THE Murphy's Law (murphyslaw) reveals the ability of things to go wrong.
It gets its name because it was created by the American aerospace captain and engineer Edward Murphy (1918-1990) in 1949.
It is based on the laws of probability and generally has a negative content. Its statement is expressed as follows:
If anything has the remotest chance of going wrong, it certainly will.
History of Murphy's Law
Edward Murphy was a captain of the US Air Force and in one of the tests to prove the acceleration and gravity of the pilots in the aircraft, the system stopped.
Murphy, who was involved in the project, went to check the system's sensor connections and noticed they were wrong. At that point, he created Murphy's Law. In the words of the engineer:
If this man has any way of making a mistake, he'll do it.
However, the one who publicly mentioned the expression was the Brazilian John Paul Stapp (1910-1999). At the time, he was a colonel in the United States Air Force and worked with Murphy on the project.
Thus, Murphy's Law was popularized around the world and remains one of the most used expressions of humorous content when something does not go as expected. That is, if something can go wrong, it will.
Later, the law was reformulated, becoming a maxim. Although it seems that it has no scientific basis, the truth is that many things that go wrong can be explained by science, involving several variables and probabilities.
One example, perhaps the most famous of these, is the bread that always falls butter-side down. However, for this reason, science explains that there is a 50% chance that the bread will fall with the butter facing up, and another 50% of falling face down. That depends on your position in space and the force of gravity, explains physics.
Interestingly, we tend to pay more attention to the times when things are going wrong. In other words, Murphy's Law was only famous for the importance we place on these moments of discomfort.
Be it the bread and butter, the line that doesn't move, the red traffic lights, the moment of the crash. You know that feeling of thinking that the Universe is against us. Well, Murphy's Law explains!
Murphy's Law vs. Clark's Law
Unlike Murphy's Law, Clark's Law expresses optimism and involves human and technology issues.
It was created by the British Arthur Charles Clarke, being formulated in three laws. According to him, "Murphy was optimistic”. Check out the statements for each of them below:
- When a distinguished and experienced scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he says something is impossible, he is most likely wrong.
- The only way to unravel the limits of the possible is to venture a little beyond it, into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
