Did you know...

I was chatting with Ashraf online last night. Through the random twists and turns of conversation, I learnt a curious piece of titbit information: that the word “serendipity” came from Horace Walpole’s Persian fairy tale Three Princes of Serendib and “Serendib” was an old name for what is known today as Sri Lanka.

The trusty Wikipedia tells me:

Serendipity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For other uses, see Serendipity (disambiguation).

Serendipity is finding something unexpected and useful while searching for something else entirely. For instance, the discovery of the antibacterial properties of penicillin by Alexander Fleming is said to have been serendipitous, because he was merely cleaning up his laboratory when he discovered that the Penicillium mould had contaminated one of his old experiments.

The word was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip. (Serendip is an old Persian name for Sri Lanka.) The episode in the story involves a case of spectacular abductive reasoning (as used by Sherlock Holmes), which later leads to unsought "serendipitous" rewards from the king.

Origin of the term
The fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip is based upon the life of Persian king Bahram Gur who ruled the Sasanian Empire from ca. 420-440 AD. Stories of his rule are told in epic poetry of the region (Firdausi's Shahnameh 1010 AD, Nizami's Haft Paykar 1197 AD, Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht 1302 AD), parts of which are based upon historical facts with embellishments derived from folklore going back hundreds of years to oral traditions in India and Tales of the Arabian Nights. With the exception of the well-known camel story, English translations are very hard to come by.

In the camel story, the Three Princes use trace clues to precisely identify a camel they have never seen (lame; blind in one eye; missing a tooth; carrying a pregnant maiden; bearing honey on one side and butter on the other). This result of abductive reasoning is not what is meant by serendipity (the discovery of something NOT sought). Because of their cleverness and sagacity, they are accused of stealing the camel and are about to be put to death by Bahram Gur. Suddenly and without anyone seeking him out, a traveler steps forward to say that he has just seen the missing camel wandering in the desert. Bahram spares the lives of the Three Princes, lavishes them with rich rewards and appoints them as advisors. These rewards are the unsought (serendipitous) results of their sagacious insights.

Pretty serendipitous discovery, I think.

This is why you can never tire of the internet. It’s the Serendib of our times. Except we’re never really looking for anything at all. We are all trivia junkies who get high on ‘I’m feeling lucky’. The one thing I liked best about William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition was its open acknowledgement of the place ‘google’ held as a verb in the contemporary lexicon. I suspect ‘wikipedia’ will make it there soon too, though two more syllables makes it a tad more difficult to roll it off the tongue.

Next stop: Did anyone ever wonder how bats poo-poo while hanging upside down? Heheheh.