Franklin's Law of Geography
Rules of Geographical Coincidence + Friendship
Several years ago I was in Amsterdam for a research meeting with a Dutch colleague and friend. Remember back when we did that? And this was the best sort of academic work trip—a few hours of work in the morning, punctuated by a coffee, and then a leisurely lunch, followed by dinner out. The mix of geographical novelty, intellectual stimulation, and friendship that can be a perk of the academic profession is one reason I love my chosen profession.
And, if I may speak frankly, I excel at travel.
I ate the world’s largest stroopwafel on that visit and also colored sprinkles on my morning toast. “Skirt day” was explained to me: that magical spring day when the weather is finally warm enough again for Dutch women to pull their skirts back out of their closets. I also had my ideal run in Amsterdam’s Vondel Park—5 miles of flat but interesting terrain.
By accident,1 I discovered that, at the same time I was doing research things in Amsterdam, a Canadian friend of mine was doing research things in Utrecht. Same foreign country, different cities. Concurrently. By pure coincidence. It was evident to me that we must meet—that if by chance a person residing in Providence, Rhode Island, should find herself in the same foreign location as a friend living in Hamilton, Ontario, it would be criminal not to say hello in person. And thus was coined Franklin’s Law of Geographical Coincidence.
Put formally, Franklin’s Law states that, should two friends, P(i) and P(j), normally residing in different locations, i and j, find themselves in a third location, k, at the same time, they must meet.
But that’s not a law, I hear you say.
It’s ok. I anticipated this concern on your part.
“Laws”
Have you seen what passes for “laws” or “rules” in much of academic research? It’s sort of a free for all. My own personal North Star where Laws are concerned is Tobler’s First Law of Geography, which states that, “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”
I mean, really.
No offense to Geography, the First Law, or Waldo Tobler. We in Geography are in good company anyhow, with our Law that isn’t really a law. The social sciences are rife with Rules, Laws, Effects, and Statistics. I’m not convinced that Statistics belong in the same category as the rest, but I like the implied rigor of associating my Law with statistics. I’ve identified a few commonalities across most of these. Somewhat obviously, the first is that they put a name to a phenomenon that can be observed in the real world. That’s good; my Law does the same.
So, for example, we have the Peter Principle: Individuals in an organization tend to be promoted up to the point at which they become incompetent. I’m sure we have all encountered evidence of the truth of the Principle out there in the real world.
The Matthew Effect identifies the cumulative advantage that adheres to individuals, places, and things. Basically, the more you have, the more you’re likely to get.
There’s more.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Wikipedia refers to this as, “the miscalibration of the incompetent,” which is some of the best phrasing I’ve seen in a long time. But basically the Effect refers to a situation in which individuals overestimate their own abilities.
Moore’s Law: I’m hazy on the specifics, but this one’s about the capacity of semiconductor chips doubling every two years. Wikipedia is clear that this is not a law of physics, but I have to say that it is awfully specific, which is appealing. Perhaps Franklin’s Law should specify that friends crossing paths in foreign climes must meet for two hours.
Parkinson’s Law: I like this one. Work expands to fill the time available for it. Were truer words ever written?
Actually, Parkinson has two laws, which seems almost greedy. There’s also his Law of Triviality, which is a gem: “The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum [of money] involved.”
I can tell already that I would have really liked this Parkinson guy.
Which leads me to a second observation about these Laws. They’re pretty much all authored by men who bestowed their own name on their creation. The exception in the above examples is the Matthew Effect—that one’s named after the Gospel of Matthew and coined by a husband and wife sociologist team. I think I would have liked those two, too. Franklin’s Law, of course, is authored by me, not a man, but I hope we can see our way to ignoring that small wrinkle.
(In case you can’t tell, the edifice of my discussion rests on a solid foundation of Wikipedia.)
A third observation is that Laws and their ilk are more like litmus tests in the sense that they allow for exceptions that prove the rule. By this I mean that, for a Law to be valid, it doesn’t have to hold in all cases. Exceptions to the rule merely serve to reinforce the rule’s existence in the first place. I think it’s amazing that a Law can be wrong some of the time and still be a Law—but I’m hoping to use this to my own advantage here.
Statistics are trickier. They too tend to be named after men and capture phenomena observed in the real world (or in real-world data, which admittedly isn’t quite the same thing). Where Statistics differ is that the litmus test aspect of Rule-dom is baked into their essence. The Statistics I’m thinking of are tests—Durbin-Watson, Breusch-Pagan, White, or Moran’s I—and the researcher employs them to see if a rule holds, allowing for the possibility that it does not. Whether a null hypothesis can or cannot be rejected, the named statistic still gets its time in the sun. I approve of this nuance.
I’ve left out Coase, Granger, Beveridge2 and a host of others with theorems, curves, et cetera, named after them. You didn’t come here for other people’s Laws, and I’m sure I’ve made my point.
What I’m slowly getting at is that I would like my name on something academic.3 Like a law or a statistical test. Or a lab. Once upon a time, a Franklin Lab seemed to me to be the apex of academic success. But then I learned that eponymously-named labs are considered problematic by some: the emphasis on the personality leading the lab, instead of the research purpose of the lab, might be viewed as an unfavourable indicator of research culture. This seems a little unfair to women and other under-represented groups. Just as we finally arrive on the scene, it is decreed that we should no longer be naming stuff after ourselves.
Franklin’s Law of Geographical Coincidence
Back to Franklin’s Law. Or Rachel’s Rule, as I’m tempted to nickname it. As originally articulated, it captures the magic of paths crossing unexpectedly in new places. I like the double meaning of the word “coincidence”. Formally, it captures the geographic aspect of the Law: two people who have to be in a coinciding location. It also speaks to the unexpectedness of a familiar face in a new place.
Once you look for it, the evidence of Franklin’s Law is everywhere. For me, there’s the time I ran into my Aunt Susan in the Prague train station and, of course, meeting up with my fellow geographer friend, Antonio, in Utrecht. A couple of years ago I also spent a lovely afternoon at the playground in the Jardin du Luxembourg, in Paris, with another geographer friend who was working in the city with her family for the summer. My kids still talk about it.
Relaxed a bit, Franklin’s Law lends itself to a number of permutations.4
As befits a geographer, my Law is multi-scalar by design, and flexible. We geographers love our concepts to be multi-scalar. In this case, I mean that, while the Law originated to cover two individuals and three countries, it can also be adapted to cover multiple individuals and locations as small as households and as large as continents. If my Law is to be referenced, it must be applicable in as wide a set of settings as possible. Marketing 101, really.
For example, what is the ultimate embodiment of Franklin’s Law? An academic conference. Participants converge on one location from a variety of origins—albeit not coincidentally (although finding even one friend in a sea of 8,000 fellow geographers at our annual conference sure can feel like pure luck). Together, we meet up with dozens of our closest friends and colleagues in a new city. We share research, but also coffees, walks, and doughnuts.
At the other extreme, at the hyper local scale, friends from different households in the same city may opt to meet at a third location. Passing a friend on the sidewalk and stopping to say hello could, I suppose, count as Franklin’s Law. I think that might be pushing it, though.
For many of us, as we have hunkered down through pandemic and lockdowns over the past year, distanced, third-location interaction has been the best we could hope for. I haven’t been inside a friend’s house for social interaction in a year and have never been so eager to see friends as I am now.
Of course, there are situations in which Rachel’s Rule does not apply. Visiting friends and colleagues on their home turf, or vice versa, is not an example of Franklin’s Law. It is amazing and I yearn to do this, but not because of Franklin’s Law. An essential component of Franklin’s Law is the 3rd location—both Person P(i) and Person P(j) must find themselves in a different, third location (k).
Travel with friends falls into a grey territory. Like conferences, it’s not coincidental, but does often involve persons P(i) and P(j) traveling from separate origins to an agreed destination (k). I say we count it in the name of inclusivity.
How about willfully not seeing other people, either at home or elsewhere? That’s definitely not Rachel’s Rule, although it is the healthy, safe, and responsible choice in these unprecedented pandemic times.
I miss the banal internal deliberation of passing through place k and debating whether or not to get in touch with friends or family who live in k and surely would appreciate a visit. You don’t know what you had until you’ve lost it.
I’ve thought a lot about Franklin’s Law. I love travel. I love my friends. Tobler’s First Law of Geography is all about the importance of distance. Proximity—or propinquity—governs interaction, influence, and outcomes. Franklin’s Law, in contrast, is all about the importance of friendship.
In fact, at its most generalized, Franklin’s Law can be summarized as: “friendship transcends distance”.
Postscript
I owe a big debt to Antonio Páez. First, for being the reason I articulated Franklin’s Law back in Amsterdam and Utrecht in March, 2014; second, for encouraging me in the comments on my last newsletter to make the Law the subject of an essay; and, third, for insisting over the years that it is a law of “geographical coincidence” when I would have un-creatively stuck with plain old Franklin’s Law of Geography.
Remember, friendship transcends distance!
By which I mean the serendipity of Facebook.
According to Wikipedia, the Beveridge Curve was named after Beveridge by two other researchers, so this doesn’t quite fit my argument.
I mean, I don’t even have my name on my kids.
I wanted to specify Lemmas or, failing that, corollaries, but unfortunately feel permutations is the more accurate term.