Anatomy of the Unsought Finding. Serendipity: Orgin, History, Domains, Traditions, Appearances, Patterns and Programmability

Andel, Pek van

doi:10.1093/bjps/45.2.631

Cited by 250 publications

(134 citation statements)

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“…Horace Walpole coined the term serendipity in 1754 [38,47] to characterize the discoveries made by The Three Princes of Serendip-the figures of an ancient fairy tale: "as their Highnesses travelled they were always making discoveries, by accidents & sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of " [38, p.20]. Currently, variations of the Oxford English dictionary's definition are commonly used to describe the term serendipity: "the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident" [36].…”

Section: Defining Serendipitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These people embrace serendipitous discoveries as part of their life process. Talents or special traits that facilitate serendipity include observational skills [41], curiosity [30], open-mindedness [1,14,30,41,47], knowledge [1,30,41], and perseverance [30]. Observational Skills.…”

Section: Personality Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Open-mindedness. Numerous works on serendipity emphasize the importance of an open and prepared mind [1,14,30,41,47]. This recognizes that valuable insight from serendipitous discoveries requires receptiveness to unexpected information: "chance only favours prepared minds"(Louis Pasteur) [47].…”

Section: Personality Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Numerous works on serendipity emphasize the importance of an open and prepared mind [1,14,30,41,47]. This recognizes that valuable insight from serendipitous discoveries requires receptiveness to unexpected information: "chance only favours prepared minds"(Louis Pasteur) [47]. Open-mindedness can manifest itself in curiosity [30], questioning previous assumptions, or deliberately looking at information from various perspectives [30,41].…”

Section: Personality Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The bohemian bookshelf

Thudt¹,

Hinrichs

Carpendale

2012

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

141

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Serendipity, a trigger of exciting yet unexpected discoveries, is an important but comparatively neglected factor in information seeking, research, and ideation. We suggest that serendipity can be facilitated through visualization. To explore this, we introduce the Bohemian Bookshelf, which aims to support serendipitous discoveries in the context of digital book collections. The Bohemian Bookshelf consists of five interlinked visualizations each offering a unique overview of the collection. It aims at encouraging serendipity by (1) offering multiple visual access points to the collection, (2) highlighting adjacencies between books, (3) providing flexible visual pathways for exploring the collection, (4) enticing curiosity through abstract, metaphorical, and visually distinct representations of books, and (5) enabling a playful approach to information exploration. A deployment at a library revealed that visitors embraced this approach of utilizing visualization to support open-ended explorations and serendipitous discoveries. This encourages future explorations into promoting serendipity through information visualization.

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Section: Defining Serendipitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Personality Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Personality Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Personality Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The bohemian bookshelf

Thudt¹,

Hinrichs

Carpendale

2012

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

141

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, the camel was found safe and sound and they were freed. After many more adventures, they succeeded their father as leader of Serendip (according to Merton and Barber 2004;and Andel 1994). 43 The term 'Serendipity' was coined, with reference to this tale, by the celebrated man of letters Horace Walpole, in correspondence with his friend Horace Mann:…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%