Serendipity Science: An Emerging Field and its Methods by Samantha Copeland & Wendy Ross & Martin Sand

Author:Samantha Copeland & Wendy Ross & Martin Sand
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031335297
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Concluding Comments

The epistemology of serendipity I have sketched above is more a set of new directions to take philosophy of science than it is a detailed examination of how serendipity produces knowledge. In looking closely at the nature of serendipity as well as its rhetorical significance in the stories we tell about science, as a term that points to the role of wisdom in even accidental discovery, I have found that rather than a mysterious gap between chance observations and the production of knowledge, serendipity offers philosophy of science a bridging concept. Philosophy of science, rather than avoiding or deferring investigation of what happens when that gap is crossed—in the mind of the discoverer as well as in the world so discovered— has missed opportunities to understand how discoveries are made, more generally speaking. Contemporary philosophers, social scientists and science and technology studies scholars have taken up the cause, portraying scientific progress as partially or mostly the result of contingencies and chance (see Strevens 2020, for but one example) but they are only beginning to explore how rationality and chance truly intertwine in both ‘aha’ moments and in lengthy processes of scientific discovery. For this reason, serendipity science, I suggest, still has much to offer philosophy of science toward the clarification of what sagacity consists in, and how it enables us to recognise potential value in the unexpected.

References

Arfini, S., T. Bertolotti, and L. Magnani. 2020. The antinomies of serendipity how to cognitively frame serendipity for scientific discoveries. Topoi 39 (4): 939–948. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​s11245-018-9571-3.Crossref

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