Clarke's three laws
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Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:
- 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.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Origins
Clarke's Law, later the first of the three laws, was proposed by Arthur C. Clarke in the essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination", in Profiles of the Future (1962). The second law is offered as a simple observation in the same essay; its status as Clarke's Second Law was conferred on it by others.In a revised edition of Profiles of the Future (1973), Clarke acknowledged the Second Law and proposed the Third in order to round out the numbers, adding "As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there." Out of those three laws, the Third Law is the most known and widely cited.
References in other works
- Terry Pratchett refers to the law in his Discworld books by having wizard Ponder Stibbons state that "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." Furthermore, in another novel, Leonard of Quirm is working on the Discworld's first (non-magical) flying machine, and states that he has no use for artisans who have "learned the limits of the possible."
- In the first non-Asimov Foundation Novel, the emperor declares, "If technology is distinguishable from magic, it is insufficiently advanced."
- In Part Three of the Doctor Who story Battlefield, the Seventh Doctor asks Ace if she remembers Clarke's Law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) and explains that the same can be held true in reverse (Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology) while justifying the possiblity of a dimensional spaceship which has been grown, not built.
- In Superman Returns, Lex Luthor is twice heard saying, in reference to Kryptonian technology, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
See also
- Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics
- Adages named after people
- First contact (anthropology)
- SETI
- Futures studies
External links
- [The origins of the Three Laws]
- ["What's Your Law?"] (lists some of the corollaries)
- ["A Gadget Too Far"] at Infinity Plus
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