A field guide,
not a list of slogans.
LAWS explains the relationships, theorems, empirical regularities, and practical heuristics people use to understand how the world behaves.
Every guide is expected to answer five questions: What exactly is claimed? Why might it work? What evidence supports it? Where does it fail? Which sources let the reader verify the account?
The word law is historically broad.
Its scientific status should never be.
Four labels prevent four kinds of overclaim.
A physical principle, mathematical theorem, historical trend, and management aphorism do not carry the same kind of evidence. The label appears in the directory and on every guide.
Scientific
A quantitative relationship about the observable world, supported within a stated domain and open to empirical testing.
Examples: Second Law of Thermodynamics, Fitts's LawThe relation may be exact inside a theory or fitted from measurements. Scope, units, uncertainty, and counterevidence must remain visible.
Mathematical
A theorem or formal regularity that follows from defined assumptions, mathematical structure, or probability.
Examples: Law of Large Numbers, Benford's LawProof establishes the formal result. Application still requires checking whether real data satisfy the theorem's assumptions.
Empirical
A persistent observed pattern documented in data, without logical necessity or universal physical status.
Examples: Moore's Law, Zipf's LawThe pattern can change with technology, institutions, sampling, or scale. Evidence is historical and revisable.
Heuristic
A compact rule for reasoning, management, or design that captures a useful tendency rather than a universal equation.
Examples: Murphy's Law, Goodhart's LawIts value depends on mechanism, boundary conditions, counterexamples, and whether it improves real decisions.
Classification and subject are separate axes.
The evidence label describes what kind of claim a law makes. The domain and subcategory describe what the claim is about.
A law can sit in Technology & Computation and still be empirical or heuristic. Filing by subject must never silently upgrade its scientific status.
Trace the claim as close to its origin as possible.
References are part of the argument, not decoration at the bottom of the page.
Foundational papers, books, historical scans, standards, official data, and the author's own formulation.
Modern reviews, replications, critiques, textbooks, and research that defines the current evidence boundary.
Universities, professional bodies, public archives, laboratories, and official technical documentation.
Used to find terminology or context, but not as the sole support for a disputed, technical, or historical claim.
A reference should open the work it names whenever possible. Search result pages, invented citations, and decorative link labels do not meet the standard.
Each guide moves through the same questions, not the same template.
The review process is shared. The page design, examples, visual explanation, and interaction are created for the particular law.
Write the narrowest accurate claim and identify competing formulations.
Assign scientific, mathematical, empirical, or heuristic status.
Find origin, modern evidence, major criticism, and authoritative context.
Create a visual or interactive explanation with assumptions stated nearby.
Add failure cases, boundary conditions, misuse, and alternative explanations.
Check links, terminology, calculations, accessibility, and internal navigation.
Professional does not mean falsely certain.
Readers should be able to tell which sentences are formal results, observed findings, historical accounts, or editorial explanation.
Units, sample construction, time period, dependence, scale, and model conditions belong near the claim they limit.
Cases illustrate an application; they do not prove a universal causal story unless the evidence supports one.
Technical terms are defined where they improve accuracy. Metaphor is marked as metaphor.
Interactive scores and simulations state when they are illustrative rather than validated forecasting or measurement tools.
Substantive factual corrections should update the guide, its sources, and any connected explanation rather than hiding the change.
What LAWS will not pretend to be.
A short definition is not enough. A published guide needs mechanism, evidence, limits, and sources.
A law may guide investigation, but it does not automatically prove fraud, intent, causality, or policy.
Every page has a stable domain, subcategory, evidence label, and explicit relationship to nearby guides.
Scientific and historical understanding changes. The collection should remain open to revision and stronger evidence.