are the three robot laws a parody of thermodynamics?
sort of, i think. but, not really - it's more general.
i mean, it's a reasonable hypothesis. asimov was, of course, a chemistry prof. but, i think the three laws of robotics are a more general critique of axiomatic systems, including euclidean geometry, both newtonian and relativistic physics and secular humanism's roots in aquinian natural law theory. the framework is one that's been sort of lost post-heisenberg, but was really at the crux of the historical debate between science (which was not logical, but empirical) and philosophy (which was strictly logical, and disinterested in empiricism). with the retreat of physics from strict empiricism to largely unfalsifiable theoretical models, and the more recent embrace of empiricism by any philosopher worth listening to, this distinction has been blurred. nowadays, we tend to lump philosophy & science in together in the "pro-reason" category and throw away religion as "irrational" or "emotional". and, this has taken on, like, greek overtones of masculine v feminism, which is daft. but, that wasn't the world asimov lived in - he would have seen science and what was called the british school (which actually included marx as well as darwin and bacon and turing and the rest) on one side of this, and the broad swath of philosophical doctrine, which included both religion and mathematics, on the other side of it.
you also have to realize that asimov was very much the archetype of the self-deprecating science nerd, and he was perfectly content to make fun of himself, if it resulted in a good punchline. it's a mark of a mature writer, and especially of a liberal one in the 1900-1950 period, that people often miss - he's offering a lot of criticism of ideas he supports, because he's not trying to advance an argument so much as he's trying to push the needle forward. it's actually a black mark on our own era that the idea of somebody being more concerned about the general advancement of knowledge than he is about personal ideological bickering comes off as bizarre and unrealistic. but, you see this with the likes of asimov, russell, sagan - they're just not driven by their egos, so they don't care if they're right or not, and are happy to admit they were wrong. so, they invite a critique of their own ideas to try to strengthen them. we'd do well to get back to that, both in science and on the left.
when i was a math student, i spent an unusually large amount of time on axiomatic systems, so i sort of get this a bit better than most. i had to make the same point of correction when we did gulliver's travels in the science fiction course i took years ago, because i was able to identify a critique of pythagoreanism that most people today would have missed for a critique of "science", entirely - but that would have been painfully obvious to swift's contemporary audience.
what asimov does with the three laws is actually relatively soluble and transferable, and he's consequently able to use the mechanism to criticize a wide variety of applications of logic in place of empirical study. it's that general critique of reason (in a very non-kantian sense) that is what he's on about, not a specific critique of the laws of thermodynamics. i actually haven't come across a story that is specifically about thermodynamics quite yet, but i'm sure one is coming.
and, hey - if you can disprove thermodynamics, go for it. nobody's succeeded yet, right?
everybody knows it's all wrong, though - and it has to be, because it's axiomatic.
