• Project Name: Universal Laws
• Field Researcher: 151654
• Department: Film and Cultural Studies, or Philosophy (I can't decide which)
• Faculty: Arts
• Start Date: Mid-August 2001; not before 5 August
• End Date: six weeks after start date
• Assisting Sub-Editor: none yet

Project Description

An examination and dissertation of various semi-facetious laws, for example, Murphy's Law (unfortunately that one has already been covered), and Finagle's Laws, plus such things as Godwin's Law, Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology, and Brooks's Law. They are humorous, though surprisingly accurate, observations about mundane things in life, mostly things that annoy us.

Proposed articles:

• Overview of Universal Laws
• Finagle's Law
• The relationship between Finagle's and Murphy's Laws
• Laws of computer science, not including Moore's Law because it has already been covered (though including a link to it, or perhaps merging it here), but including Brooks's Law and Hofstadter's Law. This may involve a review of The Mythical Man-Month and something about Hofstadter. Also some more obscure laws, e.g. Parkinson's Law and Conway's Law
• Arthur C. Clarke's laws; there are at least three of them, the third being that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Unfortunately I don't know
  where these are written.

I realise that the proposed content so far is biased towards high technology, but this is surely not the only culture that has Universal Laws. Suggestions for other fields and laws are
requested.

Further Information Required

• History of Murphy's Laws
• Biographies of a few figures
• A copy of The Mythical Man-Month is essential. I'll have to borrow or buy a copy.
• In what work are Clarke's laws written?

If you have further information, including laws, that you think might be useful in this project, please post it in the conversations below, or contact the Field Researcher running this project (see above).