aka Eggheads, Knowitalls
You're a genius, plain and simple. You don't have the best job in the world. You certainly didn't spend your money on a fancy degree, and you may not be recognized by any of the so-called experts in any field. You're beyond those paltry distractions. You know that true wisdom can't be bought, and it can't be given. You discover it, snapping up every last fact and tidbit you can get your grubby hands on. You fill your head with all the knowledge you can get your hands on, and you can apply it in ways that those tweed elitists could never understand. All the scientists, all the professors, all the "experts" in the world can't possibly fathom the workings of your intellect. You're a genius, plain and simple.
It all goes back to the scientific method. You see, the use of carefully applied reasoning has debunked quite a few of the world's most beloved spiritual beliefs, removing dangerous ignorance. This is good, but it also takes many people's sense of meaning and belonging, replacing it with complicated mathematics and impersonal physics. The scientific method also allowed us to produce useful medicines and technology, which is now indispensable to many modern societies. This has created a weird sort of working relationship to science in the mass human conciousness. While it's known for its usefulness and necessity, it's distrusted by many for its impenetrability and coldness.
The sad thing about this is that science is ostensibly more accessible and free than religious mysticism. Education is considered not only a basic right, but a need by many, and, with more and more of our habitat being replaced with increasingly advanced technology, it's become all the more important. However, the really advanced stuff is difficult to teach, and not really necessary to operate much of the tools we need, so much of it is omitted. Most people know about the immune system, but have no clue what immunoglogulin does. People send e-mails every day, but couldn't tell you which direction network addressing is read. Roller coaster rides may be free, but good luck guessing how fast you're going, or how it was built.
This discrepancy is where Sophiamancy comes in. While someone, somewhere knows the chemical kinetics of those pills you take every day, they probably aren't the ones who designed the system that produces them, and they sure as hell didn't do the research that discovered the mechanics of the illness they treat. Sophiamancers make it a point to know all this, and their magick tells them how to refine those pills to a more efficient form. Or into a subtle and deadly poison. Or into part of a solvent to make purified semiconductor. Or into a reagent that makes any blue-eyed ingester suddenly go blind. Sophiamancy is all about using expert knowledge faster and better than the experts do, in ways that expert knowledge says isn't possible.
The central paradox of Sophiamancy is that it relies on something that serves and is open for the everyday person, but is alienating, impersonal, and exculsive to most individuals. Many Knowitalls were once bright, wide-eyed young students who were bitterly rejected from their academic pursuits for one reason or another. Other practitioners are just that rare intersection of the scientifically curious and pathologically anti-social.
Stats
Generate a Minor Charge: Spend four hours studying academic literature covering a single topic that corresponds to one of your applicable skills. The "applicable skill" in question is a skill you must have at no less than 5%, and it must be at least as specific as the topic you study. This obviously includes reading books like "The Art of Electronics" by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill when you have a skill like "Firmware Hacking" or "Electronics Engineering" but this particular topic wouldn't include "Car Maintenance" or "Online Gaming". Also, "academic" in this case doesn't have to refer to something you can get a degree in at a university, but it must be material that was written by an expert and is recognized as a legitimate resource by most of the other experts in the field. For example, if you have "Capoeira" at 5% or more, you can charge up by reading "Roots of the Dance-Fight-Game" by Nestor Capoeira, as it's a resource recognized by most Capoeira experts as correct and useful. You as the player really don't have to know every particular book and paper read for the charge, just know the topic it covers. Having multiple skills that the study material could apply to does not grant additional charges.
Generate a Significant Charge: Using your insight and all you have learned, you must complete an Hermetic Thesis on a specific aspect of a topic that corresponds to one of your proficient skills. The particulars you wish to write about this topic must be at least as specific as a non-magickal skill you possess at no less than 20%. The work must also be exhaustive, a rush job taking at least a week's worth of mundane research and experimentation, and another week of writing and revising to complete. Your Theses are the crystallization of your personal take on your accumulated knowledge, and must never be published or shared, willingly or not, with anyone else. You receive the charge once the Hermetic Thesis is completely printed or transferred to a paper medium. Some Eggheads buy several heavy blank leather-bound books in which to write their Theses, while others just type them up, buy a nondescript plastic binder and print the pages off at Kinko's. The charge is contained within the bound copy of your work, and you must have it in a safe place somewhere when you use the charge. Afterwards, the physical work is just another piece of flammable media, and you can do what you want with it, throwing it away if you wish (though this is almost always a bad decision).
Generate a Major Charge: Create a new branch of mundane science, complete with a Numinous Dissertation containing thorough research and comprehensive proofs of its workings. At this level of innovation, it doesn't matter if you're the only one who knows about it or not, but you must be recognized by all who know of it as its founder. Albert Einstein's "Annus Mirabilis" papers would have counted for this if he were a Sophiamancer, as would (if Sophiamancy were somehow plausible way back then) Al-Jazari's "Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices" way back in 1206 AD.
Taboo: Sophiamancers have a two things they must avoid. First off, your work is yours and yours alone. Anytime someone else learns from any of your Hermetic Theses, containing a charge or not, you taboo. This only happens once for each person who reads your work, but nothing's stopping them from passing that Thesis on to others who haven't read it yet. For this reason, most Knowitalls jealously guard their work, whether it serves them any purpose at all, and many develop secret codes that they write in, to keep others from understanding anything (and therefore causing the adept to wipe) even if they possess them. The second condition of the Sophiamancy taboo is that you must never allow someone else to teach or give you collaboration on any of the mundance sciences while you work or study. You can build on the work of others, if you can acquire it impersonally, or without supplicating yourself to them, but you can't ask for their help. You must always play the role of one superior in knowledge, never a colleague or a student.
Formula Spells
Minor Formula Spells
Theory in Practice (1 Minor Charge): Much like Cliomancy's "Instant Zen Master", this spell allows you to use your Sophiamancy skill, flip-flops and all, in place of a skill you already have. Unlike "Instant Zen Master", while this spell is in effect, you can't gain any charges or use any other spells. This lasts for six rounds of combat, or about an hour in a relaxed situation.
Plebeian (2 Minor Charges): The target of this spell must succeed a Mind check with your Mind skill as a minimum roll, or they get a -20% shift to all their skill rolls involving skills that overlap with yours. Usually, "overlaps" means that their skill is being used for something that yours can also do, but each case is determined by the GM. This effect lasts for two rounds in combat, or fifteen minutes in a relaxed situation. Adding an additional charge increase the duration by one combat round or five minutes, with a limit of two more charges.
Analytic Insight (2 Minor Charges): This divination spell affects one manufactured object you are touching with one hand. By focusing intently on the object, you can picture the design of it, from the general principles used all the way down to the equations involved. More specific information requires a few seconds of concentration to attain. This works much like having a book open about the object. While using this spell, you can refer to it, but you don't know it any more than you know something from a book you're skimming. When you break contact with the object, you can use as much of the information as you can remember from the spell, but you're not guaranteed to know anything you didn't spend time commiting to memory. Also, you may not necessarily understand everything you see. While using this spell, you can't divide your attention enough to, say, write anything down, but nothing's stopping you from telling someone else who can about how the object works.
Intuitive Leap (3 Minor Charges): To use this spell, first think of a problem you're trying to design a solution to, and then all the steps you take to produce that solution up until you hit a dead end. This spell will tell you the next singular step to take to reach your solution. It will give only a little push, and tell you the smallest amount of information it can, but sometimes that's enough. For example, to refine a substance you've acquired from a narqui to something that wouldn't kill you if you took it, you'd propose something like "1)Heat solution by increments to 176 degrees C, condensing all vapors in a cooler flask --> 2)Dispose of condensed impurities collected by heating --> 3)Add Iron(II) Sulfate and mineral acid to remaining mixture to test for Cyanide --> 4)???". The spell would tell you "4)Add Borax solution to remaining mixture". This would negate the effects of the mineral acid you put in, and you could deduce that step 3 was useless, but it wouldn't tell you to neutralize the syphilis-infected plasma the narqui put in the substance he gave you. Having more knowledge about the specifics of the problem, and phrasing the problem in a clever way can get you more helpful advice from this spell, but it's never more than what your next immediate action should be.
Significant Formula Spells
Technobabble (1 Significant Charge): This spell allows you to completely change one manufactured object's function, potentially forever. To cast this spell, you must touch the object in question, and provide an "expert" analysis of its capabilities, even if no one else is there. This involves using as many polysyllabic words as you can squeeze into a bullshit explanation, and speaking as authoritatively as you can. From then on out, the object will operate as you described, regardless of how ridiculous your explanation was. However, this spell will end if someone in the presence of the object determines that your analysis was wrong. At this point the object will resume its normal function, with whatever other weirdness it did being written off as weird malfunctioning or a prank. If you're around when this happens, plenty of people will be pissed off at you.
Black Box (1 Significant Charge): This spell allows you construct an object that can perform one particular function on its own, regardless of its possibility within the constraints of the materials and resources you have. You state what the object will do, and this spell gives you the inspiration to design the object based on what you know when you cast it. You'll know exactly what to do with what materials to construct your device until it's completed, at which time you'll completely everything you learned during its creation. Once it's done, you'll have a device that can do anything that something conceived by modern science could. It could instantly boil an egg, or it could produce as much energy as a nuclear reactor with only water vapor as a by-product. The device can only be operated by you, and only for the application you set for it. To everyone else, the device is a mysterious jumble of parts that doesn't do anything when activated. Many things could be accomplished with this spell, but there are some limits. First off, you don't know how it works anymore, so you can't modify or repair it. If something goes wrong and you want to fix it, you must expend six minor charges to do so, and it still won't work as well as it did before. Secondly, the device will fall apart with repeated use. No Egghead has been able to use a Black Box for more than half a year without needing to build a new one. Finally, you can only have one Black Box at a time. If you construct another one, the previous one falls apart, or the new one simply fails to function and you've wasted a charge. Also, keep in mind that this spell only knows what you tell it about the object's intended function, and thus the Black Box will only work under the exact conditions you state when you cast the spell.