Clarke’s Laws
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.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke set forth these laws in Profiles of the Future (1962 rev. ed. 1972). A prolific author of science fiction, Mr. Clarke - trained in physics and mathematics - also was first to suggest back in 1945 that a satellite in a synchronous orbit where it stays above the same point on the earth’s surface would make an ideal vehicle for relaying radio, television and telephone signals over the horizon.
The history of science is littered with examples of Clarke’s First Law. For example John Trowbridge, head of the physics department at Harvard University, said in 1880 - just a year after Einstein was born - that every important discovery in physics had already been made. Then there was Lord Rutherford who led the way in discovering the structure of the atom, but pooh-poohed the possibility of obtaining energy from this source, saying in 1933 that “Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.”
In explaining his law, Clarke pointed out that ‘elderly’ in science is not so elderly by other standards. In physics and mathematics, for example, anyone over thirty is ‘elderly.’ In other scientific fields, ’senile decay’ may be postponed into the forties. After the age of fifty, scientists “are good for nothing but board meetings and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory.”
Clarke said he had “modestly decided to stop” with three laws “as three laws were good enough for Newton” but that has not kept others from building upon his work. Thus, his third law has been extended in what is known as Jones’s Law (though who Jones is, or was, is not known): “Anyone who make a significant contribution to any field of endeavor and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress . . . in direct proportion to the importance of the original contribution” (in Arthur Block The Complete Murphy’s Law 1991).
And Isaac Asimov, reflecting upon his own valiant efforts to puncture popular beliefs in astrology, flying saucers, Velikovskianism, and so on, and while also admitting that he was “a little over thirty and have been a little over thirty for a long time”, amended Clarke with:
Asimov’s Corollary to Clarke’s First Law. When however the lay public rallies around 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 (The Skeptical Inquirer Spring 1979).
The significance of age thirty also has been noted in non-scientific contexts; see Weinberg’s Laws.
Discussion of Clarke’s Laws
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