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Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three laws:
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 very 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.
Clarke's Law, later the first of the three laws, was proposed by Arthur C. Clarke in the essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination", in
Profiles of the Future (1962). The second law is offered as a simple observation in the same essay; its status as Clarke's Second Law was conferred on it by others.
In a revised edition of Profiles of the Future (1973), Clarke acknowledged the Second Law and proposed the Third in order to round out the numbers, adding "As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there."
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. When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion — the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.
-- Isaac Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's First Law