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From: ntt@dciem.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Clarke's Laws (Re: Death Star weapon)
Message-ID: <948@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Jun-84 11:12:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.948
Posted: Tue Jun 12 11:12:45 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Jun-84 15:21:15 EDT
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Organization: NTT Systems Inc., Toronto, Canada
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Since a misquotation of Clarke's (First) Law was posted to sf-lovers a
week or so ago, and nobody has put in a correction, I thought I would.
The previous poster referred to a "highly placed" scientist, which isn't it.

While I'm at it, I include his other Laws and his comments about them.
The rest of this message is excerpted from "Profiles of the Future" by
Arthur C. Clarke, 1973 revised edition.


	Too great a burden of knowledge can clog the wheels of
	imagination; I have tried to embody this fact of observation
	in Clarke's Law, which may be formulated as follows:

		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.

	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...

[Some pages later]

	...[T]he only way of discovering the limits of the possible
	is to venture a little past them into the impossible.*

[Footnote]
	*The French edition [of the first edition] of this book rather
	surprised me by calling this Clarke's Second Law. ... I accept
	the label, and have also formulated a Third: "Any sufficiently
	advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

	As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly
	decided to stop there.


Posted by Mark Brader