Clarke's Laws
Arthur C. Clarke has made the following three axiomatic predictions known as "Laws" in his work :
- “If a respected but senior scientist claims that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. If he claims that something is impossible, he is most likely wrong. "
- "The only way to find the limits of what is possible is to push a little beyond them into the impossible."
- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Of these three “laws”, the third in particular - and not only within science fiction literature - has achieved the character of a proverb . Thus the three are clark eschen laws of the genre compared in significance to the three Laws of Robotics by Isaac Asimov .
origin
The clark ash Act , which later became the first of the three laws is by Arthur C. Clarke in 1962 in the essay Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination in the original issue of his book Profiles of the Future: on the limits of the possible English (. Profiles of the Future ).
The second law is set up as a simple observation in the same essay, the status of the second law was later assigned to it by others. In a 1973 revision of the book, Clarke himself referred to the second law as such and at the same time proposed the third to round off the number of laws. He wrote: "Since three laws were enough for Newton , I humbly decided to leave it at that number as well." Of Clarke's three laws, the third is the best known and most cited.
The third law represents possibly Clarke's most significant contribution to the genre of fantastic literature .
In novels like The Seven Suns and short stories like The Sentinel (on which 2001: A Space Odyssey is based in part) Clarke goes even further: He presents the reader with ultra-advanced technology that is only limited by the fundamental laws of physics. In The Seven Suns , for example, a human civilization is described that, after a billion years, has regressed to such an extent that it is no longer able to understand the technology that surrounds it. It is faced with streets, the surface of which flows like rivers, and “eternity machines”, which keep the physical structure of buildings and machines, including the arrangement of the individual atoms, in harmony with a stored model and thus prevent their decay. However, explaining exactly how such technology works would only be distracting to the reader and have nothing to do with the actual content and intended message of the story (Imagine explaining how radios work in order to tell a Stone Age man the To make the events of the Second World War understandable). Clarke's Third Law finds the source of wonder in our own limitation, and not in the impossibility of the technique presented. Thus, in his works, the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the later sequels) also represents the ultimate example of the third law.
Effect in literature and popular culture
- Isaac Asimov wrote a corollary to the first law that reads: “If the uneducated public cheers an idea that is rejected by distinguished older scientists and then defends this idea with great zeal and emotion - then the distinguished older scientists have probably still right. "
- Larry Niven wrote in the context of his examination of the fantasy genre : "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." This is sometimes referred to as Niven's law , but it is not part of the list he published entitled Niven's laws .
- Dave Lebling put it in a similar form in his computer game Trinity , published in 1986 : "Any sufficiently obscure magic is indistinguishable from technology."
- Terry Pratchett has the character Ponder Stibbons Niven's reversal of the third law quote in his Discworld novels . In addition, in the novel True Heroes from the same series , he lets the genius Leonard von Quirm say that he has no use for craftsmen “who already know the limits of what is possible” when he was working on the first (non-magical) flying machine.
- In the episode The traveler of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation noted an engineer to the advanced technology of the stranger: "You're asking us to believe in magic." Then the as the responses of the travelers referred to strangers: "Yes, I think , from their perspective it seems like magic. ” In the episode The God of the Mintakans , the technology used by Captain Picard is also interpreted as magic by a more primitive culture. The situation is reversed when in the later episode Death Longing of the Star Trek: Voyager series it is explained that the "Q", which previously appeared as omnipotent, god-like supernatures, are by no means omnipotent and only appear to people as they themselves with their technology less sophisticated civilization would appear divine.
- In the first volume of the Foundation cycle , not written by Asimov, the Emperor declares, “If technology is to be distinguished from magic, it is not advanced enough.” This is a paraphrase of Wolfgang's Corollary of the Third Law, which reads “Any technology, which of Magic is distinguishable is insufficiently progressive. "
- In Superman Returns , Lex Luthor cites the Third Law twice in relation to Krypton's technology.
- In The Box - You are the experiment , the third law is cited.
- In the novel Death rains from Dean Koontz , the narrator also cited several times the third law. She also says that a reversal is also possible: at a time when belief in science is increasing, supernatural phenomena can also be confused with advanced technology.
- In the webcomic Freefall , one of the main characters sets up another corollary to the third law: "Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic in the eyes of those who do not understand it."
- The television series Stargate SG-1 uses the third law as one of the central themes for the plot. The advanced Goa'uld use technology disguised as magic to subdue and enslave humans.
- In the Stargate Universe episode 2x09, the third law is quoted verbatim.
- In the TV series Babylon 5, there is a mysterious group known as the "technomage". In the 23rd century they openly admit that their “powers” are based on technology, but live according to the principle of Clarke's Third Law and thus behave more like magicians. One of them explains this with a parable: Just as a space station must appear to primitive cultures as magic, its technology is similarly far ahead of that of space-traveling people of the 23rd century and must in turn appear to them as magic.
- Charles Sheffield has one of the characters in his Heritage Universe series quote an extraterrestrial phrase that reads: "Any sufficiently ancient technology is indistinguishable from magic." His book The Proteus Trilogy; Vol. 2: The Unleashed Proteus contains the following in the introduction to Chapter 21 on p. 216: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from sorcery. Arthur C. Clarke ".
- In Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle , Jack Shaftoe says to Enoch Root: “You cannot see the thread from this distance and believe that you are using some form of sorcery.” He replies: “Any sufficiently advanced technique is not a yo-yo to distinguish. "
- A practical demonstration of the third law can be found in the book A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur by Mark Twain (published a few decades earlier) , in which the protagonist successively uses a little astronomy and a little applied chemistry to appear as a powerful magician and so on manages to outdo Merlin's poor magic tricks.
- Scott Adams , author of the comic strip Dilbert , publicly complained that in his home "all sufficiently advanced technology is broken and no one knows how to fix it."
- The title of the book Indistinguishable from Magic by Robert L. Forward refers directly to the third law. The three laws are listed in the preface.
- In the song Beyond Mirrors on the album Pocket Universe by the band Yello , the following line of text appears: "According to Arthur C. Clarke any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- In the anime Witch Craft Works , a chemistry teacher who used magic to create a room quotes the third law to distract from the fact that he created said room in the same way.
- Cheryl from the animated series Archer refers to the third law, when a submarine and its crew are to be shrunk in order to get through a patient's bloodstream to a thrombus in the patient's brain and destroy it.
- In the science fiction film Transformers: The Last Knight , Anthony Hopkins also quotes the third law verbatim in connection with the Arthurian legend .
- In the series Doctor Who , The Doctor quotes the third law at the end of episode 8 of season 11.
literature
- Arthur C. Clarke: Profiles of the Future: Beyond the Limits of What is Possible . Heyne, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-453-01905-9 .
Web links
- The origins of the Three Laws
- "What's Your Law?" (Lists some of the corollaries)