Over the years its meaning has shifted somewhat from its earlier connotation of accidental sagacity or “looking for one thing and finding another” (Solly, 1880, cited in Goodman 1961 p457) and has broadened to include notions such as “research directed toward the test of one hypothesis [yielding] a fortuitous by-product, an unexpected observation which bears upon theories not in question when the research was begun” (Merton, 1958). What each of the definitions has in common,
however, is some notion of unexpected or accidental discovery.
Science of course is replete with examples of unexpected or accidental discovery, and Newton's chance discovery of gravity from an apple falling on his head, whilst resting under a tree, is an apposite (but perhaps apocryphal) example. The discovery of Penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming is another, as is the discovery of x-rays by Röntgen. Are these tales from science’s rich history just down to chance or could other factors have been at work? Jessica George (2005), in a seemingly unrelated American Library Association article about information retrieval, poses a question which goes to the heart of this web essay: were they in some sense inevitable, given a certain set of actors and circumstances?
