Clarke's three laws - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org

The first two 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 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.

Arthur C. Clarke, the famed sci-fi author who penned these laws, is probably best known for co-authoring the screenplay to 2001: A Space Odyssee

  • HylicManoeuvre@mander.xyzOPEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    I never actually read it as a dig at “elderly” scientists but I think you’re right haha

    Tbf I think it’s supposed to be understood more conceptually as seeing how many things we take for granted as being outside the realms of possibility have just not yet been tackled the right way.

    • modeler@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      It’s a corollary of the other famous expression that science advances one funeral at a time. This came from Max Planck and predates Clarke:

      A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it …

      An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.

      Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33, 97