Accident, luck, and serendipity in historical research

Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society

Volumn 149, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 1-21

  McClellan III, James E ^a  

^a STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33749186096     PISSN: 0003049X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Conference Proceeding    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (55)

1. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2003 (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 93, pt. 3)
2. On these points see Science 303 (2 January 2004): 102-03
3. and Science's Web site http://www.sciencemag.org
4. These considerations emerged in a conversation with Professor Philip J. Pauley of Rutgers University. On simultaneous discovery in science, see Derek J. de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science ... And Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 58-63
5. Robert K. Merton, "Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 105 (1961): 470-86
6. Thomas S. Kuhn, "Energy Conservation as an Example of Simultaneous Discovery," in The Essential Tension (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 66-104
7. Pierre Crépel, "Une curieuse lettre de Borda à Condorcet," in É. Brian and C. Demeulenaere-Doyère, eds., Histoire et mémoire de I'Ac̄adémic des sciences: Guide de recherches (Paris: Tec & Doc Lavoisier, 1996), 325-37, does make exemplary scholarly use of the registers of the Comité de Librairie for one particular case
8. Horace Walpole coined the word "serendipity" in 1754 from a nominally Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, that first appeared in Italian in 1557. See the OED entry and the in-depth study of the history of the word by Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber, The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), here 14-18. Merton and Barber's book appeared after this piece was first crafted, but, as will be evident, it has proven an invaluable resource in framing this published version
9. Salvatore Prisco III, "The Vegetarian Society and the Huashan-Kut'ien Massacre of 1895," Asian Forum (January-March, 1971), Pan-Asia Foundation reprint, 1-13
10. Among relatively recent titles of this sort, see Michael Bentley, ed., Companion to Historiography (London and New York: Routledge, 1997)
11. Susan K. Kinnell, Historiography: An Annotated Bibliography of Journal Articles, Books, and Dissertations, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara and Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 1987)
12. Michael Stanford, A Companion to the Study of History (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell USA, 1994)
13. John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Longman, 1991)
14. Robert C. Williams, The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History (Armonk, N.Y., and London: M. E. Sharpe, 2003)
15. R. S. Grimes, "The Making of a Sioux Legend: The Historiography of Crazy Horse," South Dakota History 30 (2000): 277-302
16. Valentina Duka, "Ten Years of Post-Communist Historiography in Albania: Reflections on the Past in the 90-ies," Österreichische Osthefte 44 (2002): 513-20
17. Roland Savitt, "Fernand Braudel on Historiography and Its Implications for Marketing," Journal of Macromarketing 20 (2000): 89-93
18. The Ur-source for the continuing debate over postmodernism is Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)
19. For the current state of play, see Ewa Domanska, Encounters: Philosophy of History after Postmodernism (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1998)
20. and the essay reviews by Christopher Kent, "Historiography and Postmodernism," Canadian Journal of History 34 (1999): 385-415
21. and by Thomas Postlewait, "Writing History Today," Theatre Survey 41 (2000): 83-106
22. See also the important study by Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover, N.H., and London: Wesleyan University Press by University Press of New England, 1997)
23. See, for example, Jerzy Topolski, "The Role of Logic and Aesthetics in Constructing Narrative Wholes in Historiography," History and Theory 38 (1999): 198-210
24. Christine Mason Sutherland, "Feminist Historiography: Research Methods in Rhetoric," Rhetoric Society Quarterly 32 (2002): 109-22
25. C. Behan McCullagh, "Bias in Historical Description, Interpretation, and Explanation," History and Theory 39 (2000): 39-66
26. Carlo Ginzburg's book History, Rhetoric, and Proof: The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures (Hanover, N.H., and London: Published by University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press and Historical Society of Israel, 1999), discussed below, is also relevant in this context
27. Robert M. Burns and Hugh Rayment-Pickard, eds., Philosophies of History: From Enlightenment to Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
28. Mark Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
29. and his "Philosophy, Rhetoric and Power: A Response to Critics," Rethinking History 4 (2000): 341-50
30. and Aviezer Tucker, "The Future of the Philosophy of Historiography," History and Theory 40 (2001): 37-56
31. The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951), 230-31
32. See also H. W. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 125-26
33. Peter Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), chap. 2. Professor J. D. Trout of Loyola University graciously directed me to this literature
34. O[swald] J[ames] Walker, "August Kekule and the Benzene Problem," Annals of Science 4 (1939): 34-46. Mr. Christopher Stanwood of the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia was instrumental in tracking down this elusive citation
35. Annalen der Chemie 137 (1866): 129-96
36. a short selection is reprinted in Henry M. Leicester and Herbert S. Klickstein, A Source Book in Chemistry, 1400-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), 421-25
37. Jan Golinski develops this point in his Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. chap. 1
38. Golinski and others correctly attribute this historiographical turning point to the appearance in 1962 of Thomas S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press)
39. For a snapshot of current work in the area, see Mario Biagioli, ed., The Science Studies Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 1999)
40. Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968), 31-32; original emphases
41. See also Helge Kragh, An Introduction to the Historiography of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 56
42. see Baruch A. Brody and Richard E. Grandy, Readings in the Philosophy of Science, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989), 398ff
43. The Development of Darwin's Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology, and Natural Selection, 1838-1859 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), blurb
44. The noted 1969 collection edited by Robin W. Winks, The Historian as Detective: Essays on Evidence (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row), does make some little mention passim of relevant but missing sources, but the general historiographical implications of this understanding are not drawn out
45. Wolfgang Köhler, The Task of Gestalt Psychology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969). My colleague in social sciences at Stevens Institute, Professor Susan Schept, suggested this source and line of inquiry
46. Howard E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity, Foreword by Jean Piaget, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), preface and introduction
47. Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996)
48. See, again, Merton and Barber, esp. chaps. 9 and 10. A recent critical examination of the role of serendipity in modern scientific discovery is Robert Friedel, "Serendipity Is No Accident," The Kenyon Review 23 (2001): 36-47
49. Royston M. Roberts, Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1989) provides a popular exposition of the role of serendipity in science
50. Note that the scientific and social science research communities themselves have sought to systematize thinking about serendipity in order to maximize fruitful outcomes in the research process; see, for example, L. Steinman, "Gene Microarrays and Experimental Demyelinating Disease: A Tool to Enhance Serendipity," Brain 10 (2001): 1897-99
51. see, for example, Bruce D. Ario, "Creating Creativity," Supervision 63 (2002): 16-18
52. David Mechanic, "Lessons from the Unexpected: The Importance of Data Infrastructure, Conceptual Models, and Serendipity in Health Services Research," Human Resources Abstracts 2 (2002): 165-319
53. On this jeton see Michael Mitchner, Jetons, Medalets & Tokens: Volume 1: The Medieval Period and Nurenberg (London: Seaby, Ltd., 1988), 604
54. and Félix Feuardent, Jeton et méreaux depuis Louis IX jusqu'à la fin du Consulat de Bonaparte (1915: reprint, Paris: Maison Piatt, 1995), 3: #11711-15 and #11725
55. The notion of the winds of Fortune was a commonplace from antiquity; see iconography and commentary by Lesley Thomson, "Fortune: 'All is But Fortune,'" on the Folger Shakespeare Library Web site: http: //www.folger.edu/public/exhibit/Fortune/fortune.htm. I thank my brother, Dr. Murray McClellan, for recalling this point to mind and for suppling the URL