Clarke's Three Laws

Clarke's Three Laws

Clarke's Three Laws are three "laws" of prediction formulated by the British writer and scientist Arthur C. Clarke. They are:

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 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.

In his 1999 revision of Profiles of the Future, published in London by Indigo, Clarke added his Fourth Law: "For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert". This is similar to Gibson's law, which holds that "For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD". [edit]

4. For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert

Clarke's Three Laws



I was reading a magazine which contained this list of eponymous laws and felt it felt right on topic with the themes discussed here on ATS. For those of you who don't know who Arthur C Clarke here is a quick background summary of him.

Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction author, inventor,[2] and futurist,[3] most famous for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in parallel with the script for the eponymous film, co-written with film-director Stanley Kubrick;[4] and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World.[5][6] For many years, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.[7]

Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar instructor and technician from 1941–1946. He proposed a satellite communication system in 1945 which won him the Franklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Gold Medal in 1963.[8][9] He was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1947–1950 and again in 1953.[10]

Clarke emigrated to Sri Lanka in 1956 largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving;[11] that year, he discovered the underwater ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom in 1998,[12][13] and was awarded Sri Lanka's highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005.[14]

Arthur C. Clarke


These laws that were contributed to society are an invaluable tool, an almost philosophy of sorts. They are a way to view the progression of not only just science fields, but all fields and areas of interest as a whole. My personal opinion of this man is one of the highest as he digressed from mainstream scientific views of his time in his belief of the limitless possibilities of the human condition.