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From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Clarke's Laws ("Any sufficiently advanced technology...")
Message-ID: <1104@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Feb-86 02:11:09 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.1104
Posted: Sun Feb  9 02:11:09 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Feb-86 13:52:21 EST
References: <1119@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> <1660@jhunix.UUCP> <508@oliven.UUCP>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 58
Summary: 

>>> "A sufficiently high level of technology is indistinguishable from magic."
>>>  Heinlein
>> Clarke!
> Now don't start *that* again!
> Yes, both Heinlein and Clarke are credited with the above statement ...
> The verdict?  Neither admits to being the originator.

Curious.  I've read a lot of both authors, and this is the first I've
seen of anyone but Clarke connected with the aphorism.  But I have no
involvement with organized fandom; perhaps the last quoted poster does.
I'd be interested to see a reference for Heinlein's claim to this.

Here is Clarke's claim, and note that it is a claim of authorship; did
he later retract it?  For good measure I throw in Clarke's other laws,
as they originally appeared.

Reference: "Profiles of the Future", 1972 revised edition.  Page numbers
are for the Popular Library paperback of 1977.

Page 32:

#  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 astronauts 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!

Page 39:

#  The [above] list is deliberately provocative: it includes sheer
#  fantasy as well as serious scientific speculation.  But the only way
#  of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way
#  past them into the impossible[1].  In the chapters that follows, this
#  is exactly what I hope to do...

Footnote:

#  [1] The French edition of this book rather surprised me by calling
#  this Clarke's Second Law.  (See page 25 [sic] for the First, which
#  is now rather well-known.)  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.

Mark Brader