by Ry Moore

Created on: January 05, 2010

Serendipity is a word with a strange etymology. Its root comes from an old Persian name for Sri Lanka, but its meaning from the events of a “fairy tale” conveyed to us in the English language by Horace Walpole. It is generally used to mean the good fortune of arriving at an unexpected result based on a series of seemingly unrelated events.

 In a lot of instances people would tend to see serendipity as luck, coincidence or fate. Perhaps they could be right but it seems to me that it involves a lot more that that. In the story related to us by Walpole, we read that ‘...as soon as the three princes arrived a far away trip that they were able to trace clues to accurately identify a camel they have never seen. The princes had concluded that the camel was lame, blind in one eye, missing a tooth, carrying a pregnant woman, and bearing honey on one side and butter on the other of its load. When they reported their observations to the merchant who has lost the camel, he accused them of stealing the camel...’ so their father the king, Beramo, asked how they are able to give such an accurate description of the camel if they have never seen it?

It is clear that they used a collective of small clues to cleverly deduce the nature of the missing camel. [taken from wiki- The Three Princes of Serendib]

Based on the information available to the princes one will be tempted to say they made a lucky guess, but I am more inclined to agree with the thoughts of Louis Pasteur  who declared that in the field of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind. In essence he is saying that whilst chance/luck plays a part, that the discovery whether anticipated or unexpected, can only be recognised by the mind that is prepared for its occurrence. one must be able to examine even the insignificant bits and pieces of data for within them are clues to something you may or may not be hoping to find.

The advent of such television shows as NCIS, CIS and NUMBERS one can readily see how serendipity works. Presented with a series of spurious facts related and unrelated, the detectives as it were, wave their magic wands causing the data to flow psychically in and out of their beings.Their minds churn mixing facts with fiction; the real with the hypothetical ... and then shazaam... just out of the blue, it hits them.subsequently when asked ‘How did you know it was that?’ the reply may be ‘I just had a gut-feeling’; or ‘I don’t know... it just seemed to be the right move!’  That, my friend is Serendipity!

There was a movie done in 2001 which when by the name of Serendipity. It was a sweet romantic comedy, but to my mind I saw no evidence of serendipity in the film. In my analysis, the movie was more about the coincidence of fate (or destiny) that it was about unearthing an unexpected discovery.

Events like the discovery of electricity and making of raisins or peanut butter are serendipitous, simply because the personnel involved sought to discover something other than what they actually discovered. The ability to spot the significance of inconsequential clues is a skill that separates the erudite from the novice; and it is the outcome of such observations that brings value for the advancement of science and thus presents a platform for us to understand what we didn’t understand before.

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