iSagacity of the human mind has impressed spectators at all times, be they kings and queens or beggars and buffoons. Riddles often were told and used as show pieces in pageantry and were preserved by oral and literal tradition. The "Tale of the Three Princes of Serendip" is one such literary framework of ancient Indo-Persian origin.
We, in the Century of Brain (21st), nicely fit into this spiritual chain with the interest in "serendipity" as it evolved and how this rising interest, by itself, is interlaced with the history of the human mind and its globalization. Renaissance brought this collection of Oriental legends of travels, riddles, sagacity in solving them, to the European stage. The Tramezzini of Venice, brother-editors, used a fictional author to offer it to the public in 1557, as an entertaining literature to be compared to Giovanni Boccaccio's Decamerone (Holubar, 1991; Tramezzino (ed), 1557;Remer, 1963; van Andel, 1994). Translations into other languages followed suit (Fick and Hilka, (eds) 1932; Remer, 1963). Enlightenment provided the next step. Horace Walpole (1717–1797), son of the famous British prime minister, sitting in his estate in Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, Middlesex, translated the sagacity of the three princes into a concept which he labeled "serendipity" in a letter to Horace Mann, British envoy at the Florentine Court, dated January 28, 1754. Literally, he wrote of the three princes: "they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." The item he referred to was a picture of Bianca Capello (1548–1587) and her crest, modified by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in consequence of their liaison (van Andel, 1994). Semantically, the referral points to the island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon of yesteryear). Serendip
is the historical Arabo-Persian- form of Sri Lanka, a word with Sanskrit (Pali) origin, naming the island of Singhalese Sinhala dvipa 
and kept alive in folk tales and legends of this area.
The original corpus of tales contained a multiplicity of wondrous stories which are beyond the scope of this short note. The travels of the three princes provide a narrative framework of the complex of legendary events. These three young men, sons of the king of Serendip, were sent abroad by their father in order to learn and gain experience.
The upcoming world of the sciences in Post-Darwinian Europe let "serendipity" become a lexeme in 1880 (Compound Oxford English Dictionary: 1994). Throughout the ensuing eight decades the word was used as a substantive or adjective occasionally, till during the sixties the attention of the scientific world was aroused.Simon Winchester's "Surgeon of Crowthorne" (1998) nicely illustrates one of the noble facets of British tradition which enables us to re-draw this development. Beyond that, two additional facts of "English" may be emphasized (i) its rise as the undisputed lingua franca of the global scientific community and (ii) the absence of any special letters within the Latin alphabet (as present in French, German, and abounding in Czech, Croatian, Hungarian and so forth). This latter advantage makes it easy to formally take over a semantic term into another language (next to the idea of it).
Today, at the beginning of a new century (and millennium) in a world of deciphering the human genome, creating human chimeras, transplanting hearts, lungs and livers, on the verge of becoming denizens of space ourselves, another step in the development of the human mind has taken place. Research, especially in the field of biotechnology, has swamped all other fields to an extent that a resuscitation and expansion of a holistic approach to man and his inner and outer environment is demanded. If the 21st really were a "Century of the Brain", a fancy concept like serendipity must catch on, and draw curiosity, invite comment.
The traveling visitor is advised to pass by Strawberry Hill in the outskirts of London and visit the magic place into which Walpole transformed his estate and Lady Waldegrave continued during the 19th century. A fairytale neo-gothic castle with decorum all over–the beautifully inlaid wooden floors came from Vienna–and the Yale edition of Walpole's 10, 000 letters and many other books on the shelves. This is the place where the concept of serendipity was born 250 years ago.
Let us address two more points.
(i) random, luck, coincidence
Random means a motion, event, which is haphazard in nature, i.e., without planning, aim or purpose.
Luck is the same if the outcome is felicitous. (The finesses of the English language (vide supra) nicely permits separation from happiness).
Coincidence, however, is someway down the road to serendipity, in happenings which may suggest also a trace of underlying conditioning, e.g., people meeting on the same train, in the same street, etc.
(ii) philosophy and the humanities
Our modern world made us erudite in regard to physical and functional details of ourselves and the world around, statistical details, antigenic moities, molecular structures, and the like. But, alas, it made us less philosophical. The background of the humanities in our minds is dimming, the "zeitgeist" is not conducive to studying the Ancient, where most of the human and (in)humane aspects of our lives have been covered widely. Sappho, Sophokles, Menander, Ovidius, Virgilius, Boethius, Dante; or, for that matter, Job and Kohelet, David's songs, Solomon's Shir ha-shirim, ...you name it. Suffering, joy, lust, pain, happiness and tragedy, Heaven's curse and bliss, life and death: it's all there. Today we are stuck in surface structures and genetic codons. In short, with much more knowledge but less wisdom.
What is wisdom? Where is it? Kohelet, son of David (Ecclesiastes in Christian terms) wrote: "only G-d knows" (xxviii:23). And the requirements for wisdom, what are they? A high IQ, something that can be conferred by Evidence Based Medicne (EBM) (van Andel et al, 2002), and Problem Based Learning (PBL), by sweat alone? No. Bloody sweat, i.e., suffering may be a prerequisite as part of the overall condition of experience, and experience is IQ plus knowledge plus ambition plus time. Only then wisdom may ensue, and this seems to be our point. Serendipity is a synthetic capacity which is not based on science alone. The sagacity of mind is a result of having gone through adversities, over years, along many miles, in gallons of sweat, and–with an open mind and a tender heart.
So serendipity is wisdom? How should we know! We deal with philosophical cartridges, words, at a time when we do not understand (yet?) how our brain works, what telepathy is, prescience, love, the soul–death and the dimension beyond. Perhaps serendipity is a symbol of a process which is not fully perceptible to us, a spark which may light up, a shooting star which cannot be foreseen, something unpredictable anyway. The stuff, then, of which discoveries are made, Alexander Fleming's discovery for instance, or Agostino Bassi's detection of the silk worms in 1826, not, however, Paul Ehrlich's finding of Salvarsan (the latter he was in search of.)
Often scientific discoveries are called "coincidental", i.e., labeled a per chance event–which most were not! A per chance event is a random event, e.g., mixing black and white marbles and then picking one (or the other). Modified earlier last century, the sober formulation of Louis Pasteur reads (modified by his relative René Valéry-Radot-Pasteur) "la chance ne favorise que les esprits préparés" or, chance favors the prepared mind, as it is mostly quoted in English.
Our ambition if not obligation is to prepare our minds to enable us to develop this sagacity and become serendipitous.
References
| 1. | Compound Oxford English Dictionary:. 2nd edn Clarendon Press Oxford (1994) p 1715. |
| 2. | Fick R, Hilka A, edsOf Benfey T. Die Reise der Drei Söhne Des Königs Von Serendippo. FF Communications #98 (Proceedings of the Finnish Academy of Sciences), Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki 1932 (complete translation, in German; 178, pp). |
| 3. | Holubar K. Serendipity – its basis and importance. Wien Klin Wochenschr (1991) 103: 533–535. | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort | |
| 4. | Peregrinaggio di tre giovane figliuoli del Re di Serendippo per opera di Christoforo Armeno dalla Persiana all'Italiana lingua trapportato. Michele Tramezzino:, edVenezia (1557). |
| 5. | Remer TG. Serendipity and the three princes. From the Peregrinaggio of 1557 (1963) University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. |
| 6. | Winchester S. The Surgeon of Crowthorne. (1998) Simon Winchester. |
| 7. | van Andel P. Anatomy of the unsought finding, serendipity: Origin, history and domain, traditions, appearances, patterns and programmability. Br J Phil Sci (1994) 45: 631–648. |
| 8. | van Andel P, Fatovi -Feren i S & Holubar K. Evidence Based Medicine-how it relates to knowledge, wisdom and serendipity. Wien Klin Wochenschr (2002) 114: 468–470. | PubMed | ISI | |
