The word serendipity is used to describe how someone will discover something through unexpected events. This generally causes one to envision the accidental discovery of something ground breaking, and as such there is much debate on how serendipity reflects the skills and abilities of the discoverer. Some may say that it is the result of dumb luck or that whoever has experienced serendipity does not deserve to be recognized for the achievement. This however is quite a false assumption to make on serendipity, as there is much more to serendipity than just “getting lucky.”
When serendipity is mentioned or thought of, the general idea is that it jumps towards the discoverer all by happenstance. This seems like a grievous misunderstanding of what serendipity truly is and devalues the knowledge and hard work that was put forth by the scientist. One famous example of serendipity is the image of Isaac Newton sitting underneath an apple tree. Everybody knows the story of how an apple fell from the tree that he was sitting under and hit his head, and how that inspired him to produce the various equations that have tremendously guided our understanding of gravity. The thing about that story is that the apple did not 'beat' or 'pound' that information into his head. If that was how knowledge could be suddenly implanted into someone's brain, then the study sessions at Georgia Tech would be... interesting to say the least. Instead, it may have been more of a reflection of the topic that crystallized the thoughts, knowledge, and experiences that Isaac Newton had gained prior and turned it toward answering a curious observation. “Stupid apple!” Newton may have thought, “Why did you have to fall on my head!” Then after pondering that statement for a second, he may have thought, “Hmm... Why did you fall on my head? And why did it hurt more as it fell than if had merely been on top of my head? Is that because it is accelerating? It was established earlier that a velocity is constant unless acted upon by force. Does that mean a force is constantly acting on it?” This thought process could have gone on for hours as he used insight to try and understand one of the mysterious forces of the universe.
Serendipity is not a situation where the answer jumps out of nowhere and says, “Here I am!”
It instead is when the scientist notices something and says, “Wait a minute,” and starts to question even mundane things in search of answers. The scientist then uses what he or she has learned over the years to make the first steps in that search. None of which involves “dumb luck,” because serendipity is less of a a giant neon sign, and more of a nudge in the right direction.
This post was very interesting in that it gave me a different perspective on this issue. Personally, I have never thought of serendipity as just "getting lucky" but I can see how others might make the mistake of thinking that. I also had been dismissing the hard work part of serendipity, focusing instead on the knowledge part. Here is a link that delves into what it really takes to take advantage of serendipity: http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/serendipity
ReplyDeleteIn response to your argument I would have to say that there was a part, albeit a very small one, that involved luck in the case of Newton. I enjoyed when you went through all of the thoughts that may have been going through Newton's head at the time the apple fell on it. I imagine that those thoughts are very accurate, and I really like the idea of the nudge in the right direction to symbolize this concept, which is the result of the synthesis of so many other things.
Andrew Ford
ReplyDeleteThis post was really interesting but at the same time humorous. I really like the Newton reference but what I liked the most about it was how you made the the post so personal. I feel that this is how blogs should be written. Also, the example of what Newton might have thought when the apple hit his head was a good comment to make to help people understand the concept of serendipity. Also, I like the imagery of the neon sign in the window other than more common references. Overall, I think the humor was the best part of this post and you should definitely keep that up.