Serendipity is a discovery or chance discovery. It is done by accident, by chance, unexpectedly, on things that are not being searched or investigated, but that they provide a solution for another problem we had.
Serendipity can be considered as the ability of an individual to constantly find things by chance, even if it is unrelated to what they are looking for, it is productive to solve other problems.
It is not a very used word in Spanish, but some synonyms of serendipity are: fluke, carom (colloquial terms), luck, coincidence, chance, accident.
The phenomenon of serendipity can be witnessed in different areas. In the case of science, when things are discovered without investigating about it, by chance. For its part, in the literaturewhen someone writes about something they imagine and it is later proven to exist just as they imagined it.
On the other hand, there is talk of pseudoserendipity when, after having researched a lot about something without obtaining results, the objective is finally achieved due to a chance accident or a revelation.
Origin of the word serendipity
The word serendipity comes from the English, “serendipity.” Derived from the Arabic word “Serendib” either “Sarandib”is a Persian name of the fabulous Arabian country from the story of Sinbad, The Thousand and One Nights.
Also, Serendip is the Arabic name of the ancient island called Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka since 1972.
On the other hand, there is an old Persian fable from the 18th century, with the title of The Three Princes of Serendip. It tells the adventures of three princes, gifted with the strange gift of accidentally discovering solutions to their problems. In 1754, the English writer Sir Horace Walpole (1717-1797) picked up this term from that book and spoke of the expressive richness of serendipity in a letter to Horace Mann.
Curious examples of serendipity
Archimedes entered a bathtub and observed how his body displaced a mass of water equivalent to the submerged volume. Thus he discovered the Archimedes’ principle and he went out naked into the street shouting: Eureka!
They say that Christopher Columbus He discovered America in 1492 searching for the Indies, and that is why he called the natives of America, Indians or indigenous people.
Morgan Robertson wrote a book in 1898 called “Futility or The Wreck of the Titan” where he recounts the shipwreck of an ocean liner called the Titan. 14 years later, the Titanic suffered a shipwreck with many amazing coincidences.
For example, the names of the two ships are similar (Titan and Titanic). Their dimensions are similar (243 and 268 meters in length, 75,000 and 66,000 tons). They were equipped with three propellers and two masts.
They sank on their maiden voyage in April colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, 400 miles off the island of Newfoundland, New York (one at a speed of 25 knots and another at 22.5 knots); They had few lifeboats (24 and 20), less than half the number required for the total passenger capacity, which was 2,223 in both cases.
Most of the dead were multimillionaires and more than half of the passengers died screaming for help. They sailed from Southampton, England, in the same month, April; the captains had the same last name (Smith); and both ships were considered “unsinkable.”
Of course there were also differences, for example, 705 people were saved from the Titanic and only 13 from the Titan; Three ocean liners were built like the Titanic, while the Titan was only one.
The Titanic hit the iceberg in perfect navigation conditions, in a very calm sea, while in the sea where the Titan sank the weather conditions were adverse.
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