How Murphy's Law Works

We’ve all used the cliché: "Whatever can go wrong, will." Sure, this may ring true at times — perhaps when you spill your first morning coffee. But the fact it's 8:30 a.m. and you're already having a bad day isn't because of some mysterious power the law possesses. In reality, it's us who give Murphy's Law relevance. When life is going well, little is made of it, but when things go badly, we look for reasons.

The very phrase seems to poke fun at humankind as it attempts to use the rules of probability — the mathematical likeliness that something will occur — to support itself.

One reason that Murphy's Law is such a universal concept, and so attractive, in a strange way, is that it implies we are powerless to the whims of fate. Additionally, it contradicts our concept of free will, something we humans don’t take lightly. Murphy's Law also reminds engineers, computer programmers and even NASA scientists of a simple truth: systems fail. In some cases, a system's failure means that the experiment must be repeated. In other cases, the results of a failure can be much more costly. Because it is so universal and prevailing, Murphy's Law remains the granddaddy of all maxims.

Of course, Murphy’s law is also joined by many other universal truths, such as Etorre’s Observation (the other line moves faster), Boob’s Law (you always find it in the last place you look) or Patton’s Law (a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow). Murphy’s Law is also akin to another oft-quoted cliché-turned-theory called Occam’s Razor.

How Occam’s Razor Works

Perhaps you’ve read in detective novels, or think of it as a universal truth, that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Or, at least, that’s according to Occam’s razor. This line of reasoning is often used as a quick way to get to the root of a problem and eliminate unnecessary elements from an equation. However, today’s translation differs a bit from its Latin roots, which encompassed two thoughts:

• The Principle of Plurality — Plurality should not be posited without necessity
• The Principle of Parsimony — It is pointless to do with more what is done with less

Taken together, these two ideas have preserved the basis of humanity's investigation into the universe and the way we see our environment. But first, who exactly came up with this simple, yet complex idea we now know as Occam’s razor? Enter William of Occam, a philosopher and Franciscan monk whose vow of poverty spurred the idea of simplicity in thinking as well as living. As science and philosophy progressed and crossed paths, we started to see elements of William’s concepts show up in the scientific method, used in the idea of empirical evidence and the space-time continuum.

In this article from HowStuffWorks, learn even more about Occam's razor history, who prizes and shuns it, and how the principles within it can become distorted.