Clarke's Third Law

Writing in the 1973 revision of his book of essays Profiles of the Future, Arthur C Clarke identified three ‘laws’ connecting science and science fiction. Appearing in the essay “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination”, the first stated that senior scientists are almost certainly right about what may be possible, and almost certainly wrong about what is not. The second states that the only way to find a limit of possibility is to push a little past it. But by far the best known of these adages is Clarke’s Third Law:

 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Indistinguishable from Magic

Catchy as Clarke’s phrasing was [1], this wasn’t a new idea but one built on the history of science fiction, as well as acute observation of the rapid advance of science. The medieval monk and early scientific investigator Roger Bacon noted that “many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical" in the 13th century. The industrial and scientific revolution didn’t really change this, but did bring into focus the very different ways of interpreting the world prevalent in the past as opposed to the present. 

As early as 1889, Mark Twain published his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Although this was primarily a satire on monarchy, democracy and other aspects of contemporary culture, it is notable in that the protagonist, Hank Morgan, is a nineteenth century engineer displaced in time, who uses his advanced technical knowledge to establish himself as a wizard in the eyes of those around him. The same technique, of course, is used by the eponymous wizard in Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (novel, 1900), although in this case the setting is one in which genuine magic also exists. In both of these, the technology being deployed is well within the scope of the readers and provides an opportunity to laugh sympathetically at the naivety of those who believe.

A similar situation can be found in the many examples of post-apocalyptic or distant future science fiction in which any individuals or groups retaining some measure of technological expertise can be seen as magical by the majority of the now-regressed society. Examples include (amongst many others) The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance (1950), The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe (1980-1987), or The Broken Earth trilogy by J K Jemison (2015-2017) [2].

The long time-scales of science fiction open other possibilities. Indeed it is possible for users of sophisticated technology to themselves forget its origins and take it for magic. For example, The Ship Who Won (novel, 1994) by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye is one a series of sequels to McCaffrey’s original novel The Ship Who Sang (novel, 1969). In this series highly disabled infants are encased in mechanical shells and eventually mature to be installed in starships, space stations or similar locations and act as a coordinating and controlling intelligence. In The Ship Who Won, shell-person space ship Carialle and her un-shelled partner Keff are explorers who land on an alien world. Being fond of playing fantasy role-playing games to pass the long space voyages, they are fascinated to find what appears to be an entire culture of mages and magesses, actively engaged in throwing lightning bolts at one another and levitating themselves and other objects through the air. Each of these people fervently believe that they are using magic, focussed by ancient objects of power, and (at least at first) Keff believes it too:

“Magical evocation is hardly scientific, Keff,” Carialle remind him. “They’re getting power from somewhere, that’s for sure. I can even follow some of the buildup a short way out, but then I lose it in the random emanations.”

It comes from the ether,” Keff said, rapt. “It’s magic.”

“Stop calling it that. We’re not playing the game now,” Carialle said sharply. “We’re witnessing sophisticated manipulation of power, not abracadabra-someting-out-of-nothing.”

Unsurprisingly, Carialle proves to be correct. The magic abilities and power on which the entire culture depends proves to be the result of an ancient alien weather control device, which is now malfunctioning after being abused by centuries of misuse by the non-native human mages. Saving the planet will require a readjustment of both the mages’ relationship with magic and their relationship with an enslaved labourer population - their previous unlimited power having been accompanied by a jealous hoarding of its bounties.

At the other extreme, and also very common, are science fiction narratives where advanced technologies appearing beyond the scope of human science are simply accepted as technology beyond understanding. Less advanced races (like humanity) might view the actions of aliens with bafflement and the characters even joke about magic. The less advanced species nonetheless view the feats of their sufficiently advanced acquaintances from the perspective of assuming that scientific principles underlie the apparent impossibilities. In these narratives, the sufficiently advanced aliens’ technologies are simply accepted as such and the plot proceeds without further attempt to analyse them, as, for example, in cases like television series Doctor Who where Time Lord technology is accepted with little more than a shrug of bafflement by most of those encountering it.

An interesting alternative approach is taken by stories where a subset of society (or perhaps one planet amongst many) adopts technologies whose effects appear magical and demonstrate this, not exactly claiming to be magicians but also not denying it, despite being held in awe and superstitious respect by others and sometimes even cultivating this awe.

The Languages of Pao (novel, 1958) by Jack Vance, for example, features the Dominie. These are humans from the remote and barren planet Breakness, trained at the Breakness Institute and equipped with technologies - both implanted and external - which enable them to perform apparent acts of magic. As Dominie Lord Palafox explains to one character:

“Antigravity web is meshed into the skin of my feet. Radar in my left hand, at the back of my neck, in my forehead, provides me with a sixth sense. I can see three colours below the red and four over the violet. I can hear radio waves. I can walk under water; I can float in space. Instead of bone in my forefinger, I carry a projection tube. I have a number of other powers all drawing energy from a pack inserted into my chest.”

The Dominie acknowledge their technological advancement but nonetheless cultivate their mythos and semi-magical image on less developed worlds (such as Pao) where they are known as Lords. Here they can extract tribute using abilities that are generally recognised as technological trickery, but nonetheless give them the status and title of Wizards.

Also leaning into traditional imagery of wizards are the Technomages of the Babylon 5 universe (TV series and spin-offs, 1994-1998). These were introduced in the Babylon 5 episode “The Geometry of Shadows” (1994) and a technomage main character, Galen, was introduced in the spin-off series Crusade (1999). Technomages, as indicated by their name, acknowledged and even broadcast the fact that all their skills were based on technology, as in the following exchange between B5’s Captain Sheridan and Technomage Elric:

Sheridan: "I do think there are some things we don't understand. If we'd be back in time a thousand years, trying to explain this place to people, they could only accept it in terms of magic."

Elric: "Then perhaps it is magic. The magic of the human heart, focused and made manifest by technology. Every day you here create greater miracles than a burning bush."

The technomages nonetheless accomplished feats which appeared magical to other characters, and deliberately cultivated that impression. The mages wore hooded robes, carried staffs which enhanced their abilities, spoke of spells in place of (or to invoke) computer programmes, and met in councils akin to those common in fantasy. They also typically spoke in oblique riddles, including referencing fantasy works. In “The Geometry of Shadows” mage Elric actually (mis)quoted J R R Tolkien's fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings (novel, 1955), noting that: "There's an old saying: 'Do not try the patience of wizards for they are subtle and quick to anger.'"

In the end, the technomage story arc was never really resolved following the cancellation of Crusade after just half a season.

Indistinguishable from Religion

While Baum and Twain were writing of magic in its traditional, fantastic sense, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation stories were amongst those to explore the idea of technology being taken for ‘magic’ in the form of religious or divine intervention. As neighbouring solar systems lost their technological expertise, the Foundation was able to exert influence by creating a religion in which technologies such as medical care were delivered by priests rather than technicians. The stories which comprised the first fix-up novel of the series, Foundation (1951), included characters who debated the ethics of deliberately adopting such a deception, balancing it against the threat that the regressing systems otherwise posed to the defenseless Foundation.

Roger Zelazny also combined Clarke’s Third Law with religion in his 1967 novel Lord of Light. In this narrative, a colony world has long since been settled by humans equipped with the means to transfer electrical impressions of minds to newly cloned bodies, giving effective immortality. However this technology, together with a large number of others, have been reserved by the original crew and a handful of their chosen supporters, while the vast majority of the original passengers and many-generation-down descendants of those Firsts exist in a non-technological culture which follows the precepts of Hinduism on almost-forgotten Earth. The First have used their technological knowledge (together with psionic abilities described at one point as mutations, but also needing training and technological enhancement) to acquire the powers and status of gods drawn directly from the Hindu pantheon.

The actions of Zelazny’s gods are seen as either magical, scientific or divine depending on perspective, but it is clear to the reader that they are not entirely one or the other. There’s an interesting balancing act here. Many of those on the planet are aware of the origins of their pantheon, and have some idea of the existence of technologies, but nonetheless accept their divinity and abilities as magic. The title character is himself a dissident (or ‘fallen’) First with the ability to consciously control and convert different forms of energy. Opposed to the theocracy, he chooses to rebel by modelling himself instead on Buddha and introducing Buddhist precepts and traditions to the society, in order to subvert the domination of his peers without explicitly challenging their divinity. 

Other science fictions in which aliens with advanced technology pose as Earth divinities are common - the whole Stargate franchise (film, 1994; multiple television series and novels) is built on this premise, with different species of alien appearing to primitive humans as gods from different pantheons. The Star Trek universe has also included examples dating back to its original series (e.g. “Who Mourns for Adonais?”, 1967) as well as in the years since.

Indistinguishable from Science

Numerous corollaries have arisen from Clarke’s Law. Perhaps the most common is the idea that any sufficiently analysed magic may be indistinguishable from science - i.e. that genuine magic (in the fantasy sense) may be codified and regulated as a scientific endeavour (and thus qualify as a form of science fiction).

In many cases, as in Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea series (novels, 1968-2001), Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series (novels, 2011-present) and countless others, magic is described as a system of knowledge with rules, laws and within which the results are predictable and repeatable. By at least some definitions, this represents a science, if not the Science most familiar to most modern western cultures. Systematic or systematisable magic is akin to the empirical sciences which measure, observe, extrapolate and predict the results of experiments, and so has much in common with science in the nineteenth century and earlier

Rivers of London (novel, 2011) actually proposes that formalised magical science was pioneered by Isaac Newton, alongside his work on the physical sciences and using the same rigorous approach, producing a latin text: the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicus. As experienced wizard Nightingale explains to his new apprentice Peter (a metropolitan police officer):

“Lux, the spell you just did, is what we call a form,’ said Nightingale. ‘Each of the basic forms you learn has a name: Lux, Impello, Scindere - others. Once these become ingrained, you can combine the forms to create complex spells the way you combine wods to create a sentence.”

 “Like musical notation?” I asked.

 Nightingale grinned. “Exactly like musical notation,” he said.

Where magic in such scenarios differs significantly from modern Western Science is that the latter does not generally restrict itself to empirical description but instead prioritises the construction of mathematical models which encapsulate scientific laws. In other words, the results of scientific approaches are predictable because the principles which lead to those results occurring are understood, not just because the same results have been observed before. Western science in its modern incarnation is more about why things happen than what happens. Even the most systematised forms of magic in fantasy fiction tend to focus more on results rather than causes.

Of course, some authors go further. The Martian and the Magician is a short story by Evelyn E. Smith that appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in November 1952. It is written from the point of view of a young man in a very different world:

Sorcery, the history books say, used to be called science up until the latter part of the Twentieth Century. Then the FBI discovered an atomic scientist muttering over his work in what they took to be Russian. He was immediately brought before an investigating committee, soon broke down and confessed that he hadn't been speaking Russian at all but chanting a spell to make his atom bomb work.

It turned out that all the scientists had been doing the same thing, making a lot of hoopla about inventing stuff - atom bombs, jet planes, television - when actually they did it all with witchcraft. Seems all the magicians had gone underground since the Age of Enlightenment and had been passing off their feats as science — except for a few unreconstructed gypsies.

While most fantasy stories don’t go so far as suggesting science is simply disguised magic, many hint that their apparent magic and miracles could be explained scientifically in other circumstances. In many other cases, magic and technology peacefully coexist and are treated as equal. In Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures series (starting with Another Fine Myth, novel, 1978), for example, the two are combined, with demons represented as extradimensional technology users whose actions and abilities are perceived as magical primarily when outside of their usual plane of existence, while in the later books of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (starting with The Colour of Magic, novel, 1983) the city of Ankh-Morpork is in the throws of an industrial revolution on a world where genuine magic is fundamental to the workings of all things, leading to a complex synthesis of technology with sorcery.

Invoked by Name.

Since first being articulated by Clarke, the third law has become deeply embedded within science fiction culture and has been particularly prominent in science fiction in which a culture recognisable as similar to ours comes into contact with others. Indeed, it is now often invoked either in phrasing or by name. This is perhaps most common in film and television.

In the television universe of Doctor Who, Clarke’s third law has been repeatedly invoked both implicitly and explicitly. In the classic series, examples include “The Pirate Planet” (1978) where we are told the planet includes technology “so far advanced you would not be able to distinguish it from magic”, “The Robots of Death” (1977) where Leela becomes convinced that using a yo-yo is necessary for the function of the TARDIS and is told that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo” and “Battlefield” (1989) in which extradimensional aliens use what appears to be a mixture of magic and technology. Here the law and its first corollary are invoked by name:

Doctor: “What is Clarke's law?”

Ace: “Any advanced form of technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Doctor: “Well, the reverse is true.”

Ace: ”Any advanced form of magic is indistinguishable... from technology.”

The law continues to be invoked into the modern period, being mentioned in contexts from the advanced medicine of “New Earth” (2006), to medieval Scandinavia in “The Girl Who Died” (2015) and the witch-hunting craze of the seventeenth century in “The Witchfinders” (2018).

Similarly, the Star Trek universe has called upon Clarke’s law, mostly in contexts where starfleet crews come into contact with less advanced or regressed civilisations in breach of their own General Order Number One - the Prime Directive. Examples include Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes such as “Devil’s Due” (1991) or “Who Watches the Watchers” (1989), and Discovery episode “New Eden” (2019, where Pike and Burnham discuss the law by name). The law is also invoked implicitly in dealings with entities far beyond the technology of the Federation such as members of the Q Continuum or the Prophets of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The latter, in particular, are religious figures on the planet Bajor, as Kira Nerys comments in the episode “Treachery, Faith and the Great River” (1998):

"I know to Starfleet the Prophets are nothing more than wormhole aliens, but to me they're gods. I can't prove it, but then again, I don't have to, because my faith in them is enough."

 Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its premise that ancient aliens explain most of Earth’s religions and mythologies, the Stargate universe has also actively engaged with Clarke’s law. In the initial film and the early seasons of the television series Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007), the focus is on combatting the technology of the alien Goa’uld and convincing their subject human populations that they are not gods, alongside encountering the more benign but equally advanced Asgard. Later series of SG-1 and the spin-offs Atlantis and Universe focussed on a still more ancient race - the first evolution of human like life on Earth, and the potential of humanity (or other races) to reach ‘ascension’ (a form of non-corporeal existence) that is accompanied by magic-like abilities. Inevitably, the human stargate teams are unable to explain everything they encounter but they remain insistent on applying Clarke’s Law rather than accepting the existence of magic. As SG-1 team member tries to explain to a local in episode “The Quest (part 1, 2006)”:

Daniel: "They simply used their advanced abilities to fashion seemingly magical creations, like the Sangreal or that time dilation field we encountered."

 Osric: "So you would have me believe that you are possessed of a complete understanding of these amazing feats?"

 Daniel: "No, but just because I don't know how the trick is done doesn't make it magic."

While the law is often treated simply as fact by the central characters, its source is also acknowledge. One of the characters trapped aboard the Ancient starship Destiny in the spin-off series Stargate: Universe quotes Clarke’s law in its own words, and credits its creator in the episode “Visitation” (2010)

As in Stargate, the Marvel Cinematic Universe contains its own race of sufficiently advanced aliens: The Asgardians are portrayed as routine magic users, who have visited Earth in the past and become memorialised as the Norse pantheon. When they were first introduced in Thor (film, 2011), several characters, including Thor’s human love interest Jane Foster, attempt to rationalise their magic, explicitly invoking Clare’s Law:

Erik: “I'm talking about science, not magic.”

Jane: “Well, magic's just science we don't understand yet. Arthur C. Clarke.”

And later

Jane: “Describe exactly what happened to you last night.”

Thor: “Your ancestors called it magic… but you call it science. I come from a land where they are one and the same.”

Here the preoccupation of science fiction with scientific rationalisation is not only acknowledged but challenged by questioning whether there is a boundary between science and SF at all

Although most common in visual media, direct references to Clarke’s law are not restricted to it. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s short novel Elder Race (2021) plays with many of the same concepts as stories mentioned earlier here, such as The Ship Who Won. This narrative alternates between the perspective of Nyr, an anthropologist who is the sole remaining member of a long-gone research team, and Lynesse, a princess of the long-isolated human colony planet that he is studying. Over the centuries, his interactions with Lyn’s ancestors have become mythologised, and Nyr himself is regarded as a sorcerer. The alternating perspective, and particularly the single chapter which contains the same historical story seen from both viewpoints in parallel columns, shows how the same facts can be perceived as a system of science or a system of magic depending on cultural perspective:

Towards the end of the novel, as Nyr ponders his past, his future and his current position, Tchaikovsky has the anthropologist invoke Clarke’s Third Law in his phrasing:

“This is nothing but a tower, and I am nothing but a scientist of sufficiently advanced technology, which is to say a magician.”

Science Fiction, Science and Magic

A consequence of Clarke’s law (both since its formulation and in its application in the years before it was recognised) is to blur the boundaries between the genres of science fiction and fantasy. Neither genre has a precise definition, although broadly speaking, science fiction builds narratives on extrapolations from known technology and physical laws, while fantasy involves scenarios or actions actually contrary to physical laws or known possibility. However these definitions are infinitely flexible, and Clarke’s law allows virtually the entirety of fantasy to be drawn under the science fiction umbrella.

Taking the archetypal epic fantasy novel, J R R Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, for example. This involves alien races (e.g. elves, dwarfs or hobbits), a lost high technology civilisation akin to Atlantis (in the drowned land of Numenor) and ancient devices which have certain functions but whose operation is not well understood (e.g. the rings of power, the palantir, swords which glow in the presence of certain species, the mirror of Galadriel). In the context of Clarke’s Law, every aspect of this story except can be interpreted as a post-apocalyptic science fiction scenario, with the remaining magic users in Middle Earth retaining aspects of an advanced technology.

On the flip side, some of the earliest and most influential science fiction involves aliens whose abilities are apparently magical. The Arisians of E E ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman universe, for example (beginning with 1934 stories which formed the 1948 fix-up novel Triplanetary), are described as incomprehensible and unknowable, while the lenses they provide to their chosen agents are technology so advanced that the lenses might as well be magic amulets.

Partly as a response to this, the more general term speculative fiction is sometimes used to encompass both fantasy and SF (and extended to also include some horror or ‘weird’ fictions). Another commonly adopted term is Science Fantasy, which is used variously to describe stories with science fictional settings so far beyond our current technology (or conflicting with known laws) to be effectively magical, or fantasies which hint at or engage with science fictional explanations (of which the characters may be entirely unaware).

Setting aside genre definitions, Clarke’s Third Law challenges our definitions of technology, and so also our definitions of science. As discussed above, if a science is defined as an empirically-based systematisation of knowledge, then not only magic but also eighteenth and nineteenth century western scientific learning and many indigenous knowledge systems around the world would qualify as such. By contrast, if science requires a systematic knowledge or understanding of the underlying principles and theories which explain observed data, then many aspects of contemporary western science might struggle to qualify, while many of the magic systems imagined in fiction come close (albeit not usually in ways that apply to the world as we know it). 

The idea that other technologies may yet exist that lie beyond our understanding is a reminder that scientific knowledge is not a fixed body, but rather than one that is constantly expanding, and which may yet encompass many processes and abilities which might currently be dismissed as impossible. Thus Clarke’s Law acts as a reminder of humility, both for scientists and for humanity as a whole. Human history has indicated that when races are confronted by others with technology they do not understand, the result is seldom of mutual benefit.

Clarke’s law has also introduced a new classification for aliens and technologies: that of ‘sufficiently advanced’. In other words, any technology or aliens we feel we can understand can be met as equals or near equals, and so are unlikely to provide much of a threat. By contrast any ‘sufficiently advanced technology’ or ‘sufficiently advanced alien’ presents a real challenge both to humanity’s sense of confidence in its own abilities and potentially to our existence [3]. Indeed, one of the many paraphrase of Clarke’s Third Law proposed since 1974 is that “any sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from God”. This was claimed by author Michael Shermer in 2002 as Shermer’s Last Law, although as the examples above show it too articulates a long-standing truism of science fiction. Another is that any alien (or tech) not so indistinguishable is insufficiently advanced.

 Arthur C Clarke intended his three laws as a warning to science fiction readers and writers to keep an open mind and not to set their horizons too narrowly. They indicated that the boundaries of science are constantly changing and might yet lie beyond our current conception. In this respect they were advice to advocates of Hard Science Fiction (that which most closely follows current scientific laws and technologies) not to look down on more creative writers or relaxed readers.

It’s tempting to apply the same advice to the public understanding of science. As a discipline, scientific research is constantly advancing, with the limits of today’s technology far exceeding those of a few decades ago. Often new technologies are based on breakthroughs that are challenging to predict. Because scientific theory adapts to new evidence, scientists can and will change their minds and invalidate assertions of impossibility previously made even by the most respected researchers. Indeed, because of this reality, many researchers will not confidently assert that something is impossible, and that apparently lack of certainty can lead to criticism from some members of the public. Recognising that there may be things beyond our current understanding is fundamental to the progress of science.

On the other hand, statements such as Clarke’s Laws can also act negatively on the public perception of science. By questioning the limits of our knowledge, they can lead to reluctance by non-experts to accept scientific statements which are based on extensive and carefully scrutinised evidence. While a scientist has to be willing to look beyond the boundaries of their knowledge, any new theory has not only to explain new phenomena but also remain consistent with the vast body of empirical evidence that has already been collected. In other words, a novel theory is often rejected not because it predicts something new or breaks an assumed physical law, but because it can demonstrably be proved to be false based on the huge amount of experimental evidence already collected over the last few centuries. Providing an explanation for one observation is useless if it also conflicts with others. Similarly, asserting that some situation is an exception to physical law remains magic (or religion), rather than science, unless that exception can be demonstrated, measured and its origins ultimately explained. 

It’s notable that while others have expanded the Third Law since its first publication, Clarke restricted his initial assertion to “sufficiently advanced technology” rather than any more general principle - he never doubted that a systematic science, and the technology arising from it would underlie even the most apparently miraculous of actions. In other words, the physical laws may be beyond our current knowledge but they nonetheless exist, to be found in good time, when we too become sufficiently advanced.

Arthur C. Clarke’s genius as a writer was to clearly articulate the possibilities of the future and their impact on humanity. His eponymous laws have been repeated and developed across half a century, and continue to influence the development of the science fiction and fantasy genres to the present day. While their initial purpose - to caution against arrogance in assumptions on all sides - is sometimes lost, it remains as important now as ever. Perhaps even scientists sometimes need to hope for a little magic in their lives.