Essay: Luck and Science

Sample Essay

Words 1,210

Abstract

Luck and science is some how closely related. This essay is focused on important discoveries by scientists who were able to give the world their inventions and findings as a mere result of luck. Means to say that they were lucky that they got the best timings in terms of stars and astrology that the gifted the world with their discoveries and got famous.

Serendipity denotes the property of making fortunate discoveries while looking for something unrelated, or the occurrence of such a discovery during such a search i.e. what is addressed here luck and science. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages. Pharmacology and chemistry are probably the fields where serendipity is more common of all disciplines. (Clark P.)

An important study revealed that somewhere between 33% and 50% of all scientific discoveries are estimated to have been lurched or fell upon the world, rather than sought out. This may explain why scientists so often express that they were lucky.

One important name amongst those scientists is Louis Pasteur. Louis Pasteur is credited with the famous saying that “Luck favors the prepared mind”, but some psychologists have begun to study what it means to be ‘prepared for luck’ in the scientific context. Research is showing that scientists are taught various aids of learning that tend to harness chance and the unexpected results they could bring.

Another example of Serendipity in science is associated with Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin against the serious diseases at that time. He accidentally left a Petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria open and a mould had got inside which had appeared to have killed around the bacteria. It turned out that it was the fungus Penicillium and he turned the fungus into a groundbreaking anti-biotic. Thus penicillin was gifted to world by nature and luck of Alexander Fleming as an anti-biotic which is still widely used.

An important discovery as a result of Luck combined with Science is of Bioelectricity, by Luigi Galvani. He was dissecting a frog at a table where he had been conducting experiments with static electricity. His assistant touched an exposed sciatic nerve of the frog with a metal scalpel which had picked up a charge, provoking a muscle contraction and thus biochemistry came into existence by luck. (Peter B.)

When a person is talking about Serendipity he/she must not forget to mention the name of Isaac Newton and the famed apple falling from a tree, supposedly leading to his musings about the nature of gravitation.

Thus one would definitely say after reading this that science and luck are somehow interrelated and one cannot deny the existence of luck in these important discoveries.

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