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Article: Move over, Murphy: some "laws" of the sociology of religion.
- Article from:
- Sociology of Religion
- Article date:
- December 22, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Association for the Sociology of Religion. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Engineers are familiar with Murphy's Law: "If anything can go wrong, it will" (Bloch, 1990). Murphy's Law is a prototype for a literary genre in which profound truths are summarized in the form of brief, pithy statements. Similar "laws" have been formulated for every sphere of human life (Augustine, 1986; Dickson, 1979; Peers and Bennett, 1979).
Sociologists of religion have developed several laws that summarize empirical generalizations about their field of inquiry. In this comment I will discuss seven of these laws in order to call the attention of sociologists of religion to some theoretical ideas that they might be able to use in their ongoing programs of ...