Serendipity: The Accidental Scientists
Đề thi IELTS READING 23/9/2023)
A. A paradox lies close to the heart of scientific discovery. If you know just what
you are looking for, finding it can hardly count as a discovery, since it was fully
anticipated. But if, on the other hand, you have no notion of what you are looking
for, you cannot know when you have found it, and discovery, as such, is out of the
question. In the philosophy of science, these extremes map onto the purist forms of
deductivism and inductivism: In the former, the outcome is supposed to be
logically contained in the premises you start with; in the latter, you are
recommended to start with no expectations whatsoever and see what turns up.
B. As in so many things, the ideal position is widely supposed to reside somewhere
in between these two impossible to-realize extremes. You want to have a good
enough idea of what you are looking for to be surprised when you find something
else of value, and you want to be ignorant enough of your end point that you can
entertain alternative outcomes. Scientific discovery should, therefore, have an
accidental aspect, but not too much of one. Serendipity is a word that expresses a
position something like that. It’s a fascinating word, and the late Robert King
Merton—‘the father of the sociology of science’—liked it well enough to compose
its biography, assisted by the French cultural historian Elinor Barber.
C. Serendipity means a ‘happy accident’ or ‘pleasant surprise’; specifically, the
accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it. The first noted
use of ‘serendipity’ in the English language was by Horace Walpole (1717-1792).
In a letter to Horace Mann (dated 28 January 1754) he said he formed it from the
Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes ‘were always
making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’.
The name stems from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka.
D. Besides antiquarians, the other community that came to dwell on serendipity to
say something important about their practice was that of scientists. Many
scientists, including the Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon and, later, the British
immunologist Peter Medawar, liked to emphasize how much of scientific
discovery was unplanned and even accidental. One of Cannon’s favorite examples
of such serendipity is Luigi Galvani’s observation of the twitching of dissected
frogs’ legs, hanging from a copper wire, when they accidentally touched an iron
railing, leading to the discovery of ‘galvanism’; another is Hans Christian Orsted’s
discovery of electromagnetism when he unintentionally brought a current-carrying
wire parallel to a magnetic needle.
The context in which scientific serendipity was most contested and had its greatest
resonance was that connected with the idea of planned science. The serendipitists
were not all inhabitants of academic ivory towers. Two of the great early-20th-
century American pioneers of industrial research—Willis Whitney and Irving
Langmuir, both of General Electric—made much play of serendipity, in the course
of arguing against overly rigid research planning.
E. Yet what Cannon and Medawar took as a benign method, other scientists found
incendiary. To say that science had a significant serendipitous aspect was taken by
some as dangerous denigration. If scientific discovery were really accidental, then
what was the special basis of expert authority?
F. In this connection, the aphorism of choice came from no less an authority on
scientific discovery than Louis Pasteur: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
Accidents may happen, and things may turn up unplanned and unforeseen, as one
is looking for something else, but the ability to notice such events, to see their
potential bearing and meaning, to exploit then occurrence and make constructive
use of them these are the results of systematic mental preparation. What seems like
an accident is just another form of expertise. On closer inspection, it is insisted,
accident dissolves into sagacity.
G. In 1936, as a very young man, Merton wrote a seminal essay on “The
Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action.” It is, he argued, the
nature of social action that what one intends is rarely what one gets: Intending to
provide resources for buttressing Christian religion, the natural philosophers of the
Scientific Revolution laid the groundwork for secularism; people wanting to be
alone with nature in Yosemite Valley wind up crowding one another. We just don’t
know enough—and we can never know enough— to ensure that the past is an
adequate guide to the future: Uncertainty about outcomes, even of our best-laid
plans, is endemic. All social action, including that undertaken with the best
evidence and formulated according to the most rational criteria, is uncertain in its
consequences.
QUESTIONS
Questions 28-33
Reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A -F from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 28-33 on your answer sheet.
List of headings
i The origin of serendipity
ii Horace Walpole’s fairy tale
iii Arguments against serendipity
iv Two basic knowledge in the paradox of scientific discovery
v The accidental evidences in and beyond science
vi organization’s movement Opposing against the authority
vii Accident and mental preparation
viii Planned research and anticipated outcome
ix The optimum balance between the two extremes
28 Paragraph A
29 Paragraph B
30 Paragraph c
31 Paragraph D
32 Paragraph E
33 Paragraph F
Questions 34-36
Complete the summary below, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 34-36 on your answer sheet.
The word ‘serendipity’ was coined in the writing of 34………….to Horace Mann.
He derived it from a 35………., the characters of which were always making
fortunate discoveries by accident. The stem Serendip was a former name for
36………..
Questions 37-40
Choose the correct letter. A, B, c or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.
37 What does ‘inductivism’ mean in paragraph A?
A. observation without anticipation at the beginning
B. Looking for what you want in the premise
C. The expected discovery
D. The map we pursued
38 Scientific discovery should
A be much of accidental aspect
B be full of value
C. be between the two exhemes
D be skeptical
39 The writer mentions Luigi Galvani’s observation to illustrate
A the cruelty of frog’s dissection
B the happy accident in scientific discovery
c the practice of scientists
D the rigid research planning
40 Why does the writer mention the example in Yosemite Valley in paragraph
G?
A To illustrate the importance of a systematic plan
B To illustrate there is an unpredictable reality towards expectation
C To illustrate the original anticipation
D To illustrate that intention of social action is totally meaningless
