Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!ntt 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 References: <1104@qubix.UUCP>, <451@denelcor.UUCP> Organization: NTT Systems Inc., Toronto, Canada Lines: 39 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