But if Gizbak stops maintaining his Summoning Circle tomes, the whole world of magic will fall apart
Or giant megacorporations each hire 200,000+ of them to create products for the non-magic folk to consume.
After a few decades, the idea of being a wizard is synonymous with working 8+ hours a day on magic that no wizard really wants and there is so little new spells and magic being created in the world that everyone wishes there wasn't any.
Then leaks come out that the products these megacorporations create have been slowly killing the planet and they've known for decades. But since they have so much power and money, nothing can stop them until the world dies.
I mean chemistry direct predecessor, alchemy, was basically in large part magical practice attempt.
True. They didn't make gold, but they discovered phosphorus...I think? The reducing urine one experiment.
Yep. You wouldn't have adventurous magicians going out and casting spells against dragons. The variety of spells known by D&D type wizards wouldn't even be a thing. You'd have a guy who was a specialist in ritual-casting flame spells whose job consisted of continuously heating up cauldrons of metal ore so it could be smelted. If he was jumped on his commute home, he couldn't fight the attackers off with "fireball" or something. Maybe that was covered in school decades ago, but he's spent his entire career doing nothing but that one smelting spell Or, you'd have the "Gate" wizard whose entire job was to keep up a portal for their entire 8 hour shift, so that tourists could pass back and forth.