Parkinson's law He also wrote the book "Mrs. Parkinson's Law: and Other Studies in Domestic Science". Parkinson's law Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization. This law is likely derived from ideal gas law, whereby a gas expands to fit the volume allotted. Articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as part of the first sentence of an essay published in "The Economist" in 1955 and since republished online, it was reprinted with other essays in the book "Parkinson's Law: The
Maupertuis's principle applied the principle only to light, not matter (see ). He arrived at the principle by considering Snell's law for the refraction of light, which Fermat had explained by Fermat's principle, that light follows the path of shortest "time", not distance. This troubled Maupertuis, since he felt that time and distance should be on an equal footing: "why should light prefer the path of shortest time over that of distance?" Accordingly, Maupertuis asserts with no further justification the principle of least action as equivalent but more fundamental than Fermat's principle, and uses it to derive Snell's law. Maupertuis specifically states