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The term "law" is often used to refer to universal principles that describe the fundamental nature of something, to universal properties and relationships between things, or to descriptions that purport to explain these principles and relationships. For example, " physical law"s, or " scientific laws" attempt to describe the fundamental nature of the universe itself. Laws of mathematics and logic describe the nature of rational thought and inference. Laws of economics describe the nature of human behavior and interaction.
Within most fields of study, and in science in particular, the elevation of some principle of that field to the status of "law" usually takes place after a very long time during which the principle is used and tested and verified. Though in some fields of study such laws are simply postulated as a foundation and assumed. Mathematical laws are somewhere in between: they are often arbitrary and unproven in themselves, but they are sometimes judged by how useful they are in making predictions about the real world.
Finally, the term is sometimes applied to less rigorous ideas that may be interesting observations or relationships, practical or ethical guidelines (also called rules of thumb), and even humorous parodies of such laws.
Examples of scientific laws include Boyle's law of gases, conservation laws, Ohm's law, and others. Laws of other fields of study include Occam's razor as a principle of philosophy and the Pareto principle of economics. Examples of observed phenomena often described as laws include the Titius-Bode law of planetary positions, Zipf's law of linguistics, Moore's lawMoore's law is an empirical observation stating, in effect, that at our rate of technological development and advances in the semiconductor industry, the complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 18 months. See exponential growth. It is attributed t of technological growth. Other laws are pragmatic and observational, such as the law of unintended consequences.
Some humorous parodies of such laws include adageAn adage is a short, but memorable saying, which holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many people, or it has gained some credibility through its long use. Adages may be interesting observations, practical or ethical guidelines such as Murphy's lawMurphy's law is a popular adage in Western culture, which broadly states that things will go wrong in any given situation. It is most commonly formulated as "if anything can go wrong, it will. The law was named after Edward A. Murphy, Jr. a development en and its many variants, and Godwin's LawGodwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies is an adage in Internet culture that was originated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states that: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches of InternetThis article is about the Internet the extensive, worldwide computer network available to the public. An internet is a more general term for a set of interconnected computer networks that are connected by internetworking''. WWW information network structu conversations.