Wikipedia

Murphy's law

For other uses, seeMurphy's law (disambiguation).
Not to be confused withMuphry's law.

Murphy's law[a]is anadageorepigramthat is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.".

Though similar statements and concepts have been made over the course of history, the law itself was coined by, and named after, Americanaerospace engineerEdward A. Murphy Jr.;its exact origins are debated, but it is generally agreed it originated from Murphy and his team following a mishap duringrocket sledtests some time between 1948 and 1949, and was finalized and first popularized by testing project headJohn Stappduring a laterpress conference.Murphy's original quote was the precautionary design advice that "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way."[1][2]

The law entered wider public knowledge in the late 1970s with the publication ofArthur Bloch's 1977 bookMurphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG,which included other variations andcorollariesof the law. Since then, Murphy's law has remained a popular (and occasionally misused) adage, though its accuracy has been disputed by academics.

Similar "laws" includeSod's law,Finagle's law,andYhprum's law,among others.

History

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British mathematicianAugustus De Morgan(pictured circa 1860) wrote in 1866 that "whatever can happen will happen".
British stage magicianNevil Maskelynewrote in 1908 that, during special occasions, "everything that can go wrong will go wrong".

The perceived perversity of theuniversehas long been a subject of comment, and precursors to the modern version of Murphy's law are abundant. According toRobert A. J. Matthewsin a 1997 article inScientific American,[3]thename"Murphy's law" originated in 1949, but theconceptitself had already long since been known. As quoted by Richard Rhodes,[4]: 187 Matthews said, "The familiar version of Murphy's law is not quite 50 years old, but the essential idea behind it has been around for centuries. […] The modern version of Murphy's Law has its roots inU.S. Air Forcestudies performed in 1949 on the effects of rapid deceleration on pilots. "Matthews goes on to explain howEdward A. Murphy Jr.was theeponym,but only because his original thought was modified subsequently into the now established form that is not exactly what he himself had said. Research into the origin of Murphy's law has been conducted by members of theAmerican Dialect Society(ADS).

MathematicianAugustus De Morganwrote on June 23, 1866:[5]"The first experiment already illustrates a truth of the theory, well confirmed by practice, what-ever can happen will happen if we make trials enough." In later publications "whatever can happen will happen" occasionally is termed "Murphy's law", which raises the possibility that "Murphy" is simply "De Morgan" misremembered.[6]

ADS member Stephen Goranson found a version of the law, not yet generalized or bearing that name, in a report byAlfred Holtat an 1877 meeting of an engineering society.

It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later, so it is not to be wondered that owners prefer the safe to the scientific… Sufficient stress can hardly be laid on the advantages of simplicity. The human factor cannot be safely neglected in planning machinery. If attention is to be obtained, the engine must be such that the engineer will be disposed to attend to it.[7]

ADS member Bill Mullins found a slightly broader version of theaphorismin reference tostage magic.The British stage magicianNevil Maskelynewrote in 1908:

It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything thatcango wrongwillgo wrong. Whether we must attribute this to the malignity of matter or to the total depravity of inanimate things, whether the exciting cause is hurry, worry, or what not, the fact remains.[8]

In astronomy, "Spode's Law" refers to the phenomenon that the skies are always cloudy at the wrong moment; the law was popularized by amateur astronomerPatrick Moore[9]but dates from the 1930s.[10]

In 1948, humoristPaul Jenningscoined the termresistentialism,a jocular play onresistanceandexistentialism,to describe "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects",[11]where objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a runaway bouncy ball) are said to exhibit a high degree of malice toward humans.[12][13]

In 1952, as an epigraph to themountaineeringbookThe Butcher: The Ascent of Yerupaja,John Sackdescribed the same principle, "Anything that can possibly go wrong, does", as an "ancient mountaineering adage".[14]

Association with Murphy

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John Stappriding arocket sledatMuroc Army Air Field(pictured circa the late 1940s or early 1950s). Murphy's law most likely originated during similar tests in 1948 and 1949.

Differing recollections years later by various participants make it impossible to pinpoint who first coined the sayingMurphy's law.The law's name supposedly stems from an attempt to use new measurement devices developed byEdward A. Murphy,aUnited States Air Force(USAF)captainand aeronautical engineer.[15]The phrase was coined in an adverse reaction to something Murphy said when his devices failed to perform and was eventually cast into its present form prior to a press conference some months later – the first ever (of many) given byJohn Stapp,a USAFcolonelandflight surgeonin the 1950s.[15][16]

From 1948 to 1949, Stapp headed research project MX981 at Muroc Army Air Field (later renamedEdwards Air Force Base)[17]for the purpose of testing thehumantolerance forg-forcesduring rapid deceleration. The tests used a rocket sled mounted on arailroad trackwith a series of hydraulicbrakesat the end. Initial tests used a humanoidcrash test dummystrapped to a seat on the sled, but subsequent tests were performed by Stapp, at that time a USAF captain. During the tests, questions were raised about the accuracy of the instrumentation used to measure the g-forces Captain Stapp was experiencing. Edward Murphy proposed using electronicstrain gaugesattached to the restraining clamps of Stapp's harness to measure the force exerted on them by his rapid deceleration. Murphy was engaged in supporting similar research using high speed centrifuges to generate g-forces.

During a trial run of this method using achimpanzee,supposedly around June 1949, Murphy's assistant wired the harness and the rocket sled was launched. The sensors provided a zero reading; however, it became apparent that they had been installed incorrectly, with some sensors wired backwards. It was at this point a frustrated Murphy made his pronouncement, despite being offered the time and chance to calibrate and test the sensor installation prior to the test proper, which he declined somewhat irritably, getting off on the wrong foot with the MX981 team. George E. Nichols, an engineer and quality assurance manager with theJet Propulsion Laboratorywho was present at the time, recalled in an interview that Murphy blamed the failure on his assistant after the failed test, saying, "If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will."[15][unreliable source?]Nichols' account is that "Murphy's law" came about through conversation among the other members of the team; it was condensed to "If it can happen, it will happen", and named for Murphy in mockery of what Nichols perceived as arrogance on Murphy's part. Others, including Edward Murphy's surviving son Robert Murphy, deny Nichols' account,[15][unreliable source?]and claim that the phrase did originate with Edward Murphy. According to Robert Murphy's account, his father's statement was along the lines of "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then he will do it that way."

The phrase first received public attention during a press conference in which Stapp was asked how it was that nobody had been severely injured during the rocket sled tests. Stapp replied that it was because they always tookMurphy's lawunder consideration; he then summarized the law and said that in general, it meant that it was important to consider all the possibilities (possible things that could go wrong) before doing a test and act to counter them. Thus Stapp's usage and Murphy's alleged usage are very different in outlook and attitude. One is sour, the other an affirmation of the predictable being surmountable, usually by sufficient planning and redundancy. Nichols believes Murphy was unwilling to take the responsibility for the device's initial failure (by itself a blip of no large significance) and is to be doubly damned for not allowing the MX981 team time to validate the sensor's operability and for trying to blame an underling in the embarrassing aftermath.

The name "Murphy's law" was not immediately secure. A story byLee Correyin the February 1955 issue ofAstounding Science Fictionreferred to "Reilly's law", which states that "in any scientific or engineering endeavor, anything that can go wrongwillgo wrong ".[18]Atomic Energy CommissionChairmanLewis Strausswas quoted in theChicago Daily Tribuneon February 12, 1955, saying "I hope it will be known as Strauss' law. It could be stated about like this: If anything bad can happen, it probably will."[19]

Arthur Bloch,in the first volume (1977) of hisMurphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONGseries, prints a letter that he received from Nichols, who recalled an event that occurred in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base that, according to him, is the origination of Murphy's law, and first publicly recounted by Stapp. An excerpt from the letter reads:

The law's namesake was Capt. Ed Murphy, a development engineer fromWright Field Aircraft Lab.Frustration with a straptransducerwhich was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring thestrain gagebridgescaused him to remark – "If there is any way to do it wrong, he will" – referring to the technician who had wired the bridges at the Lab. I assigned Murphy's law to the statement and the associated variations.[20]

Disputed origins

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The association with the Muroc incident is by no means secure. Despite extensive research, no trace of documentation of the saying as "Murphy's law" has been found before 1951. The next citations are not found until 1955, when the May–June issue ofAviation Mechanics Bulletinincluded the line "Murphy's law: If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will install it that way",[21]and Lloyd Mallan's bookMen, Rockets and Space Rats,referred to: "Colonel Stapp's favorite takeoff on sober scientific laws—Murphy's law, Stapp calls it—'Everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong'." In 1962, theMercury Sevenattributed Murphy's law toUnited States Navytraining films.[21]

Fred R. Shapiro,the editor of theYale Book of Quotations,has shown that in 1952 the adage was called "Murphy's law" in a book byAnne Roe,quoting an unnamed physicist:

he described [it] as "Murphy's law or the fourth law of thermodynamics" (actually there were only three last I heard) which states: "If anything can go wrong, it will."[22]

In May 1951, Anne Roe gave a transcript of an interview (part of athematic apperception test,asking impressions on a drawing) with said physicist: "As for himself he realized that this was the inexorable working of the second law of the thermodynamics which stated Murphy's law 'If anything can go wrong it will'. I always liked 'Murphy's law'. I was told that by an architect."[23]ADS member Stephen Goranson, investigating this in 2008 and 2009, found that Anne Roe's papers, held in theAmerican Philosophical Society's archives inPhiladelphia,identified the interviewed physicist as Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson (1903–1961). Robertson's papers at theCaltecharchives include a letter in which Robertson offers Roe an interview within the first three months of 1949, making this apparently predate the Muroc incident said to have occurred in or after June 1949.[15][unreliable source?]

John Paul Stapp, Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols were jointly awarded anIg Nobel Prizein 2003 in engineering "for (probably) giving birth to the name".[24]Murphy's Law was also the theme of 2024 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.[25]

Academic and scientific views

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According toRichard Dawkins,so-called laws like Murphy's law and Sod's law are nonsense because they require inanimate objects to have desires of their own, or else to react according to one's own desires. Dawkins points out that a certain class of events may occur all the time, but are only noticed when they become a nuisance. He gives an example ofaircraft noise pollutioninterfering with filming: there are always aircraft in the sky at any given time, but they are only taken note of when they cause a problem. This is a form ofconfirmation bias,whereby the investigator seeks out evidence to confirm their already-formed ideas, but does not look for evidence that contradicts them.[26]

Similarly,David Hand,emeritus professor of mathematics and senior research investigator atImperial College London,points out that thelaw of truly large numbersshould lead one to expect the kind of events predicted by Murphy's law to occur occasionally.Selection biaswill ensure that those ones are remembered and the many times Murphy's law was not true are forgotten.[27]

There have been persistent references to Murphy's law associating it with thelaws of thermodynamicsfrom early on (see the quotation from Anne Roe's book above).[22]In particular, Murphy's law is often cited as a form of thesecond law of thermodynamics(the law of entropy) because both are predicting a tendency to a more disorganized state.[28]Atanu Chatterjee investigated this idea by formally stating Murphy's law in mathematical terms and found that Murphy's law so stated could be disproved using theprinciple of least action.[29]

Variations (corollaries) of the law

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From its initial public announcement, Murphy's law quickly spread to various technical cultures connected toaerospace engineering.[30]Before long, variations of the law applied to different topics and subjects had passed into the public imagination, changing over time. Arthur Bloch compiled a number of books of corollaries to Murphy's law and variations thereof, the first beingMurphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG,which received several follow-ups and reprints.[20]

Yhprum's lawis an optimistic reversal of Murphy's law, stating that "anything that can go right will go right". Its name directly references this, being "Murphy" in reverse.

Management consultantPeter Druckerformulated "Drucker's law" in dealing with complexity of management: "If one thing goes wrong, everything else will, and at the same time."[31]

"Mrs. Murphy's law" is a corollary of Murphy's law, which states that "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong while Mr. Murphy is out of town."[32][33][34][35]

The term is sometimes used to describe concise, ironic, humorousrules of thumbthat often do not share a relation to the original law or Edward Murphy himself, but still posit him as a relevant expert in the law's subject. Examples of these "Murphy's laws" include those formilitary tactics,technology,romance,social relations,research,andbusiness.[36][37][38]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^Also less commonly known asStapp's lawand thefourth law of thermodynamics,and historically asReilly's law.

References

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  1. ^"Edward A. Murphy, Jr. Quotes - 2 Science Quotes - Dictionary of Science Quotations and Scientist Quotes".todayinsci.com.Retrieved2023-11-06.
  2. ^"Dr Karl - Murphy's Law".www.abc.net.au.Retrieved2023-11-06.
  3. ^Matthews, Robert A.J. (April 1997)."The Science of Murphy's Law".Scientific American.276(4): 88–91.Bibcode:1997SciAm.276d..88M.doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0497-88.
  4. ^Rhodes, Richard (1999).Visions of technology: a century of vital debate about machines, systems, and the human world.New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.ISBN9780684839035.
  5. ^"Supplement to the Budget of Paradoxes",The Athenaeumno. 2017 p. 836 col. 2 [and later reprints: e.g. 1872, 1915, 1956, 2000]
  6. ^"LISTSERV 16.0".Linguist List. Archived fromthe originalon 2012-07-10.Retrieved2012-04-19.
  7. ^"Holt, Alfred. 'Review of the Progress of Steam Shipping during the last Quarter of a Century', Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Vol. LI, Session 1877–78 – Part I, at 2, 8 (November 13, 1877 session, published 1878)".Listserv.linguistlist.org. 2007-10-10. Archived fromthe originalon March 12, 2008.Retrieved2012-04-19.
  8. ^"Maskelyne, Nevil. 'The Art In Magic',The Magic Circular,June 1908, p. 25 ".Linguist List. Archived fromthe originalon 2009-01-22.Retrieved2012-04-19.
  9. ^Patrick Moore (1957).The Amateur Astronomer.Cambridge University Press. pp. 35, 74.
  10. ^Eric Partridge (1984). Paul Beale (ed.).A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.p. 1129.
  11. ^Paul Hellwig, Insomniac's Dictionary (Ivy Books, 1989)
  12. ^"Report on Resistentialism",The Spectator,23 April 1948
  13. ^"Thingness of Things",The New York Times,13 June 1948
  14. ^Sack, John.The Butcher: The Ascent of Yerupajaepigraph (1952), reprinted in Shapiro, Fred R., ed.,The Yale Book of Quotations529 (2006).
  15. ^abcdeSpark, Nick T.(2013).A History of Murphy's Law.Lulu Press, Inc.ISBN978-1-935700-79-1.
  16. ^The Fastest Man on EarthArchived2009-10-14 at theWayback Machine–Improbable Research
  17. ^Rogers Dry Lake – National Historic Landmarkat National Park Service
  18. ^"Astounding Science-Fiction,February 1955, p. 54 ".Linguist List. Archived fromthe originalon 2008-06-21.Retrieved2012-04-19.
  19. ^"Chicago Daily Tribune,February 12, 1955, p. 5 ".Linguist List. Archived fromthe originalon June 21, 2008.Retrieved2012-04-19.
  20. ^abBloch, Arthur (1980 edition).Murphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG,Los Angeles: Price/Stern/Sloan Publishers, Inc.ISBN0-8431-0428-7,pp. 4–5
  21. ^abShapiro, Fred R., ed.,The Yale Book of Quotations529 (2006).
  22. ^ab"Roe, Anne,The Making of a Scientist46–47 (1952, 1953) ".Linguist List. Archived fromthe originalon 2008-03-12.Retrieved2012-04-19.
  23. ^Genetic Psychology Monographsvolume 43, p. 204
  24. ^"Past Ig Winners".improbable.com.2006-08-01.Retrieved2024-08-12.
  25. ^"The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony".improbable.com.2024-07-07.Retrieved2024-08-12.
  26. ^Dawkins, pp. 220-222
  27. ^Hand, pp. 197-198
  28. ^Robert D. Handscombe, Eann A. Patterson,The Entropy Vector: Connecting Science and Business,p134, World Scientific, 2004,ISBN981-238-571-1.
  29. ^Chatterjee, p. 1
  30. ^"Murphy's Law".Jargon File.Archived fromthe originalon 2012-02-14.Retrieved2012-04-19.
  31. ^Drucker, Peter F.Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices,p. 681
  32. ^Arthur Bloch (1998),Murphy's Law 2000,p. 4
  33. ^William H. Shore (1994),Mysteries of life and the universe,p. 171
  34. ^Harold Faber (1979),The Book of laws,p. 110
  35. ^Ann Landers (May 9, 1978), "Mrs. Murphy's Law",The Washington Post
  36. ^"Cheap Thoughts".www.angelo.edu.Archived fromthe originalon 2023-08-03.Retrieved2023-08-03.
  37. ^"Murphy's laws".www.cs.cmu.edu.Retrieved2023-08-03.
  38. ^"Murphy's Laws of Combat Operations".meyerweb.com.Retrieved2023-08-03.

Bibliography

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