Serendipity is when someone finds something that they weren't expecting to find. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages.[2] In the simplest of words, it means a "happy accident" or a "pleasant surprise".
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The first noted use of "serendipity" in the English language was by Horace Walpole (1717–1792). In a letter to Horace Mann (dated January 28th 1754) he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip,
whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and
sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". The name stems from Serendip, an old name for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), from Arabic Sarandib, from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa which literally translates to "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island"[3]
Role in science and technology
One aspect of Walpole's original definition of serendipity that is
often missed in modern discussions of the word is the "sagacity" of
being able to link together apparently innocuous facts to come to a
valuable conclusion. Thus, while some scientists and inventors are
reluctant about reporting accidental discoveries, others openly admit
its role; in fact serendipity is a major component of scientific
discoveries and inventions. According to M. K. Stoskopf[4]
"it should be recognized that serendipitous discoveries are of
significant value in the advancement of science and often present the
foundation for important intellectual leaps of understanding".
The amount of benefit contributed by serendipitous discoveries varies extensively among the several scientific disciplines. Pharmacology and chemistry are probably the fields where serendipity is more common.
Most authors who have studied scientific serendipity both in a historical, as well as in an epistemological
point of view, agree that a prepared and open mind is required on the
part of the scientist or inventor to detect the importance of
information revealed accidentally. This is the reason why most of the
related accidental discoveries occur in the field of specialization of
the scientist. About this, Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD properties by unintentionally ingesting it at his lab, wrote
It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity.
Another example of serendipity in science is associated with Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin against the serious diseases at the time. He accidentally left a petri dish of Staphylococcus
bacteria open and a mold had got inside which had appeared to have
killed around the bacteria. It turned out that it was the fungus Penicillium and he turned the fungus into a groundbreaking anti-biotic.
The French scientist Louis Pasteur also famously said: "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."[5] This is often rendered as "Chance favors the prepared mind." William Shakespeare expressed the same sentiment 250 years earlier in act 4 of his play Henry V: "All things are ready if our minds be so."
History, of course, does not record accidental exposures of
information which could have resulted - but did not - in a new
discovery, and we are justified in suspecting that they are many. There
are several examples of this, however, and prejudice of preformed
concepts is probably the largest obstacle. See for example[6]
for a case where this happened (the rejection of an accidental
discovery in the field of self-stimulation of the limbic system in
humans).
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