British science fiction writer

Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Spac ...

formulated three

adage An adage (; Latin: adagium) is a memorable and usually philosophical aphorism that communicates an important truth derived from experience, custom, or both, and that many people consider true and credible because of its longeval tradition, i.e. ...

s that are known as Clarke's three laws, of which the third law is the best known and most widely cited. They are part of his ideas in his extensive writings about the future.

The laws

The laws are: # 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

One account claimed that Clarke's "laws" were developed after the editor of his works in French started numbering the author's assertions. All three laws appear in Clarke's essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination", first published in ''Profiles of the Future'' (1962). However, they were not all published at the same time. Clarke's first law was proposed in the 1962 edition of the essay, as "Clarke's Law" in ''Profiles of the Future''. The second law is offered as a simple observation in the same essay but its status as Clarke's second law was conferred by others. It was initially a derivative of the first law and formally became Clarke's second law where the author proposed the third law in the 1973 revision of ''Profiles of the Future'', which included an acknowledgement. It was also here that Clarke wrote about the third law in these words: "As three laws were good enough for

Newton Newton most commonly refers to: * Isaac Newton (1642–1726/1727), English scientist * Newton (unit), SI unit of force named after Isaac Newton Newton may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Newton'' (film), a 2017 Indian film * Newton ( ...

, I have modestly decided to stop there". The third law is the best known and most widely cited. It was published in a 1968 letter to ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

'' magazine and eventually added to the 1973 revision of the "Hazards of Prophecy" essay. In 1952,

Isaac Asimov yi, יצחק אזימאװ , birth_date = , birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR , spouse = , relatives = , children = 2 , death_date = , death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S. , nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (192 ...

in his book ''Foundation and Empire'' (part 1.1 ''Search for Magicians'') wrote down a similar phrase "... an uninformed public tends to confuse scholarship with magicians..." It also echoes a statement in a 1942 story by

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: "Witchcraft to the ignorant, ... simple science to the learned". Even earlier examples of this sentiment may be found in '' Wild Talents'' (1932) by

Charles Fort Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932) was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The terms "Fortean" and "Forteana" are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold w ...

: "...a performance that may someday be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic," and in the short story ''

The Hound of Death ''The Hound of Death and Other Stories'' is a collection of twelve short stories by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom in October 1933. Unusually, the collection was not published by Christie's regular publi ...

'' (1933) by

Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictiona ...

: "The supernatural is only the nature of which the laws are not yet understood."

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

's 1928 novel '' Orlando: A Biography'' explicitly compares advanced technology to magic: Clarke gave an example of the third law when he said that while he "would have believed anyone who told him back in 1962 that there would one day exist a book-sized object capable of holding the content of an entire library, he would never have accepted that the same device could find a page or word in a second and then convert it into any typeface and size from

Albertus Albertus Magnus (c. 1200 – 15 November 1280), also known as Saint Albert the Great or Albert of Cologne, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop. Later canonised as a Catholic saint, he was known during his life ...

Extra Bold to Zurich

Calligraphic Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as ...

", referring to his memory of "seeing and hearing

Linotype machine The Linotype machine ( ) is a "line casting" machine used in printing; manufactured and sold by the former Mergenthaler Linotype Company and related It was a hot metal typesetting system that cast lines of metal type for individual uses. Lin ...

s which slowly converted 'molten lead into front pages that required two men to lift them'".

Variants of the third law

The third law has inspired many

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s and other variations: * Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God. ( Shermer's last law) * Any sufficiently advanced act of benevolence is indistinguishable from malevolence (referring to

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

) * The following two variants are very similar, and combine the third law with Hanlon's razor ** Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice (Clark's law) ** Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice (Grey's law) * Any sufficiently advanced troll is indistinguishable from a genuine kook ''or'' the viewpoints of even the most extreme crank are indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced satire ( Poe's law) * Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo * Any sufficiently advanced idea is distinguishable from mere magical incantation provided the former is presented as a mathematical proof, verifiable by sufficiently competent mathematicians * Any sufficiently crappy research is indistinguishable from fraud (

Andrew Gelman Andrew Eric Gelman (born February 11, 1965) is an American statistician and professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University. Gelman received bachelor of science degrees in mathematics and in physics from MIT, where he was a ...

) * Any sufficiently advanced hobby is indistinguishable from work The third law has been reversed for

fictional universe A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes may ...

s involving

magic in fiction Magic in fiction is the endowment of characters or objects in works of fiction or fantasy with powers that do not naturally occur in the real world. Magic often serves as a plot device and has long been a component of fiction, since writing wa ...

: * "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!"

Corollaries

Isaac Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's First Law: "When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervour and emotion – the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right." A

contrapositive In logic and mathematics, contraposition refers to the inference of going from a conditional statement into its logically equivalent contrapositive, and an associated proof method known as proof by contraposition. The contrapositive of a statemen ...

of the third law is "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." (Gehm's corollary)

References

External links