Murphy's Law, 'whatever can go wrong will go wrong', is usually understood as a sort of ironic joke, since it seems that there are infinite things that can go wrong by accident, and most things actually work as expected once initial bugs are sorted out. In terms of our expectations and understanding, Murphy's Law is obviously wrong. But then, if we think in more of a deterministic and mechanistic clockwork view of causality, the range of what can go wrong, or what can evolve, is more limited within real but unknown physical constraints. Similarly, the boundaries of what can evolve are set by the resource dynamics of the environmentDWill wrote:I don't know about your Murphy's, Robert. This still seems to rely too much on a retrospective view, whereby we "see" how something managed to survive merely by noting that it did, and frequently making up the path that it took on that survival journey.
When the conditions of an ecological niche are established and known, the boundaries of what can happen within that niche become far more predictable. Add fertilizer and plants will grow better. Conquer a vast new continent with almost limitless freedom and abundance, and new religions will emerge that syncretise features of various mythical sources.
Biology sees many examples of convergent evolution. In similar conditions, different species occupy the same niche. The USA is exceptional in its historical evolution to become a leading global power, due to the marriage of the cultural resources of Europe and the natural resources of the American continent. The evolutionary principle that the conditions enabled an institution like Mormonism to flourish mean that even if J. Smith had been gunned down earlier in his colourful career, a similar sort of body would have emerged to fill the available gap.
