Researching Serendipity in Digital Information Environments. Lori McCay-Peet

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СКАЧАТЬ mental discernment and accident to explain a discovery.

      Walpole’s concept remained a private communiqué between the two friends, until Walpole’s correspondence was published in the 1830s. It took another 40 years before the word resurfaced in a public medium. In 1875, it appeared in formal print in the English language in the journal Notes and Queries, where Edward Solly introduced it into literary groups (Merton and Barber, 2004). Even though many incidences of serendipitous findings occurred in science during this period (e.g., vulcanization of rubber, coal tar dye mauve), the word, serendipity, was not used to describe them. In 1909, serendipity had its first appearance in a dictionary, The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, (the precursor to the Encyclopedia Britannica) and in 1913 it appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary. From the early 1900s to about 1935, serendipity remained used almost exclusively by literary scholars. In the mid-1930s, scientists and, in particular, Cannon (1945) at the Harvard Medical School popularized its role in scientific discovery (Merton and Barber, 2004). The pendulum swung from a dominant use in describing discoveries in science, although serendipity is now widely used throughout all disciplines.

      In 1958, Merton and Barber wrote a detailed account of serendipity, but the book languished as a manuscript until 2004 when it was published shortly before Merton’s death. This work, however, remains the most comprehensive discussion of the concept. Since that time, Walpole’s “very expressive word” has entered everyday conversation to describe everything from surprises to random occurrences and unexplained but happy outcomes (Merton and Barber, 2004, p. 4). But we believe that the common use in everyday language has led to dilution in its meaning, which challenges its application in research.

1.2 ON DEFINING SERENDIPITY

      Part of the confusion over what is meant by serendipity can be attributed to Walpole (Remer, 1965; Merton and Barber, 2004) who did not make clear how the concept was to be defined and thus used. Merton and Barber (2004) examined its appearance in dictionaries from its conception to the end of the 20th century and concluded that it had been perceived as an “esoteric word” given that it did not appear in any of the abridged dictionaries until 1951.

      How it appears in dictionaries illustrates its lack of specificity as these examples demonstrate.

      1. An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident; good fortune; luck (“serendipity,” n.d.-a).

      2. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident; the fact or occurrence of such discoveries; an instance of making such a discovery (“serendipity,” n.d.-b).

      3. The faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for (“serendipity,” n.d.-c).

      4. The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way (“serendipity,” n.d.-d).

      5. The faculty of finding valuable or interesting things by chance or where one least expects them (“serendipity,” 1932).

      The challenge with these definitions is their use primarily of adjectives (e.g., desirable, fortunate, valuable, agreeable, happy, interesting) that are difficult to operationalize. While the use of the words faculty and aptitude in the definitions suggest ability on the part of the individual experiencing serendipity, sagacity and the prepared mind are missing, suggesting that to be serendipitous is, largely, to be lucky. From a research perspective, we need to deconstruct and operationalize the terminology so that we recognize the phenomena that we are investigating. For greater clarity, we look instead to how serendipity is deployed by those who research it.

      For an incident to be described as serendipitous, or for an outcome to claim to be serendipity, it will have the following five conditions:

      1. There is an observation that is unanticipated, anomalous, unexpected, unpredictable, or inconsistent with existing findings or theories. This is a core condition and is generally agreed on by all who have researched serendipity (see, for example, Danzico, 2010; Foster and Ford, 2003; Makri and Blandford, 2012; McCay-Peet and Toms, 2015; Merton and Barber, 2004; Toms, 1997). But it is not the only characteristic. Many discussions of serendipity stop here, but in doing so interpret serendipity as simply synonymous with surprises and apparently happy random accidents; “without an element of chance, ‘discovery’ is nothing more than verification; without sagacity, it is mere happenstance” (Arvo, 1999, p. 183).

      2. The individual involved must have the human cognitive capacity and ability or knowledge and experience to make that observation—the prepared mind—which is often an observation that many have failed to notice, recognize, or even consider. From penicillin to dynamite, and microwave ovens to Post-it notes and Velcro, the “know-how” of the person making the observation is integral to the discovery. Chemist Paul Flory, on receiving the 1977 Perkin Medal, noted,

      Significant inventions are not mere accidents. The erroneous view [that they are] is widely held, and it is one that the scientific and technical community, unfortunately, has done little to dispel. Happenstance usually plays a part, to be sure, but there is much more to invention than the popular notion of a bolt out of the blue. Knowledge in depth and in breadth are virtual prerequisites. Unless the mind is thoroughly charged beforehand, the proverbial spark of genius, if it should manifest itself, probably will find nothing to ignite (Flory, 1977, p. 4).

      Similarly, medieval historian, Julian Luxford (2009) was researching two topics at once (sources for his book on medieval drawings and decoration in Carthusiasn manuscripts) when he stumbled upon a rare negative reference to Robin Hood in the marginalia of a 13th century medieval manuscript in the Eton school library. Even though other medieval scholars had examined the same manuscript, only he both recognized the find, and went on to write about the out-of-the-ordinary discovery. His knowledge of the era and context enabled him to recognize the value of the scribble. Pasteur astutely reached the same conclusion illustrated above a century earlier; it is not about luck and chance, but also about knowledge and experience. In a 1854 speech to the Faculté des Sciences at Lille, Pasteur made his now famous quote in describing the discovery of the technology underlying the telegraph. As he relayed it, Orsted observed the movement of a magnetic needle “suddenly by chance, you might say, but remember, that in the sciences of observation, chance favors the mind which is prepared.”¹

      In all of these cases there was an “intellectual preparedness” (Fine and Deegan, 1996) that enabled the researcher to understand the value of the observation, and then to allow for the “ah ha” moment to occur. If a person only sees what one is looking for, then one may miss the chance discovery.

      3. While the individual needs the ability based on knowledge and experience to sense the anomaly and its import, the individual also must have the human mental space at that time to absorb it, and recognize its value, and the perseverance to then act on it. Fleming (1964) in his 1945 Nobel speech described his discovery:

      …I prefer to tell the truth, that penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist (p. 83).

      It takes a person in the right “mental space” to observe, interpret and seize the opportunity.

      Surprises and accidents and incidental information encountering occur every day to everyone. But not everyone can turn that surprise or accident or new piece of information into a significant outcome. From the examples mentioned earlier, how many other people were exposed to the same or similar set of circumstances but failed to see the relevance? “The “natural tendency of the unprepared mind is to discard the unusual” (Rosenau as quoted in Merton and Barber, 2004, p. 179).

      Perhaps the most fitting example is the case of the floppy rabbit ears (Barber and Fox, 1958). Two eminent medical research groups СКАЧАТЬ