“I define serendipity as the art of making an unsought finding,” writes Pek Van Andel in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. There appear to be endless scenarios to which this unusual word can be applied: getting lost on the highway, which leads to a new friendship made at a pit stop; mixing up ingredients in a recipe and discovering a surprisingly delightful new flavor combination; setting out to invent one thing but ending up with the invention of another; falling in love not with your blind date but with the server at the restaurant instead.
The word that umbrellas all of these concepts can be traced back to the innovation of English politician and writer Horace Walpole. Walpole is known to literature students for composing the Gothic romance novel The Castle of Otranto, but his more widely known claim to fame is the invention of a new word to describe something wonderful that happens when you least expect it. It happened to him when he found something he wasn’t looking for.
On January 28, 1754, Walpole wrote a letter to his good friend Horace Mann. Mann, using his wealth and connections, had secured a portrait of Bianca Cappello, a late Grand Duchess of Tuscany, as a gift for Walpole. Walpole, who loved everything to do with Italian history, cherished the painting. He went on a research spree one day and unexpectedly found a Capello family crest that incorporated the fleur-de-lis of the Medici family into which Bianca had married. The marriage had been scandalous, as Bianca had been the mistress of Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, before becoming his second wife.
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Finding an official crest representing the widely disapproved-of marriage was a surprise. Walpole described the experience in his letter to Mann as “serendipity,” inspired by the Persian tale The Three Princes of Serendip in which the titular princes make grand discoveries by accident and observation. Most notably, they catalogue the defining characteristics of a lost camel without ever seeing the beast (Walpole, who read the story in his youth, misremembered the anecdote and believed the princes tracked a mule), put into play a plan to restore a love- and grief-stricken emperor to good health, and (perhaps less fortunately) returned a kidnapped girl to her position as a slave in the emperor’s court.
The noun “serendipity” has expanded into the adjective “serendipitous,” which is used to describe an unlikely and lucky event, such as the invention of many now commonplace items that were created by accident, including, but not limited to, microwaves, Popsicles, Post-It notes, and the antibiotic penicillin. Van Andal, who divides serendipitous situations into “patterns”—some “seventeen ways in which unsought findings have been made”—characterizes the invention of Post-It Notes in 1968 by Spencer Silver as a “successful error” serendipity, citing R. M. Roberts’s 1989 textbook, Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science.
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“The ‘bad and discarded’ glue,” Van Andel writes, “the ‘temporarily permanent’ adhesive on removable self-stick post-it notes, was unintentionally invented at 3M.”
The word gained popularity after the release of the 2001 romantic comedy film Serendipity, directed by Peter Chelsom. The film follows a couple who meet by chance and feel an instant attraction to one another. Though they’re both already in relationships, they conduct a series of small chance-reliant tests to determine if they’re meant to be together. This premise is, of course, scripted. In real life, serendipity only happens when you’re not waiting for it or trying to force it.
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