13. Clarke's Laws
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This article is from the rec.arts.sf.written FAQ, by Evelyn C. Leeper evelynleeper@geocities.com with numerous contributions by others.
13. Clarke's Laws
Clarke's Law, later Clarke's First Law, can be found in the essay
"Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination", in the collection
"Profiles of the Future", 1962, revised 1973, Harper & Row, paperback
by Popular Library, ISBN 0-445-04061-0. It reads:
# [1] When a distinguished but elderly scientist
# states that something is possible, he is almost
# certainly right. When he states that something
# is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Note that the adverbs in the two sentences are different. Clarke continues:
# Perhaps the adjective "elderly" requires definition. In physics,
# mathematics, and astronautics it means over thirty; in the other
# disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties.
# There are, of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher
# just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for
# nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out
# of the laboratory!
Isaac Asimov added a further comment with Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's
Law, which he expounded in an essay logically titled "Asimov's Corollary".
This appeared in the February 1977 issue of F&SF, and can be found in the
collection "Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright", 1978, Doubleday; no ISBN on
my copy. Asimov's Corollary reads:
% [1AC] When, however, the lay public rallies round an
% idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly
% scientists and supports that idea with great fervor
% and emotion -- the distinguished but elderly
% scientists are then, after all, probably right.
So much for Clarke's First Law. A few pages later on, in the final
paragraph of the same essay, Clarke writes:
# [2] But the only way of discovering the limits of the
# possible is to venture a little way past them into
# the impossible.
To this he attaches a footnote:
# The French edition of [presumably, the first edition of] this
# book rather surprised me by calling this Clarke's Second Law.
# (See page [number] for the First, which is now rather well-
# known.) I accept the label, and have also formulated a Third:
#
# [3] Any sufficiently advanced technology is
# indistinguishable from magic.
#
# As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly
# decided to stop there.
[Provided by Mark Brader.]
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