. But all evidence points to them really being one and the same. I can not give you an answer to why, Auramancy simply isn't there yet, but maybe you can go on to be the one to find out!"
Student: " I still don't get why we need to learn about these, modifying primals directly is nearly impossible, and thinking about them just causes them to get in the way of real spellcasting."
Docer: "typical youth, always worried about the applied and not the theory. Mark my words ill turn some of you applied kids into theoretical auramancers yet. But for now i must move on to discussing our friend the Zayler transformation"
*collective groans from the class*