Burns’s Law
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.
The line is from the next-to-last verse of ‘To a Mouse’. The poem’s subtitle - ‘On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough November 1785′ - provides the context for the thought. Burns enlarged upon it in the manner:
But Mousie thou art no thy lane [not alone] In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley [awry]
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promis’d joy!
Along with the mouse nest, then, it is clear that Burns also stumbled upon what is known today rather less poetically as the Doctrine of Unintended Consequences.
Discussion of Burns’s Law
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