From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: clarke's law
Date: 9 Nov 92 00:42:31 GMT
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada

> > > Someone recently posted Clarke's law.  The one about
> > > if a senior scientist says possible ...
> > Funny, the one I learned as "Clarke's Law" is:
> > "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
> Clarke is allowed to have many laws. Both of these are known as
> "Clarke's Law."

No, these are Clarke's First Law (which *was* Clarke's Law when it
was the only one), and Clarke's Third Law.  Incidentally, in his
recent book "How the World Was One", he refers to a case where the
First Law bit *him*.

Here's an old article of mine which made it into the FAQ list for the
newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written:


----------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The original poster asked for email, not posted answers, and I am
emailing this article to him also.
-- 
Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com
	We can design a system that's proof against accident and stupidity;
	but we CAN'T design one that's proof against deliberate malice.
	-- a spaceship designer in Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

This article is in the public domain.