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Serendipity

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Serendipity

The Unexpected in Science

MIT Press,

15 min read
8 take-aways
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What's inside?

The unexpected in scientific explorations reveals how the human mind works.

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9

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The concept of serendipity traces back to a medieval Persian fairy tale. Sometimes significant breakthroughs in science, technology, and even criminal investigations occur as a result of what 18th-century British writer Horace Walpole called “serendipity” — details you run into more or less by accident that lead to connections and insights you weren’t pursuing. No one takes advantage of serendipity randomly; you must mentally prepare to capitalize on unexpected good fortune. Examples include the invention of Post-it notes, the discovery of penicillin, and the esoteric mathematics that makes modern physics viable.

Summary

Archimedes made an important discovery — while lounging in a bath.

In ancient Greece, an Athenian tyrant entrusted gold to a craftsman to create crowns. The tyrant suspected the craftsman was cheating him and asked the mathematician Archimedes whether an objective way to check existed. The solution came to Archimedes as he observed the changing level of the steaming water of the bath he was lounging in: The quantity of displaced water equaled the volume of the submerged object, whether that was a human body or a gold crown. Archimedes had his “Eureka!” moment while relaxing in a bath, his mind probably wandering. He proved that the craftsman had mixed less dense silver into the gold. Archimedes’ intuitive revelation and insight enabled Galileo, many years later, to measure the density of bodies.

Some dispute how Archimedes came up with his solution. The 5th-century CE Latin Grammarian Priscianus, for example, suggested that Archimedes submerged a scale in water, and placed in it the disputed crown and a pile of gold, comparing their relative balance. Still, Archimedes found what he was looking for. In solving a specific...

About the Author

Full Professor at the Department of Biology, University of Padua Telmo Pievani also wrote Imperfection: A Natural History.

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