Some of mankind's greatest discoveries have occurred thanks to serendipity. August Kekulé, one of the creators of the Theory of Chemical Structure, discovered the structure of the benzene molecule only by accident.
One day, while he was returning home by bus, he had a strange dream in which he saw the atoms and molecules forming twisted serpentine chains, one of them transformed into a snake biting its own tail forming a circle that rotates on itself. same . So he realized that it was a cyclic compound. This is serendipity!
The word comes from the tale of "The Three Princes of Serendip", which tells the adventures of three princes with a strange power that allows them to make random discoveries. Indeed, serendipity should not be confused with intuition, since even if with the latter the solution comes suddenly, the person had spent weeks or even months absorbed in the problem, so the different alternatives were continuously analyzed on an unconscious level.
Conversely, serendipity refers to a fortuitous discovery that occurs by chance, usually while looking for something completely different. This is usually a positive and unexpected discovery with enormous scope.
Discoveries such as X-rays, penicillin, Archimedes' principle, viagra, the microwave oven and even post-its arose thanks to serendipity.
Another particularly interesting example is found in the history of basketball. The year was 1891, when a physical education teacher named James Naismith nailed two fruit-picking baskets to the walls of the gym and asked the students to try putting the ball in them. Thus basketball was born.
But the problem is that once the ball entered the basket it was necessary to stop the game because someone had to go and catch it. If this problem hadn't been solved, basketball would probably have had its days numbered. Nobody could find a solution. Until after many games and centered baskets, the bottom of the basket gave way and fell. The ball slipped out and it was finally possible to continue playing without interruption.
Seen from our point of view it may seem trivial. After all, it doesn't take a genius to get rid of the bottom of a basket. But at that time they were all victims of what is called "functional fixity". That is to say, they were so engrossed in the one way of doing something that they made no attempt to imagine a different way.
Serendipity has the power to break rigid patterns by offering us a taste of what lies beyond. Of course, serendipity alone isn't enough to make a discovery or bring about a change, it's just the first step. Later you will need to go through a series of stages.
Serendipity in action
Serendipity involves funnel-shaped thinking at its base. In the first place, there is a phase marked by the mystery referring to a gap in knowledge, a situation that appears chaotic and that often was not even foreseen. In the basketball example it was the fact that the ball always got stuck in the basket.
Then the lucky event takes place and we realize the progress it represents. In fact, we have probably all had numerous episodes of serendipity in our lifetime, but we have not been able to grasp the essence of it. Obviously, if we are not chemists, August Kekulé's dream would have meant nothing to us and if we hadn't been James Naismith, a broken basket would have been nothing more than that.
Then follows the third and last phase which involves the application of an algorithm, that is, we find the solution. At this point we work on the solution and perfect it by applying ours
knowledge on the subject.
What does all this teach us?
That serendipities are random discoveries, but that it is also necessary to have a certain knowledge of the subject to take advantage of them, because otherwise, they risk going completely unnoticed. Randomness exists, but we also need the right tools to interpret it and after that, we also need to be persistent enough to take advantage of it.
