View source for Clarke's three laws

== Origins ==
One account stated that Clarke's laws were developed after the editor of his works in French started numbering the author's assertions.<ref>{{Cite book |title= The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When |last= Keyes |first= Ralph |publisher= St. Martin's Press |year= 2006 |isbn= 978-0-31234004-9 |location= New York |page= [https://archive.org/details/quoteverifierwho00keye/page/217 217] |url= https://archive.org/details/quoteverifierwho00keye/page/217 }}</ref> All three laws appear in Clarke's essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination", first published in ''Profiles of the Future'' (1962);<ref>"Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in the collection ''Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible'' (1962, rev. 1973), pp. 14, 21, 36.</ref> however, they were not all published at the same time. Clarke's first law was proposed in the 1962 edition of the essay, as "Clarke's Law" in ''Profiles of the Future''.

The second law is offered as a simple observation in the same essay but its status as Clarke's second law was conferred by others. It was initially a derivative of the first law and formally became Clarke's second law where the author proposed the third law in the 1973 revision of ''Profiles of the Future'', which included an acknowledgement.<ref>{{Cite book |title= The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies — How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths |last= Shermer |first= Michael |author-link= Michael Shermer |publisher= Henry Holt & Co. |year= 2011 |isbn= 978-0-80509125-0 |location= New York |page= [https://archive.org/details/believingbrainfr0000sher/page/358 358] |url= https://archive.org/details/believingbrainfr0000sher/page/358 }}</ref> It was also here that Clarke wrote about the third law in these words: "As three laws were good enough for [[Isaac Newton|Newton]], I have modestly decided to stop there".

The third law is the best known and most widely cited. It was published in a 1968 letter to ''[[Science (journal)|Science]]'' magazine<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Clarke|first=Arthur C.|date=1968-01-19|title=Clarke's Third Law on UFO's|url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.159.3812.255.c|journal=Science|language=en|volume=159|issue=3812|pages=255|doi=10.1126/science.159.3812.255.c|bibcode=1968Sci...159..255C |s2cid=159455247 |issn=0036-8075 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> and eventually added to the 1973 revision of the "Hazards of Prophecy" essay.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible |last=Clarke |first= Arthur C.|publisher= Popular Library |year=1973 |isbn= 978-0-33023619-5}}</ref>