We explain what serendipity is, the origin of the term and its current use. Also, examples of serendipity in history and science.
What is serendipity?
It is known as serendipity. a fortuitous, that is, accidental, finding or discoveryunforeseen, which is due to chance and not to what was originally planned, but which in itself is valuable, sometimes more than what one really intended.
The history of humanity is full of cases of serendipity, especially in the scientific field, although they are also considered literary works that imagine at the time, and with a significant degree of accuracy, realities that will later be scientifically demonstrated.
The word serendipity is a loanword from the English language, in which it is said serendipityand in turn comes from Farsi Serendipwhich is the name that the Persians once gave to the island of Ceylon, in Sri Lanka.
This term It was coined as a neologism in the English language in 1754by the British politician and writer Horace Walpole (1717-1797), taking it from a traditional Persian story in which the princes of Serendip resorted to chance and chance to seek the solution to their most varied problems.
This story was published for the first time in the West in the book of poems of 1302, Hasht Bihisht (Eight paradises), by the Sufi poet and musician Jursan Amir (1253-1325), and brought into English through a Venetian book of 1557, Peregrinaggio di three giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo (“Pilgrimage of three young sons of the king of Serendip”), translated by Cristóforo Armeno.
It is a term rarely used in common language, which was put back into circulation in recent times, thanks to different literary and cinematographic works, as well as the interest in this type of phenomena that has been demonstrated by self-help and other aspects of New Age thinking. .
In them, serendipity is usually interpreted as the individual's ability to recognize the crucial but accidental findings or learnings that we are given in life, even though these differ from what was initially expected.
See also: Luck
Examples of serendipity
Some famous examples of discovery by serendipity are the following:
- It is said that the Greek philosopher and mathematician Archimedesin ancient times, was forced by the tyrant of Syracuse, Hiero II, to determine the portion of pure gold that was in his crown, due to the suspicion that the goldsmith had used silver. Since he could not damage or melt the crown, Archimedes was about to give up, and went to take a dip: in the bathtub he noticed that the level of the water increased when he entered it, proportionally to the volume of the body introduced into it, and thus discovered the so-called “Archimedes Principle”.
- Columbus's arrival on American shores in 1492 was an accident happy, since the Genoese navigator intended to reach India, and instead discovered an entire continent for the Spanish crown.
- The pigment called Prussian Blue It was discovered accidentally in 1704, when the Swiss paint manufacturer and inventor Heinrich Diesbach was trying to achieve a bluish-red color. It did not achieve its original purpose, but it achieved a new shade of blue that has been widely used ever since.
- Another example was the accidental discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1922which was a consequence of the accidental contamination of a plate of bacteria with a fungus. Fleming noticed that the fungus was capable of secreting a bactericidal substance, since bacteria grew everywhere except around it. He then proceeded to isolate the substance and found the first antibiotic in history, which would forever change the course of modern medicine.
- The discovery of Teflon in 1938 by Dr. Roy J. Plunkett It was also an accidental discovery, since the scientist was studying new refrigeration methods, and a failed experiment led to the appearance of this type of plastic, called polytetrafluoroethylene.
Continue with: Scientific thinking
References
- “Serendipity” on Wikipedia.
- “Serendipity” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Serendipity – creativity through chance” (video) in TED Talk.
- “What is serendipity?” in Culturizing.
- “Serendipity” in The American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology.
