Serendipity: to make discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things not in quest of.

The word serendipity was coined by Horace Walpole 28 January, 1754, in a letter he wrote to his friend, Horace Mann, the English resident in Florence.

"I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity? One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for, comes under this description) was of my Lord Shaftsbury, who happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table."as given by W.S. Lewis, ed., Horace Walpole's Correspondence, Yale edition, in the book by Theodore G. Remer, Ed.: Serendipity and the Three Princes, from the Peregrinaggio of 1557, Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Theodore G. Remer, Preface by W.S. Lewis. University of Oklahoma Press, 1965. LCC 65-10112

There are three interrelated debates regarding the meaning of the word serendipity:

• The first debate: are the events referred to by Walpole in his letter to Mann, good examples of serendipity, as defined by Walpole? Expanding on this debate, are any of the adventures of the Three Princes, good examples of Walpole's definition of serendipity?
• The second debate: if the examples of serendipity cited by Walpole are not good examples of serendipity, what should determine the meaning of the word serendipity, Walpole's precise definition, or a definition derived from the adventures of the Three Princes?
• The third debate: given the range of current definitions for the word serendipity, from Walpole's precise or strict definition to extremely loose definitions, what events should be cited as actual occurrences of serendipity?

History of the word

For more information about the story that inspired Horace Walpole to coin the word serendipity, see the entry The Three Princes of Serendip.

Examples of Serendipity

• Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Gelignite by Alfred Nobel

• Penicillin by Alexander Fleming
  • The Accident: Fleming was cleaning up his laboratory when he noticed that the Penicillium mold had contaminated one of his old experiments.
  • Sagacity: He had been researching the antibacterial properties of common substances for several years and thus had the experience to realize what he saw.

• Polyethylene by Hans von Pechmann
• Post-it Notes by Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry
• Psychedelic effects of LSD by Dr. Albert Hofmann
• Rings of Uranus
• Silly Putty by James Wright
• Serendipity by Ardbeg
• Velcro by Georges de Mestral

Trivia

Serendip is the old Arabic name for Sri Lanka.

The episode in the story is a case of abductive reasoning (as used by Sherlock Holmes), which later leads to unsought "serendipitous" rewards from the king.

The word 'serendipity' has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its sociological use, the word has been imported into many other languages (Portuguese serendipicidade or serendipidade; French sérendipicité or sérendipité; Spanish serendipia; Italian serendipità; Dutch serendipiteit).

Related terms

William Boyd coined the term zemblanity to mean somewhat the opposite of serendipity: "making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries occurring by design".Boyd, William. Armadillo, Chapter 12, Knopf, New York, 1998. ISBN 0375402233 It derives from Novaya Zemlya (or Nova Zembla), a cold, barren land with many features opposite to the lush Sri Lanka (Serendip).

Bahramdipity is derived directly from Bahram Gur as characterized in the "Three Princes of Serendip". It describes the suppression of serendipitous discoveries or research results by powerful individuals(a) Sommer, Toby J. "'Bahramdipity' and Scientific Research", The Scientist, 1999, 13(3), 13.
(b) Sommer, Toby J. "Bahramdipity and Nulltiple Scientific Discoveries," Science and Engineering Ethics, 2001, 7(1), 77-104..

Bibliography

• Theodore G. Remer, Ed.: Serendipity and the Three Princes, from the Peregrinaggio of 1557, Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Theodore G. Remer, Preface by W.S. Lewis. University of Oklahoma Press, 1965. LCC 65-10112
• Robert K. Merton, Elinor Barber: The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science. Princeton University Press, 2004. ISBN 0691117543. (Manuscript written 1958).
• Royston M. Roberts: Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science. Wiley, 1989. ISBN 0471602035
• Pek Van Andel: "Anatomy of the unsought finding : serendipity: origin, history, domains, traditions, appearances, patterns and programmability." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1994, 45(2), 631-648.

References