edelson@mhuxi.UUCP (edelson) (11/19/84)
Antedating Murphys Law, there have always been equivalent statements of
failure principles. At universities, it was common to name these after
ones favorite professor; at Yale in the late 40's we had our own Murphys
Law which was named for Prof George Murphy of the chem dept (of Margenau
and Murphy, the physicists and chemists math handbook).
In physics and chemistry departments it became common to also class these
laws as extentions of thermodynamic principles. Thus:
4th Law of Thermo: If anything can go wrong, it will.
5th Law of Thermo: The ratio of horses asses to horses is always greater
than unity.
Along with these goes the restatement, attributed to the late Nobel Laureate
Prof. Lars Onsager, of the 2nd Law as "The Principle of
the Conservation of Ignorance".