Many important discoveries or creations are accidental it is usually while seeking the answer to one question that we come across the answer to another

The speaker claims that many important discoveries or creation are serendipities and they come about while seeking answers to other questions. Though statement finds merit in many renowned discoveries and inventions from the past that came into being while they were not sought, it goes too far to in stating the importance of accident especially for modern day discoveries and creations.

Firstly, the statement does seem appropriate considering the accidental nature of many important past discoveries. To start with, the discovery of fire in the stone-age that transformed the Homo Sapein life till eternity was indeed serendipity. It is also fair to say that Newton’s discovery of Gravitational Law had a chance element in the falling of the apple. Similarly, in 1895, Wilhelm Rongten was flirting with a cathode ray tube and observed a glow on the fluorescent screen thereby discovering X-rays in the process that revolutionized healthcare and gave birth to crystallography. Then one can also learn from how microwave was discovered by the melting of chocolate bar when Percy Spencer was working on a radar-related project. History is rife with such discoveries and inventions that were influenced by chance circumstances running the gamut from invention of pacemakers to the discovery of penicillin where the end result was not something the Scientist intended but was still an important discovery or creation.

However, apart from a select few not every such discovery or creation can be considered to be purely accidental. They were rather accidental observations which needed a perspicacious mind to follow through and turn them into important discoveries. To set the record straight, not every layman can discover X-rays from a glowing fluorescent screen, microwave from a melting chocolate bar, laws of gravity from a falling apple and so on.

More importantly, while the speaker bases his/her claim on ‘accidental discoveries’, he/she conveniently ignores the fact that many significant discoveries and creations have been anticipated and achieved through goal-oriented efforts. Right from the creation of electric bulb by Edison in 1880 to the discovery of Nobel Prize winning blue ‘Light-emitting diode (LED) by Japanese researchers Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, all were purposefully sought product of painstaking lab-work. In fact, the list of such discoveries and inventions is longer than serendipities. Such a list would include discoveries of all fundamental particles of an atom, photoelectric effect, DNA structure, etc. on one hand and the inventions of printing press, I.C. engines, computers, smart phones, etc. on the other.

Lastly, the speaker fails to consider the nature of modern research which requires expensive resources and thus need funding by Government agencies or private firms. Any research project starts with a meticulously planned proposal backed by thorough literature review, and must have well-defined expected outcomes in order to attract funding. Moreover, the principal investigator is accountable to the sponsor for the results of the project, thus leaving very little scope for the former to completely rely on ‘accidents’ for relevant outcomes. For example, the multi-billion Euros ‘Large HadronCollidor’ project from the start had promising prospects which was finally fulfilled by the discovery of long sought-after ‘Higgs-Boson’ particle. Similarly, the evolutions of semi-conductor technology, superconductors, optoelectronics, thermo-electric materials, etc are all the inteneded results of well-planned and designed research projects rather than creations by chance. Yet the possibility of an accidental discovery or invention springing out from these projects cannot be completely ruled-out.

In conclusion, while the statement apparently finds support in many historical discoveries or creations which had the element of chance - though they were not entirely accidental, it goes too far in highlighting the importance of ‘accident’ in scientific research. Not only it fails to consider myriad discoveries and inventions where ‘intent’ was the key, it also overlooks the modern research methodology where even ‘trial-and-error’ is not acceptable in pursuing the claimed outcomes let alone the sole dependence on ‘accidents’.