SETTING OUT FOR SERENDIP: Of Research Quests and Chance Discoveries

As a guiding concept for contemporary researchers, “serendipity”—defined in the modern sense as “happy chance” or “fortunate discovery”—is undoubtedly a valuable one. Serendipity implies a moment of success for researchers, a sudden epiphany about how to solve what has seemed like an unsolvable problem. Considered historically, however, the concept of serendipity may be even richer for considering the research process than the modern sense suggests. The concept itself is commonly traced back to the eighteenth century when it was coined by scholar, author, and polymath Horace Walpole in a letter to his friend Horace Mann. To borrow a