Murphy's Law

Sun Feb 20 13:30:28 UTC 2011

Some more quotes, in case Augustus De Morgan (1806 -1871) played a role in the origin of "Murphy's Law," whether as author of the law or of a related law, or as the person misremembered (if something went wrong) as Murphy. (Other options in previous post below.)

[1838 An essay on probabilities, and their application to life contingencies and insurance offices p. 114
 By Augustus De Morgan
It is an assumption of this theory that nothing ever did happen, or ever will happen, without some particular reason why it ... by showing that out of all the possible cases which can happen, those in which black and white are equal, ...]

June 23, 1866 "Supplement to the Budget of Paradoxes," The Athenaeum no. 2017 page 836 col. 2 [and later reprints: e.g., 1872, 1915, 1956, 2000]
The first experiment already illustrates a truth of the theory, well confirmed by practice, what ever can happen if we make trials enough.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Apr 1975 p.5
Anything that can happen will happen and anything that can go wrong will go wrong (Murphy's Law).

1995 Understanding electro-mechanical engineering: an introduction to ... - Page 343
        Lawrence J. Kamm - 1996
...If something can go wrong, it will." In a more general form it is: "Anything that can happen will happen, good and bad." Our entire professional lives are a battle with Murphy.

[forgotten date] American Society of Mechanical Engineers - 1948 [--not, decades later]
      It seldom violates Murphy's law of "Anything that can happen, will happen," unless positive, continual efforts are directed toward proper orientation.
Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Stephen Goranson [goranson at DUKE.EDU]
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Subject: [ADS-L] Murphy's Law

Apparently, as previously detailed, mathematician and physicist and Limerick-writer Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson used the term "Murphy's Law," and related it to laws of thermodynamics, in the first quarter of 1949, earlier than the claimed origin scenario at Muroc. This was determined with help from archivists of the papers of Anne Roe (the psychologist who interviewed Robertson) and Robertson. Recently the CalTech archivists kindly checked Robertson's correspondence with Henry Margenau. I asked for that favor because Margenau was co-author of a book that discussed the laws of thermodynamics, The Mathematics of Chemistry and Physics (1943 and later editions). His co-author was George Moseley Murphy, co-discoverer of deuterium (heavy water). (Incidently, some later discussions of unwanted chain reactions include "deuterium" and "Murphy's Law.") G.M. Murphy (1903-1968) went to UNC-Chapel Hill and got a PhD at Yale (Margenau's school). He taught at Columbia, then NYU. Murphy's !
 book is too serious for an eponymous "law," but he may have had a lighter side: his students calculated the cost of the New York Times including a period in its masthead; the NYT dropped the period. That is reported in the Times' obituary, but I have found little biographical information on him, and his papers to not appear to be housed in the usual suspect places. G.M. Murphy himself could be considered a plausible "suspect" Murphy for the law. (He might have been the type not to bother to claim ownership of such a thing.) Assuming, that is, that the law is not named as joke with no real individual Murphy intended, or if the law is misnamed for another misremembered individual.

The following proposed progression may be wrong, but it may have value heuristically.

1) A general law is articulated, in a limited statistical framework: whatever can happen will happen, eventually (e.g., in heads/tails coin tosses).
2) It is later stated with negative consequences (and dropping limiting statistical framework): whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
3} It gets associated with thermodynamics law(s).
4) It is named Murphy's Law, perhaps in the mid 1940s, before 1949, when Robertson said he "always liked" it, implying that it was coined at least earlier than 1949.

Now some quotes. Augustus De Morgan, mathematician, in several 19th-century (and reprinted) publications, did indeed write that "whatever can happen will happen." (Not to be confused with Morgan's law, which is something else.) Now it so happens that some label this, or close variants, Murphy's Law. In the decades after De Morgan, there are plenty of examples of what could be seen as the negativization of this or similar statements.

Here's an example, with another Irish name (real or fictional?):
The Oregon countryman: Kampus Kolums Volume 13 - Page 37
March   1920 - Full view
"Why, Rastus, that ham was only cured last week." "Dat might be, Mr. Smith, but it sho" must a' had a relapse." — Outlook. How Clear! "In chemistry anything that can happen will happen." said Prof. Kelly. Which explains fully. ...

 Abraham Veinus (apparently a New Yorker [Robertson was at Princeton till 1947]) wrote in The Concerto:(NY, copyright 1944, published 1945, p. 141. but edited out of later editions):
"Actually the evolution of the sonata-form concerto from J. C Bach to the present, if it is subject to one ruling principle at all, seems governed by the mythical fourth law of thermodynamics which, according to the honorable tradition of both the laboratory tyro and the research expert, teaches that anything can happen and usually does."

Since Robertson said in 1949 that he "always liked" Murphy's Law (and he referred to an architect, i think, not about Murphy's Law but to the story about Antoni Gaudi in his interview), Rpbertson may have written it also circa 1944 to 1948 in colloquial writing. CalTech archives has a long, lively correspondence between Robertson and E.T. Bell, mathematician, mathematician biographer, and science-fiction writer. It is too long for the archivists to check. Is there anyone in the vicinity of Cal Tech, Pasadena CA, who would be interested in old-fashion quick eye-scanning to see if there is an appearance, antedating, of "Murphy's Law"?

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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