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Do you know another "eponymous" law besides "Murphy's Law"?

Named after a person or character.

Posted - September 18, 2016

Responses


  • 137

    Well there's the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In a nutshell - 'Things behave differently when watched'.

      September 18, 2016 5:37 PM MDT
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  • Yep! Rothbard's Law which says that everyone specializes in his or her own area of weakness  :)

      September 18, 2016 8:28 PM MDT
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  • 3191
    Occam's (or Ockham's) razor is a principle attributed to the 14th century logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. Ockham was the village in the English county of Surrey where he was born. The principle states that "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily."

    That basically means that the simplest answer is usually correct, don't make unnecessary assumptions.
      September 18, 2016 9:49 PM MDT
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  • 3191
    Similar to the Peter Principle, where people are promoted beyond their level of competence.
      September 18, 2016 9:54 PM MDT
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  • 46117

    Shroedinger's Cat?    Well. It IS a law of Physics.

    Or a darned fine argument supporting that it is a law.   It counts, trust me.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

      September 18, 2016 9:55 PM MDT
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  • 46117

      September 18, 2016 9:56 PM MDT
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  • 46117

      September 18, 2016 9:56 PM MDT
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  • 46117

      September 18, 2016 9:56 PM MDT
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  • 1113
    Lots of scientific laws; Boyle's law, Ohm's law, Newton's laws of motion, Kepler's 3 laws of planetary motion, Kirchoff's law, etc. All these are named after their discoverer, or at least who published them first.
      September 18, 2016 10:53 PM MDT
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  • 2500

    If you're interested in "laws" specific to the bend of Ed Murphy look for a book titled Malice in Blunderland by Thomas L. Martin.

      September 19, 2016 12:09 AM MDT
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  • 5835

    Stigler's law of eponymy is a process proposed by University of Chicago statistics professor Stephen Stigler in his 1980 publication "Stigler’s law of eponymy".[1] It states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. Examples include Hubble's law which was derived by Georges Lemaître two years before Edwin Hubble, the Pythagorean theorem although it was known to Babylonian mathematicians before Pythagoras, and Halley's comet which was observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC. Stigler himself named the sociologist Robert K. Merton as the discoverer of "Stigler's law" to show that it follows its own decree.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy

      September 19, 2016 12:40 AM MDT
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  • I don't know the name of it, but the law which states 'People who borrow money soon lose the desire to pay it back'

      September 19, 2016 5:30 AM MDT
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  • 137

    One formerly oft-mentioned drain on resources was Parkinson's Law.

    This law posits that for every job, there has to be someone to do it, someone to help him, and someone to supervise him.

    It seems to me that in many cases the pendulum has swung the other way. Now the quality of product, even maintaining the good name of the company, has been pushed aside by the ever-increasing-profit imperative. So that even in cases of assured continuous flow of work, in some hospitals, or care homes for the elderly and infirm, for instance, the foot-soldier staff of 138 has been whittled down to 51. So that now, typically without consultation, individuals are obliged to work excessively long hours in what is often an onerous, even dangerous, psychologically wearing job, but where wages plus overtime bonuses bring the wage bill close to what it was before the cuts, and nurses work beyond their efficient capability so that mistakes, oversights, irritability due to mental fatigue, and a work ethic gradually eroded by enforced cost-cutting, and there may even arise a festering resentment at being 'put upon', all serve to reduce efficiency below the required level for a people-in-need caring environment.

    The modern principle of words not deeds, interspersed with threats or implied threats, is always there to facilitate the intent of course.          

      September 19, 2016 6:54 AM MDT
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  • 2500

    I've seen that "law" before but it's not attributed to Parkinson anywhere that I can find. Parkinson is the person that gave us the "work expands to fill the time available" axiom. Here's a list of the laws that I found attributed to Parkinson, all still germane to your point: 

    Parkinson’s First Law
    Work expands to fill the time available for its completion;
    the thing to be done swells in perceived importance and
    complexity in a direct ratio with the time to be spent in
    its completion.


    Parkinson’s Second Law
    Expenditures rise to meet income.


    Parkinson’s Third Law
    If there is a way to delay an important decision the good
    bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.


    Parkinson’s Fourth Law
    The number of people in any working group tends to increase
    regardless of the amount of work to be done.


    Parkinson’s Law of Delay
    Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

    for every job, there has to be someone to do it, someone to help him, and someone to supervise him

      September 19, 2016 11:10 AM MDT
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  • 373

    Believe it or not I first heard about this "law" on The Simpsons.

      September 21, 2016 4:34 PM MDT
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  • 373

    Yes; "Law of Jante", a.k.a. "Janteloven" a.k.a., "Jante".

    It was/is in the Nordic countries (it's debatable if they still go by it) a code of conduct that they used to/ still do follow.

    It is 10 rules. To condense  them, it is: don't think you're better than anyone else, don't think you're smarter than anyone else, don't be a know-it-all, don't think you are more important than anyone else.

      September 21, 2016 4:44 PM MDT
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  • 258
      September 21, 2016 4:48 PM MDT
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  • 85

    A couple of rather amusing ones out of the 260 or so eponymous laws:


    1- Cunningham's law: The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer. Attributed to Ward Cunningham by Steven McGeady.

    2- Mrs. Murphy's Law is a corollary of Murphy's Law. It states that things will go wrong when Mr. Murphy is away, as in this formulation:

    “              Anything that can go wrong will go wrong while Murphy is out of town.

      October 9, 2016 2:02 AM MDT
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