Clarke's Laws

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke is famous, among many, many things, for coining three laws concerning Science-with-a-capital-S and, well, the way we think as human beings, I guess.*

I’ve only seen the last one with any frequency in books about science and science fiction. In Michio Kaku’s interesting little book which I’ve been thumbing through this past week, I’ve come across all three laws stated in full. Want to hear them? They’re all fairly commonsensical, but with a neat little twists to make them memorable and pithy.

Clarke’s First Law: 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.

Possibly formed in honor of Lord Kelvin, the eminent British physicist of the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to a couple of his pronouncements, here, I think he may also have been the source of the (para)phrase “All that remains in physics is to measure out the decimal points.” In other words, everything worthy and worthwhile has been discovered, all that’s left is to fine-tune our measurements. Physics is a dead-end science. All this said on the eve of the incredibly revolutionary discoveries of quantum mechanics and relativity in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Clarke’s Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

I like this one. It’s poetic in a way. I agree with the often-heard commentary that the word impossible should be stricken from language, both one’s personal self-dialogue as well as anything said or written for public consumption. Impossible self-limits us as individuals and as a society. Nothing is impossible; everything is a matter of will, resources, and time. And no, I do not think these ponderings are in violation of Matthew 19:26. Think about it.

Anytime anyone, anywhere or anyhow, says anything is Impossible, red flags must go up. I’m talking more red flags than you’d see at Pamplona when they let all them damn bulls run free. In my imagination I see a multi-gazillionaire philanthropist creating a school for a hundred exceptionally bright and gifted students, and at the start of school on a crisp September morning, he hands these kids a list – a list of all the things that have currently been labled as “impossible” – and he clasps his hands and says, “Now, children, get to work!”

Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This is the one you’ve most likely heard if you’ve read anything in the science/science fiction nonfiction field. It’s also the one most fun. Used as something like a hind-sight tool, you can go back in literature (or even history) and hypothesize what “magical” phenomena might have been. Merlin’s spells, such as when he transformed Uther’s features to resemble a rival king?** Crystal balls or palantirs? We’re on the verge of that technology, or will be in a few years. Some have spent their days writing how the Ark of the Covenant was a great electrical battery.

Star Trek: The Original Series, the series I’m most familiar with, used this Law frequently in episodes. Kirk and Spock would find themselves on some planet with an apparently primitive society. They’d make contact with various members of the populace who were being oppressed by evil rulers or beings who used “magic” to keep them in line. Spock would deduce the actual technology behind the magic, and Kirk would go ahead and free the enslaved, Prime Directive be damned. For a kid, it was instructive. Like solving a mystery.

For my thoughts on Mr. Clarke, a great (though flawed in some respects) writer, scientist and engineer, who died last year, see here.

For a review of The Fountains of Paradise, the latest Clarke novel I’ve read since the awesome Rama series I put away in the early 90s, see here.

More tidbits from Kaku’s Physics of the Impossible in the days to come.


* Odd note: as I was typing the end of this sentence, I typed human begins instead of human beings. I like that. It’s very teleological. It kinda denotes our humanity as a starting point. We’re not “beings,” we’re “begins.” Now, the supreme question is: Where are we heading? And I’m not necessarily talking about us as a species, but as individual, specific begins. Hmmm?

** Also, I seem to remember, didn’t Merlin experience time backwards? What would be the purpose of that, and what device could possibly produce such a magical effect??